It is a very interesting title and one which most if not all agents reading this would love to do. How to save time showing property? How I hear you say? Well it is all about qualification of your customer (the tenant or the buyer), the very first step in any sales process should be qualification. If you are trying to sell ( or rent) anything to somebody they need to qualify to be a prospect.
Strategies
In a previous post I discussed Strategies agencies use when marketing a property , a really quick overview of this blog would be the more information given on a property will result in a smaller number of enquiries. That’s bad isn’t it? Well its only bad if you don’t value your time or your agents employed within your agencies time.
The feedback on the blog above was significant with many agents agreeing and arguing the strategies they use and why. So rather than just go by assumptions I conducted a case study on a property. I contacted a number of agents who use the Rentview software and asked would they take part in a case study on How to save time showing property. I found one who had two similar properties to rent and about to come on to the market.
The strategy I am going to show you will decrease the number of viewings that you will do on a property but increase the % of viewings to offers.
Using Video Marketing Tours Case Study
In this case study I advertised two very similar properties to rent in the same building. The first property was advertised with images and description, the second property in the exact same way but when an enquiry came in I responded by giving a link to a property video tour. The only difference in the study was the time of year in which the units were advertised**, the findings were very interesting.**The first unit was advertised in March and the available stock levels in the area were 30% less then the second unit being advertised in June.With this information it could be argued that a vacant unit may be on the market slightly longer.
Case Study 1 – No Video being used.
The property was listed and it received 1806 ad views through the portal it was displayed on over 13 days. From this 35 enquiries were received and viewings took place within 48 hours of an enquiry, a total of 5 separate viewings took place before a tenant was secured.
| Ad views | Enquiries | Showings | Vacant | Month | Viewing Time | Total Cost |
| 1806 | 35 | 5 | 13 days | March | 7hrs | €225* |
*Cost of showing for an average agency based at €25 for an agent per hour along with €10 in travel expenses.
Case Study 2- Marketing Video being used.
The property was listed and received 3600 ad views and generated 43 enquiries through the portal. The difference from the above scenario was that the enquiry was then emailed across a link to view the property through a video tour. (The tour was a simple video which took no more then 2 minutes to record and a further 10 minutes to edit and upload to YouTube and you can see how to do this in my previous blog). The property was shown 2 times in total and took 21 days to rent out.
| Ad views | Enquiries | Showings | Vacant | Month | Viewing Time | Total Cost |
| 3621 | 43 | 2 | 21 days | June | 2.5hrs | €90.00 |
Here is the property video tour which I provided as you can see is very basic
Case Study Findings
By using property video tours after an initial enquiry was made it saved the agency 60% of agents viewing times and costs associated with showing a unit. It did take a further 8 days to find a tenant but this could be argued by the fact that there was 30% more stock on the market along with the time of year.
There is also a number of other benefits.
- It saved tenants time in viewing units which was greatly appreciated (see image below)
- It provides an excellent opportunity to leverage the videos for SEO of your agency.
- Increases the offering to landlords or vendors as an additional marketing service being provided
Your thoughts
So after reviewing the stats what are your thoughts on video marketing? Is this something that you have not provided to date but would now consider? It would be great to get your feedback and thoughts as a professional in the industry.
