I had a client asking how they could get their Redfin listing to show the prominent “3D Walkthrough” link on their listing. It appears that Redfin currently only supports Matterport tours for this feature. Does anyone have more experience with this and has anyone at iGuide contacted Redfin about adding iGuide as an option?
On a similar note, another client still uses me for photos, but has started using another tour provider that supports Zillow 3D tours, because Zillow currently only supports their tours. I am considering offering a Zillow Tours (but only as an add-on to iGuide). The quality of tour is not great, and the agent who does a lot of business stated as much, but Zillow is saying these tours get twice the views, which trumps quality with her. Has anyone offered Zillow 3D as an add-on that would like to provide feedback?
Have been offering Zillow 3D Home Tours since November last year. iGuides don’t make sense for every listing unfortunately. The Zillow 3D Home Tours aren’t bad but they’re only 3D Tours. They also help bump their listing up towards the top in the Zillow search engine.
I will say, Zillow’s technology is horrible. They’re a pain to deal with to get any support. They only support one of two Ricoh 360 cameras and they both suck for different reasons.
We do a lot of Zillow Tours. We don’t charge a whole lot but it does provide some extra revenue/profit on properties where they aren’t getting an iGuide.
I have been offering Zillow 3-D tours for free along with my iGuide. In fact we do a 3-D Zillow tour for every listing regardless of whether we do an iGuide. It takes a maximum of 10 minutes to do most houses and then an additional five or six minutes to process back at the office. My agents are doing it themselves on their own listings. Honestly I think we’re the only brokerage in our MLS doing it.
I’ve had several agents ask about this, and one of them won’t be using iGuide anymore because Redfin doesn’t support it. A few months ago I asked Redfin support if there are any plans to support iGuide URLs and the response I got was “We are looking into possibly adding more options at a later date, however, there are no current timelines to provide on when or if this will be expanded.” So whenever I have an agent ask about this, I request that they ask Redfin to support iGuide. I think our best bet is to keep asking Redfin to support it. Not sure if iGuide has approached Redfin about this issue but would be interested to know if any efforts have been made on iGuide’s part.
On the Zillow 3D tours, one of our agents mentioned that he used to be able to upload photo spheres into the Zillow app, but not anymore. We weren’t doing Zillow 3D because it’s easy enough for an agent to take the iGuide photo spheres and upload them to Zillow themselves, but we may have to look into doing that as an add-on service since it seems agents cannot do this themselves any longer.
Thank you for the replies. I’ve ordered a Ricoh Z1 (backorered for a few weeks) and will test the waters with the Zillow tours. On a similar note, I also find it interesting that in Redfins virtual tour link (the more hidden link toward bottom from the MLS) they show direct links to Zillow 3D tours if one has been input in the MLS. I would not be surprised if Redfin doesn’t do something about this. I was just on Redfin, but looking at a tour provided by Zillow. They must hate that.
My agent also said the other day she was unable to create her own Zillow tour. Having no experience with it, I didn’t know what to say. I find that interesting. How soon will it be that a photographer has to be a “certified Zillow Photographer” to even create a tour. That’s what worries me here using a service so tightly controlled by a single company with interest in controlling everything.
iGUIDE is now prominently featured on Zillow via the Virtual Tour button shown over the main listing image. The same is true for Realtor.com (via the VR Tour button). In both cases the requirement is for yourguide.com to be part of the virtual tour URL when it is entered into MLS.
When speaking to Redfin, Compass, or StreetEasy agents you can point out that iGUIDE is supported by the two largest real estate portals in the US and that Redfin, Compass, or StreetEasy agents should encourage their brokerages to do the same or risk losing homebuyer traffic as listing content on Zillow and Realtor.com is more useful with a larger fraction of 3D tours being easily found. Our own attempts to get Redfin, Compass, StreetEasy onboard have not been fruitful so far.
We have readily available documentation about how to detect and embed or link iGUIDEs that can be used by any portal, brokerage, or MLS: https://docs.youriguide.com/guides/embed.html
Free??? Dude (Dudette?) you really need to charge something. I mean, no, we don’t charge a TON for them ($50/ea) but–until COVID–we were doing 40-50 a month. It adds up. And you’re taking 10-15 mins onsite and another 10 minutes to arrange it all. Your time is worth money.
I remember the thread about iGuides on Zillow and I’ve tried it with a few of our customers and they aren’t being pushed. Do you have any more info on that? Would be big if they did. We have some customers who do iGuides AND do a Zillow 3D tour. Not that I want to lose the couple of bucks but I’d rather let them know they can save a little money. Always a good thing.
No, they are not pushed. They are pulled by Zillow from MLS feed.
If the URLs you provide to your customers do not contain youriguide.com in them, Zillow will not display the Virtual Tour button for iGUIDE.
If you provide your customers with multiple URLs and they do not put a youriguide.com URL into their MLS system, Zillow will not display the Virtual Tour button for iGUIDE.
If their MLS system has multiple fields for virtual tours (e.g. Virtual Tour 1 and Virtual Tour 2 fields and some MLSes also have a 3D Tour field now), your customers will need to experiment and determine which MLS field gets analyzed by Zillow and connected to the Virtual Tour button when that field contains a URL for a tour which is white-listed by Zillow.
Is there a PDF somewhere that has current posting instructions for all the main sites? If not, it would be a great thing to have at hand. It could be updated as things change.
Not all MLS fields may be sent by your local MLS to Zillow. We saw that with HomeSnap, where an iGUIDE would appear on Realtor.com and Zillow, but not on HomeSnap and their reply was that the MLS was not sending the virtual tour fields to HomeSnap, but apparently was sending it to Realtor.com and Zillow.
The trend in real estate data management in the US is to transition all data flows to RESO APIs and standards (Real Estate Standards Organization). Property data is sent to aggregator portals like Zillow, Realtor.com, HomeSnap via MLS feeds.
If agents enter an iGUIDE URL into their MLS system and have tried using all available MLS fields (related to virtual tours, exact field naming varies from MLS to MLS with over 600 MLSes in the US) and that did not show the Virtual Tour button on Zillow or VR Tour on Realtor.com, they should be asking their MLS if it prohibits certain fields to be sent to certain aggregator portals and why.