One Benefit from Covid-19: Video Tours

[Dave Poeppelmeier]

I think we can all agree that Covid-19 had been trying for all of us personally, as well as professionally. As we also know, Black Swan events like this can also force us to change the way we do things, and (spoiler alert) sometimes they work out for the best. 

In my case, residents obviously didn't want people viewing their house during the beginnings of the Covid-19 crisis. For me the big problem was that it was smack in the middle of Student Housing rental season , which here at the University of Toledo is February through May. I had 4 houses changing over for the next school year, and only 1 had students for the next year. But... now I can't show them. How about YouTube Video Tours? Excellent!

The video tours were a hit. The residents only had to let me come in once, I did an 6-8 minute walk through of the whole house, and posted it to an unlisted YouTube account that I sent a link to once someone  requested a showing on Zillow or our website. Prospective Residents (as well as myself) because they didn't have to get off the couch to see the house, and I wasn't running back and forth to the houses to show uninterested people. Those who did love it I would show it to in person, then they put the application in, and done. 

Now that the world has had more experience and acceptance of working remotely, I think these Virtual Tours will carry a lot more weight than they once did. 

[Anthony Angotti]

@Dave Poeppelmeier we went the extra step and got a matterport compatible camera. The time savings has been amazing! We have reduced so much wasted time showing apartments to people that either 

A) Don't show up

or

B) Just don't like it once they see the layout. 

It gives us a much higher likelihood of only going to show the property to prospective tenants that actually want the place. 

We also started using it for listings, which saves a lot of aggravation to tenants on tenant occupied properties and homeowners that don't want to leave the house as often for people that aren't going to buy their house anyway.