Front Elevation: Instant Open House
Size up, walk through and furnish your next home from your computer.
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ShareFebruary 1, 2007
Buyers of luxury real estate all want the same thing—an immediate sense of what it would be like to live in each prospective home. While searching for the right vacation property, buyers ask: Will the layout of this home fit my lifestyle? Will my furniture fit here? How does the sunset look from these windows? Until recently, getting a sense of a place has required a huge investment of travel time in order to view properties, envision layouts and gather MLS listing sheets.
Finally, new technologies are emerging that allow home buyers to quickly screen a large number of properties and concentrate on the few that really meet their needs. Buyers can now collect enough information about a property to get a real sense of it to consider making an offer or to reject it outright, without leaving their own homes or offices.
For sellers, these technologies are transforming transient web traffic or casual drive-by viewers into profiled potential customers who are already creating their own vision for the property. Buyers who have received the MLS listing via e-mail, viewed a film about the home, and are now using the online layouts of the home to make their own interior design plans for the property, are buyers who are about to make an offer.
TurnHere.com
The video begins with a tight shot of the signs at the
intersection of Park Avenue and East 76th while a voice-over begins: "Park
Avenue is known around the world as one of the most prestigious and luxurious
places in which to live." Cut to the busy traffic. Cut to a shot of the luxury
high-rise where the four-bedroom duplex apartment is located. Cut back to the
real estate agent who describes the building’s concierge and staff. The
three-and-a-half-minute video, shot on film, lingers on the recessed doorway of
the building and on every room in the duplex, including the 60-foot-long living
room, the floor-to-ceiling French doors and the maid’s quarters. Each room has
been staged and lit perfectly; the video cuts back frequently to the real estate
agent, who describes each amenity with enthusiasm.; function voidFunc() { } voidFunc();)
The luxury property website InmanStories.com allows
sellers to create, and buyers to view, in-depth short films on a property, including everything from neighborhood history to Realtor interviews to a
walkthrough. Computer photograph by Steve McSweeny/Dreamstime.com (Click image to enlarge)
This is one of more than 100 such short films featured on InmanStories.com, a website created by Brad Inman to showcase marketing films
for luxury properties. Each film is short—from three to five minutes—and heavy
on information, but also tells a compelling story about the history of the
property or the lifestyle you can expect to lead while living there. According
to Todd Tracey, senior vice president at TurnHere, the digital media company
that is the parent company to Inman Stories, these videos have to be
entertaining as well as informative.
"On the Internet, expectations of a short film are different. People want information up front, but they also want an authentic story, and that’s what we strive to do in every piece," explains Tracey. "It’s a video that people will watch through to the end." People can also forward these videos to others, and they can tell powerful stories about a location, even if the viewer has never been there. "In a couple of situations, properties in Manhattan sold to buyers in Europe because the video motivated them to get on a plane and come look at the property," says Tracey.
When streaming video hit the Internet, Inman realized that he could create short films that would highlight neighborhoods in a compelling way. He launched Turn Here.com, which is a collection of short films highlighting diverse cities around the country. Inman Stories, its luxury counterpart, is where property owners or real estate agents can showcase short films about an individual property or development. The films feature interviews with the Realtor as well as shots of the grounds and the interior.
Each film costs about $2,500 to make. TurnHere uses a national network of independent filmmakers who can be contracted to make a film
about a property. These filmmakers work closely with a producer and the real
estate agent or owner to create a treatment, or outline, for the film that will
present the best showcase. In one film, a real estate agent discusses a luxury
golf home as she walks through the immaculate gardens. Another film features a
ranch in which cutaway shots show fly fishermen wading in a nearby trout stream
and another scene shows horses chasing each other through fields adjacent to the
home. If a picture is worth a thousand words, how much is a video
worth?
