235-WGAN-TV-REALTOR Brandon Doyle Compares 16 Virtual Tours by We Get Around Network

- How do 16 virtual tours compare?

- Does the virtual tour camera make a difference?

- What are the thoughts of a real estate agent that uses virtual tours for every listing?

Stay tuned.

Hi all. I’m Dan Smigrod, Founder of the www.WeGetAroundNetworkForum.com

Today is Thursday, January 9th, 2025. You’re watching WGAN-TV Live at 5: a podcast for digital twin creators shaping the future of real estate today.

We have an awesome show for you. REALTOR Magazine Article Preview: REALTOR Brandon Doyle Compares 16 Virtual Tours. Our subject matter expert is RE/MAX Results REALTOR, and Doyle Real Estate Team Leader, Brandon Doyle. Brandon, thanks for being back on the show.

- Yeah, thanks for having me. It’s always good to catch up, and find out what’s new in the world of 360 tours.

- Well, that’s actually the question that we’re going to have for you today. But before we jump into today’s topic, Brandon, please tell us about RE/MAX Results.

- Yeah, so I am a real estate agent with RE/MAX Results, based out of Maple Grove, Minnesota. I’m on a father/son team. And yeah, I’m just really passionate about technology. So I test Smart Home Tech, and 360 tours, and virtual reality, and I write for REALTOR Magazine.

So I’m currently working on an article, and we’re comparing all the tour solutions using the same home. And then I actually reached out to you. Given your wealth of knowledge, and you’ve been really, really helpful with this, connecting me with different companies, and getting access to some of the different tours to make this all happen. So I really appreciate that.

[Doyle Real Estate Team] finds that the 360 tours help us get more listings, sell the homes faster, and command higher prices. It’s a good way to pre-qualify a buyer. And we use it for every single listing that we do. We do quite a few listings a year.

Very easy to do-it-yourself. But it’s more professional to hire a professional. Connect with a local professional [real estate photographer].

Brandon Doyle

REALTOR and Doyle Real Estate Team Leader RE/MAX Results www.DoyleRealEstateTeam.com | www.DoyleMN.com

- I thank you for reaching out. Brandon, REALTOR Magazine, seems like you’ve done this article before.

- Yeah, so I started writing for REALTOR Magazine probably eight years ago, but about two, two and a half years ago we did this article.

At that time, using the tours that were available. And I just felt we were due for a refresh, and I wanted to make sure it was a true apples to apples comparison.

Whereas last time we used different tours, but it was different houses. So this time it’s the same exact property, same conditions, although the staging did get removed while it was gotten so, a couple of them, the furniture is going to be missing. But, we did our best to really make sure that it’s a fair comparison of all the tours.

- Okay, we’ll talk about that. So this is kind of a refresh on the REALTOR Magazine article that you did two and a half years ago. A link to that article, a short link is: WGAN.info/REALTOR2025 that’s a good question. I have so many short links for today’s show. Let me just double check, Brandon.

- No problem.

- The short link for the REALTOR Magazine article is: WGAN.info/REALTOR2025 And the reason for that date, as soon as you have a new article, we’ll have the link go to your new article rather than the one that was two and a half years ago.

- Well, that makes sense.

- And then also, for context for today’s show, tell us a little bit more about your team, and about the use of virtual tours by your team.

- Yeah, so I was a very early adopter of 360 tours. I actually was at Inman Connect in San Francisco. I saw an agent talking about it as a solution they were using for luxury listings. And I was the first to bring it to our state here in Minnesota. I purchased the Matterport Pro1 Camera myself, and then got some publicity from that.

And of course we’re always trying to feature properties the best way possible, but I did end up selling that camera to a local photographer. And then I continued to outsource. And I’ve used a combination of all sorts of solutions actually over the years. Whether it’s Matterport or Realvision. They’re local to us, so they have a local provider.

So we’ve used them quite a bit. And then Matterport as well with the Ricoh THETA the Matterport Pro2 Camera, the Pro3 Camera. So I’ve kind of gone through it all. But we really find that the 360 tours help us get more listings, sell the homes faster, and command higher prices. It’s a good way to pre-qualify a buyer.

They can click through it, they get excited. It also saves some time because they might have a question. If they looked at 16 homes in a day, and they’re kind of wondering which one was which, they can go back and revisit the tour, or they can share it with loved ones, whether it’s a spouse that’s in another area, parents, kind of get that blessing. It gets them excited, allows them to visualize what it would be like living there. It works on all these different platforms. And so it’s really great. And we use it for every single listing that we do. We do quite a few listings a year, so.

