VIDEO Tab Now Available For Ubertor Websites

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News, Technology

For months, I have been reminding our clients to refer to their videos as VIDEO TOURS and not VIRTUAL TOURS in all of their marketing material. In a previous blog post, I urged realtors to ensure that they wrote VIDEO TOUR directly in their mls descriptions since there is no way to differentiate the various types of virtual tours, photo gallery, 360 or panoramic tour from the vastly superior video tour on the mls website. There is so much excitement about video on the Internet and the ever growing demand from users. I want to ensure that our clients are capitalizing on this demand.

Today, on Steve Jagger’s Ubertor Blog, they have announced that the VIRTUAL TOUR tab is now customizable. Ubertor clients are now able to correctly label the tab to read VIDEO TOUR! Finally, there is a way to differentiate VIDEO from the also-rans. Has anyone ever heard of the growing demand for 360 Tours? I didn’t think so.

Announcing – Improved Video Openhouse Photo Gallery

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News

Have you seen our new and improved photo gallery?  Users are now able to better navigate through all our photos; scroll, move forward, go back, pause. I am sure that all the viewers of our galleries will find it to be a much improved system.  At Video Openhouse, we are committed to improving all our products and services.  Please check out some of our latest image galleries:

Jacquie Darmanin, Sutton Group – West Coast (White Rock), 216 – 15150 29A Avenue

Daryl Braithwaite, Sunnus Properties, 2146 West 14th Avenue

Team Andruff, RE/Max Crest Realty (Westside), 906 West 13th Avenue

Andrew Hasman, Andrew Hasman Realty, 2750 West 15th Avenue

 

Using eBay to Sell Properties

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News

I had an interesting thought the other day.  Does anyone use eBay to sell their properties?  So I checked to see if there were any BC listings.  Currently, there are 3, except 1 is for a time share in Whistler.  So actually, there are only two.  The marketing genius that posted the first listing has advertised it as an anti-earthquake building on Georgia Street with a nice view of town and North Vancouver.  The ad does not show any pictures.  Not a chance this will sell. 

The second property is much more interesting.  It is for a custom built rancher on a half acre, close to the ocean, located somewhere on Vancouver Island.  The property comes with a 26 foot Bayline boat, a truck and 2 ATVs.  There are a hanfdul of really nice pictures.  An realtor would consider this property to be a very marketable listing.

Unlike other auctions, a real estate listing lasts for 90 days.  Anyone familiar with eBay will know that sellers are able to set a minimum price.  If that reserve price is not met, then the seller is not obligated to complete the transaction.  I am curious why someone would choose to use eBay to sell their home.  I will continue to watch this with great interest.  The auction is scheduled to last for another 80 days.

 

Want To Know What Your Neighbours Paid For Their House?

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News, Real-Estate, Technology

I have heard a lot about assessments these days. It is my understanding that they had not been kept up to date and with skyrocketing housing prices in the Lower Mainland, some homeowners are going to be hit with a big increase in the taxes. To help residents determine if their assessment is fair, BC Assessment has opened up their online database for free to the general public until March 15th. Type in your address and the query will return the last sale price and the value of your assessment for you and other residences on your street. Want to know what your neighbours paid for their house last year? Check it out on the BC Assessment website – Assessments and Sales by Address 2007.

Another great feature, if you are looking to buy or sell a home, is their Sales Select Sysytem 2007. The system allows you to specify a neighbourhood and property type and returns the selling price of the first 100 sales closest to July 1st, 2006 are returned. These services are always available to the general public but are free of any fees for the next 2 months.

Marketing Listings in Nepal

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News

Last week, Internet traffic slowed significantly between North America and Asia.  One of the major fibre optic cables that links the 2 continents had been severed.  Within 24 hours, intercontinental Internet traffic was flowing again but much slower, just 60% of the previous capacity.  I have been closely watching our logs to see if it has had any effect on our overseas web traffic.  I have not been able to notice a significant drop in our traffic, in fact it seems to be as robust as ever.  Maybe the Dalai Lama is looking for a home in West Vancouver because we just had our first video viewed in Nepal.

