You may be questioning how your leasing teams will give a virtual tour while your community is under construction. You may be waiting for everything to be shiny and presentable, right? If that’s the case, you’re missing a huge opportunity. Let us explain why.
Leasing teams need to launch their virtual tours of a new or under-construction asset during the pre-leasing phase. Construction touring is a great opportunity to show prospects progress of the building and get them interested before the leasing office is done, before the paint is up, and before everything is completed. It’s like a soft virtual launch for your community, in a way.
Normally, pre-leasing takes place in a trailer onsite or at an offsite leasing center, but with virtual leasing and the right real estate virtual tour software, these pre-leasing efforts can happen anytime, anywhere.
Using virtual tours during pre-leasing helps drum up interest and attention for the property and, of course, can help get leases signed before opening day. Why is showcasing your building via virtual tour during pre-leasing so important? Today’s prospective residents enjoy new construction touring. There is a reason why hard hat tours remain so popular. People are innately curious. They want to be a part of a process and feel like they have an exclusive look at something special. In today’s world, virtual hard hat tours meet that need and can help reach those pre-leasing goals.
At the end of the day, knowing how to make a virtual tour for real estate under construction can be one of the best ways to get leases signed before the first unit is even complete. Here’s how to make it happen.
Offer Multiple Touring Options: Pre-Recorded and Personalized Videos
Offering pre-recorded, and personalized videos as part of new construction touring will help make the pre-leasing phase very successful. In fact, some Realync clients were able to pre-lease over 40% of their units in a building site unseen using this virtual tour of real estate method. Catered, personalized pre-recorded videos are easy ways to showcase everything from construction updates to things like gym equipment being delivered or a timelapse of a living wall being installed in the lobby.
The key for leasing agents wanting to use virtual tour technology during pre-leasing is transparency and personalization. It’s going to be messy and under construction, so use that to your advantage to make people feel like they are getting exclusive looks into the space. Create pre-recorded videos to showcase the view from a specific unit that a prospect might be living in. Or create a personalized video of a unit and add a voice over like, “Great news, Mary! Your cabinets are getting installed today. Look how beautiful this kitchen will be.”
That level of personalization is what sets these types of virtual tours. Although, you should also consider 360 virtual tours or real estate 3D tours to give prospects an look into the different floorplans that will soon be available. Both a 360 virtual tour for real estate and 3D virtual tours for real estate can provide tours to interested prospects.
No matter how nice of a real estate 360 virtual tour camera you have or how much you spend on real estate virtual tour services, it’s important to look to experts—like Realync—for help in video creation.
With apartment construction touring, remember that personalized, real videos will sell. The leasing agent to personalize and paint the picture of what the space is becoming to have the ROI-focused impact that multifamily properties need.
Provide a Live Opportunity
Another way to do a virtual tour of real estate under construction is to offer a live video tour option. This goes beyond pre-recorded video tours, allowing for live, virtual open houses – aka the virtual hard hat tours we mentioned before. This can be a major part of pre-leasing success and is such a simple way to pull your larger audience of prospective residents into your space at one time.
Hard hat tours of under construction real estate used to be much more common. However, even before the pandemic, more and more cities began to limit them. It’s just too much of a risk to have high consumer traffic walking through a construction zone and enforcing proper PPE guidelines. Virtual hard hat tours can mean all the fun, but none of the restrictions or liability though.
Using a proper virtual leasing platform, like Realync, leasing agents can set a specific date and time for their virtual hard hat tour. Then, they can email out the invitation to their lead list, post it on social media channels or use any other outreach method at their disposal to get the invitation out to their audience of prospects. This is a true lead-generation activity requiring that prospects register for the virtual open house in advance.
Fast forward to the day and time of the tour, and the agent can then walk through the property in real-time with their smartphone or tablet and host as many people as possible for this tour. While touring, the leasing agent can highlight specific parts of the property and construction progress, answer questions, pull up a map showcasing the surrounding area, and more.
For example, leasing teams can show apartment units as well as amenity updates such as progress on the rooftop pool. They can take their prospective residents through a few units that have just gotten their kitchen counters or floor to ceiling windows installed. Or they can go to the top floor to show off the waterfront views.
These live virtual tours allow for all of that, highlighting what makes the property special in a walkthrough, getting their leads interested. But, since it’s live, agents and prospects can interact, ask and answer questions, and try to drive people through the funnel virtually. And 360 degree real estate tours offer similar benefits.
Live virtual tours are a great, interactive virtual tour for real estate option that can show a prospect all that a property can be…even before the dust settles.
The great thing about using a built-for-multifamily virtual leasing solution for your pre-recorded or live virtual open house needs, is that it’s all saved in one convenient, cloud-based location. Even your live virtual open houses are saved and recorded to the cloud that you can share with your lead list after a tour is complete if someone might have missed the tour and is interested in learning more. By having a virtual leasing platform built for multifamily, you’ll not only get cloud-based collaboration, but integrations, Fair Housing compliance, and so much more that will make the hectic world of pre-leasing a bit more streamlined, effective, and efficient.
In the end, whether you use pre-recorded or live virtual hard hat tours of real estate under construction, personalizing these virtual tours is what really matters. Making virtual touring a part of your pre-leasing process is what will set your property apart before the paint dries.
Let Us Help You!
Close more leases, market more effectively, engage with residents and, as always, keep it real. Do you have a question or suggestion? Or want to learn more about what you read? Email us at contact@realync.com. We’d love to hear from you!
