Last year was certainly a big year for streaming video. It came in the form of entertainment via Netflix and other services. It hit us as videoconferencing, via Zoom and other services, and included children attending their classes online. It increased on a personal level as we posted more video to Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and sent it live to friends and family using Facetime or any other service.

I helped a friend who is a new realtor use some video apps in order to show homes she was selling in live, “interactive” (by audio) walkthroughs with clients.

One NAR statistic she had seen said that 77% of realtors now use social media for their real estate business and video is a big part of that now.

Live video works with mobile devices quite well with the current technologies. The pandemic changed the way we use video online or live for a number of industries. Education gets a lot of attention, but it is certainly not the only place where live video grew exponentially.

My friend had only started showing homes in fall 2019, so when she was unable to walk with clients through homes or have open house events her agency said she had to get up to speed on using video tours.

One of my sons sold his condo using 360-degree photo views back in 2017. It seemed like a big leap from the usual static photos I was used to seeing of homes. But video takes that idea much further.

My friend told me that the agency finds that live video results in more conversions to sales than even traditional video. That may seem counterintuitive since staged and edited video certainly looks more polished than live video. But live video creates more engagement. People tend to keep watching longer than archived video.

Post-pandemic will people still want video over an actually walk through a home? Probably not. But more and more, post-pandemic seems at least a year away and there will probably still be a market for virtual home tours, both archived and live, by the end of 2021 and beyond.

Something else she is now doing is archiving herself doing a “live” walking tour of a home. It looks live but, like “live on tape” television, it can be edited and cleaned up and reused.

Since I worked with her, I myself watched a virtual walkthrough of an Airbnb that we were considering renting. I much prefer that to static photos.

Sample Real Estate Home Walk Through Video