This might be of interest to readers of our blog.  Here is the full list of countries that visited our website in 2006 sorted by number of pages viewed:

Canada
United States
South Korea
Australia
Great Britain
Russian Federation
European Union
China
Hong Kong
Taiwan
Germany
Japan
United Arab Emirates
Singapore
Italy
Netherlands
Norway
Iran
Switzerland
France
South Africa
Saudi Arabia
Sweden
Mexico
Philippines
Puerto Rico
Thailand
Poland
Yugoslavia
India
Brazil
New Zealand
Ireland
Czech Republic
Peru
Israel
Spain
Belgium
Egypt
Austria
Vietnam
Antigua and Barbuda
Kuwait
Turkey
Bahamas
Greece
Jordan
Costa Rica
Ukraine
Bulgaria
Lebanon
Indonesia
Finland
Monaco
Malaysia
Guyana
Aruba
Algeria
Argentina
Romania
Azerbaidjan
Cayman Islands
Nicaragua
Slovak Republic
Luxembourg
Namibia
Kazakhstan
Barbados
Colombia
Mauritius
Iceland
Latvia
Slovenia
Brunei Darussalam
Gibraltar
Guatemala
Burkina Faso
Dominican Republic
Venezuela
Lithuania
Chile
Pakistan
Denmark
Bermuda
Cyprus
Nigeria
Estonia
Sri Lanka 

The Internet makes the world a much smaller place.  Our video tours allow realtors to reach out to an international audience and market their listings to the world! 

 

Watching Video Openhouse Tours on Apple iPhone

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News, Technology

Apple unveiled its new cellular phone, iPhone, to the world this week with great fanfare. Of course the functionality of the iPod is built in, but it also has some other interesting features as well. Anyone familiar with a Mac will know what a widget is. For those unfamiliar with Macs, a widget is a small application that can be run on any computer running OS X. Some common examples are clocks, calculators, stock reports and weather reports. There are countless examples of widgets available for free to the general public. The iPhone will be running OS X and therefore will allow the user to quickly customize their “device” with widgets that meet their needs.

Navigating the Internet on a portable device other than a laptop has in general, been a horrible experience for the user. The iPhone attempts to make web browsing on a small screen a much more user friendly experience. The iPhone has the safari web browser installed and attempts to duplicate the experience of sitting on front of a laptop or desktop computer. Even though the resolution of the iPhone is only 360 x 240, Safari allows the user to see the whole page and then by tapping the screen, zoom in to the content you want to view or read. It sounds similar to a “Snap” preview, a javascript plugin for Internet Explorer that allows browsers to mouseover a link and see a preview of the website before zooming in on a specific area.

The most impressive feature built in to the iPhone is its ability to connect to wireless networks. Connecting to the Internet on existing cell phones is slow and requires the user to pay for data transfers. The experience is both expensive and unfriendly. If the iPhone is truly going to be a web surfing/email device, they needed to break away from relying on the cellular network to provide the data transfers. With all the free wireless networks popping up around the city, surfing the Internet on your iPhone would similar to the experience of using your laptop, just a smaller screen. I wonder if it would be possible to install ip telephony software like skype or vonage to make free long distance calls? Hmmmm.

Are you going to be able to view Video Openhouse Tours on your iPhone? Yes, but not anytime soon. The iPhone isn’t available in the US until June and won’t be released in Europe for until next year. Unfortunately, there are no release dates for the iPhone in Canada.

Panoramic Tours Are Dead – RIP

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News, Technology

Thanks to Steve over at Ubertor for drawing my attention to a great blog at the Future Of Real Estate Marketing. The post is an overview of the Inman News’ Real Estate Connect Conference. The author leaves the readers with a few thoughts including his predictions for online video in the real estate industry under the heading, “Video Killed the Virtual Tour“. Essentially, he is forecasting that this is the year that video will make an impact on the industry. Costs and technological barriers have fallen, making the use of video more accessible than ever before. If 2006 was all about aggregating real estate data, then 2007 is about giving context to the data and “video does just that”.

Panoramic or 360 tours aren’t dead … yet. But they are an old technology that is quickly being replaced by a far superior medium for virtually showcasing any home to the online world!