- So, for the Doyle Real Estate Team, every listing gets a virtual tour.

- Yep. No matter what the price point is, we do professional photography, 360 tours, floor plan, and then a quick teaser video.

- So you were previously on WGAN-TV talking about this topic. The show was called, “74 Reasons Real Estate Agents Buy Virtual Tours.”

I think when we first planned to do that show, there were going to be 10 reasons. And after going through the transcript of the show, I literally wrote down 74 reasons that you told us of why you use virtual tours. So for our viewers that would to see that previous show:

www.WGAN.info/BrandonDoyle

So that kind of sets the scene that you are obviously super enthusiastic about having a virtual tour on every listing. Your team does this. You’re doing an article for REALTOR Magazine; an update for the National Association of REALTORS: REALTOR Magazine.

Tell us about this project. Perhaps a little bit about what you started to do, and then maybe what it turned into. Because I want to say you had a list of virtual tours, but then it sounded like it just kept growing.

- Correct. Yeah. So that article to this day is one of the most viewed articles that I’ve written. So I get a lot of people that will reach out, whether it’s LinkedIn, Facebook, email, phone calls, texts, and ask me questions about that particular article, and the process.

And so I thought maybe it’s time to do a refresh. Some of the tour links that were used were no longer working. And then, like I

mentioned before, it wasn’t really a true apples to apples, because they were different properties. And so I thought it would be good to put them all in their best light, and really showcase each of them.

So I started by just reaching back out to those same companies, and asking them, “What’s changed in the world of 360 technology?” “What do I need to be included in this?” “What did I miss last time?” “How have things evolved?”

And then, “Hey, can we do another tour?” I identified a property, it was a builder that was nearby. Not my own listing, but they were grateful, gracious enough to allow us to shoot at their property. So, it was a $2,450,000 listing, which is pretty, pretty expensive for our area. Very beautiful property.

- Beautiful. Yeah, 5,500 square feet, five bedrooms, five baths, one acre lot. And some unusual features as well that we’ll see coming up.

- Yeah. And so in that process too, I reached out to you and I said, “Hey, here’s where I’m at now. A couple of these companies aren’t getting back to me.” And of course you have a very good relationship with them, so you’re able to quickly get me to the right person. Because of course there is always turnover in companies, to be expected.

And so needed to be reconnected there. And then you also had a list of some other recommendations, and so I reached out to them, or you were able to make the connections. And they were willing to share their equipment as well, or send someone out. So yeah, the list grew well beyond my initial expectations.

- Well, I want to say, our show title is about 16 virtual tours. But actually it turned out that for today’s show, we’ll call it two bonus ones, because there’s actually eight 18 to show and talk about. I thought what I would do, Brandon, is just read off the list of the tours that we’re going to talk about today.

- Okay.

- And cameras that were used. So if you could just bear with me, we’re going to do show and tell with Brandon, for Asteroom, BoxBrownie.com, CloudPano, CubiCasa Tour, EyeSpy360, GIRAFFE360, iGUIDE, Matterport, REALSEE, Realvision, RICOH360 Tours, Urbanimmersive and Zillow 3D Home. And the cameras that Brandon used on various shoots, or a photographer shot on behalf of Brandon, a DSLR camera, GIRAFFE360 Gen 4 Camera.

And the iGUIDE PLANIX R1 Camera System, and Insta360 ONE X4, a Matterport Pro2 Camera, a Matterport Pro3 Camera, REALSEE 3D Galois LiDAR Camera, Ricoh THETA Z1. So quite an exhaustive list, and it’s all one property.

Very easy to do-it-yourself. But it’s more professional to hire a professional. Connect with a local professional [real estate photographer].

Brandon Doyle

REALTOR and Doyle Real Estate Team Leader RE/MAX Results www.DoyleRealEstateTeam.com | www.DoyleMN.com

And so I’d say congratulations Brandon, because you have the single most comprehensive public list of various tour platforms, all of the same house, in order to try to do as best you could in an apples to apples comparison. So, awesome! Before we actually take a look at each of the tours and have you comment on them, why don’t we begin at the end, which is what’s your conclusion? After using all these platforms, what did you decide?

- Yeah, that’s a great question. So I’m going to answer that from a real estate agent perspective, which I think is really important to differentiate.

So, as an agent, I definitely value professionals. Some of these tools are easy to use, but at the same time it can be time consuming. And I think there is a level of professionalism when you say, “I have my photographer coming by, and they’re going to create this tour.” Versus me going out there and shooting it myself.

