Have you ever toured way too many spaces with a tenant or investor? Some of the tours could have been ruled out by a virtual tour.
I’ve seen many videos or virtual tours produced for houses for sale. I’ve often wondered, why hasn’t this practice caught on in commercial? After all, a video can show much more than a plain flyer or an email; and is more pleasing to look at. It doesn’t even have to be a video, it can be still shots that are stringed together to look like a video using free programs like Windows Movie Maker or iMovie (See sample below).
Reason One
One of the excuses I’ve heard as to why video hasn’t caught on in CRE is ugly buildings. How can you show a video of an empty shell or an industrial building? I don’t think this is a good excuse to not create a video. There are plenty of ugly houses that have videos created for them. Besides, you can focus on the surrounding area instead of showing the empty space. You can create a decent short video with a few slides (similar to what you are already putting on your flyer: property overview page, a few pictures, a map, your contact info; throw in some slide transitions, and viola, you have a video.
Reason Two
Another reason why I think video hasn’t caught on: videos for homes are viewed by interested buyers, usually while they are in their home, on their personal computer. In commercial real estate, the video might be viewed by a commercial real estate professional while he is in a cube or an office. If you’ve ever worked in a cube atmosphere, you know that you cannot watch video because you will disrupt those around you. So my theory is, out of common courtesy, commercial real estate professionals don’t create videos because they know the audience work in cubes, offices or are always on the road. Perhaps then, something like an sms campaign for real estate would be a better thought.
Who knows what the real reason video hasn’t caught on in the commercial space? Commercial professionals have some of the same tools available as residential agents; we just don’t know how to use them yet, and CRE tends to lag behind a few years. LoopNet is now getting into the video game with Pro Video, for only $995, you can have a custom video created.
By John Boyer, Coldwell Banker Commercial Affiliates