So I am very techie, I’m very capable. Obviously I created many of these tours, given the cameras that were lent to me. But at the end of the day, I am still going to hire it out. I still see the value of using a local photographer.

And I do it day-to-day. But as far as the solutions go, I think end product wise, when we’re looking across the board, I shared every single tour I created on my Facebook page. My friends that are real estate agents, and just the general public could not tell you the difference between a single one of them. And many of them refer to just all of them in general as Matterport tours.

They’re like, “Oh, what kind of Matterport tour is this?” And so it’s kind of interesting that they’ve become a Kleenex tissue level of brand recognition. Not to say that the quality is that superior, or that they are the brand. They just have a lot of market share, and they’re just well known. So, from an agent perspective, I could see using any number of these tours.

There’s a couple where I don’t think the quality is quite up to my standards, but they have other things going for them. And so, if your average agent’s going to be happy with any of these, if you just said, “I have a 360 tour platform, pick one of these.”

Give that to them at the end, they’re going to be happy. They won’t even know the difference unless you’re in the space and you can really, really tell. So for example, in my business, we contracted through a photographer that was typically using a Matterport Pro2 Camera, and one of the shoots, they used a THETA. And I said, “something looks a little bit off on this one.”

They said “Oh really?” And they’re like, “We’ve been starting to use the THETA because it’s quicker for us, it’s easier, smaller, compact. And I was like, “Oh, okay, well would you mind re-shooting it?” And they were happy to comply, but they said of all their agent clients, and there’s a ton of us, I was the only one that could actually discern the difference. So that goes to say a lot.

- Well how important is the difference?

- Yeah, I don’t know. If you’re the consumer, I don’t think it really is, to be honest. To me, I think it is. I look at the windows, to see if they’re blown out. I look for smooth navigation. Yeah. Some of them I think are just, there’s a lot coming at you. I like to see labels on things.

I like to be able to have the floor plan. I like when it’s a package, where it’s all in one versus going to different places, and then making sure everything is MLS compliant. So our particular MLS, the North Star MLS here in Minnesota is very, very picky about that tour link. And so I’ve gotten a couple of times where they’ve flagged things, and it was,

I had to go back to the provider and say, “Hey, they don’t want the logo.” Even if it’s yours, they don’t want links out, even if it’s to your site about terms of service, privacy, that type of thing. It can’t link else out, period. And so then they had to make it so that it just stays within the tour. So little things like that.

- So, we’ve talked about the appearance of the tours. I think that’s what you’ve been describing. How important is the capture process then?

- Yeah, so from the agent’s perspective, it’s irrelevant because I would outsource it. But from talking to the guys that helped out, and then my experience as well, doing the captures myself, there’s a vast difference of how easy it is ranging from like, “I got this done, this entire property done in 30 minutes,” and it automatically stitched everything to, “I had to add the navigation, which could be challenging, but also it was kind of nice because then I could customize it.”

And then the one extreme being, I’m having alignment issues and connectivity issues, and I’m having to re-shoot things, and getting very frustrated, spending hours at a property. So, the full gamut. I would say between the Matterport tours, even the Pro2 to the Pro3 the Pro3 was significantly faster. And so if you were out shooting tours day in and day out, that would really add up.

- Since the REALTOR Magazine is targeted to real estate agents or REALTORS, could you just give us the highlight on maybe the three overall categories? I want to say the first is the overall appearance of the tour, the user experience.

I know you’ve said it, but could you just like, maybe in a simple way, what is it that you’ll communicate in REALTOR Magazine with real estate agents about which tour to use?

- Yeah, so, I approach this the same way that I approach product recommendations in the smart home space, that I’m going to be as objective as possible. I’m going to say, “Here’s the pros and the cons, and then let you decide.” Because there isn’t one right answer for anyone. But for the article, it may end up being a series just because I’ve gotten so much information back from people, and really starting with the benefits. Why should you do the tours?

I think that we’ve covered that ad nausea, but now that the agents are on board, like, “Okay, yeah, I should do a tour.” Are you going to do it yourself, or are you going to hire it out? And if you’re going to do it yourself, what platform are you going to use? What camera are you going to use? And then if you’re going to it out, who’s available in your area? What’s the typical price point you should expect to pay? And what to look for from that vendor.

And then from there, there’s kind of a pros and cons, or a comparison of the solutions. I think if you’re thinking about it from the host’s perspective, if I’m an agent that’s going to buy this for myself and not outsource it, then I really want to know about the cost. What’s the upfront cost of the camera? What’s the ongoing cost of the hosting?

Because depending on how many listings you have, it may or may not make sense to be doing this yourself either. So, and then the turnaround time too was something that I thought was pretty important. So on some of the platforms, you can upload it, and it’s going to start processing. Others it was manual, and it took me a couple hours to do it.

And then some, I had, I sent it off, and then one of them took a week. And so a week isn’t really, that’s not going to work for real estate. So even if it was the highest quality platform, I still wouldn’t end up going that route, so.

- So on the user experience from the person who is looking at buying, renting a property, from your perspective, it may be that

people simply cannot tell which 360 or 3D or other related tour platform they’re looking at. So, they may get back to what the real estate agent, what the REALTOR feels that they like. And then it becomes part of the question of, well, some are harder to shoot, some are easier to shoot, some are harder in terms of the backend, some are easier on the backend, some have more features.

So it’s really, it’s kind of like, “Here’s the list for the REALTOR to decide which works best for them. And maybe if a solution is somewhat harder, maybe to shoot from your perspective. If you’re outsourcing it to a photographer, then it doesn’t matter if that’s, if that’s who’s shooting your tour.

- Correct. And there could be a level of mastery involved as well. Like some of the cameras, it was my first time using it. And I didn’t have enough time to get super in depth on the nuances and stuff. And so obviously there’s more I could showcase, but we’re doing the best we could with what we had. So.

- Mm-hm.

- Yeah.

- For our audience that is primarily real estate photographers, I think what I’m hearing is even though you are a real estate agent who has been using virtual tours, and started out shooting virtual tours, I want to say in 2014, when you first joined the, We Get Around Network Forum,

- 2014.

- 2014. Forgive me, 2014. So, in 10 plus years, even though you are adept at technology, you’re still suggesting to real estate agents that they outsource it. And could you just spend a little bit more time on why outsourcing to a professional?

- Yep. So a couple of things. First is going to be cost related. So the camera itself is an upfront cost, and then there’s hosting fees.

And so depending on the platform, and depending on how long you need the tour for, that can really add up. On the other side of that coin is going to be your time. And so at the end of the day, it’s still you out there. So I’m all about delegation and outsourcing where it makes sense. And then the other part of that too, I guess, is professionalism.

So it looks a lot more, it looks better for the consumer that is like, “Hey, I brought in this person.” They are the professionals, they’re going to showcase your house as best as they can. And that’s what they do all day every day. Versus me, going out there and shooting it myself, which again, I’m more than capable of doing, but just optics look a lot better to have a professional do it. So, yeah. And scalability too. So I can only be at one place at a time.

Very easy to do-it-yourself. But it’s more professional to hire a professional. Connect with a local professional [real estate photographer].

Brandon Doyle

REALTOR and Doyle Real Estate Team Leader RE/MAX Results www.DoyleRealEstateTeam.com | www.DoyleMN.com

- Forgive me, I recall in our previous show where one of the reasons to outsource was to help justify even maintaining the highest fee possible is that you’re hiring professionals in everything that you do for photos, floor plans.

- Correct. Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Same with staging. We’ll bring in a stager for a consultation. I’m perfectly capable of telling you that you should move your couch over, and that you need to paint, and declutter and stuff. But when I have a professional come in, and they’re the ones to do it, they can kind of be the bad guy as well. So, that works out.

- Okay. So outsourcing. Also, I think one of the things I was concluding from one of the things you were describing, let’s see how to say this.

You shot with many different cameras with many different platforms, some that you were more intimate with than others, and therefore perhaps as the technology keeps changing, a photographer that is standardized on a particular platform probably knows how to make that platform sing, and bring out the best of it, is taking advantage of all the appropriate features on behalf of its clients.

- Exactly. Exactly. And they’re keeping up with the changes in the technology too. I mean, if I was an original Matterport user, now there’s Matterport Pro2 Camera and Pro3 Camera, and you’ve been using the THETA.

And so if I was sitting there with the legacy Pro1 Camera, which I’ve long since sold, that would be a negative. I would have to figure out what to do with it. And, technology is always evolving. As you can see, I’ve got headsets behind me here. I’ve got Meta and then, Apple Vision Pro. If I wanted to stay on top of that technology, I would be continually investing. And the same is true with your DSLR camera. It’s like, they’re expensive unless you’re, and it’s just a tool, unless you’re using it daily, it’s just sitting there not, it’s collecting dust, literally collecting dust and not making the money. And so let the photographers own that, and reinvest, and I’ll focus on what I do best, which is build relationships, and help solve problems in the real estate world.

- All right. Awesome. Let’s take a look at the tours. And I think what you and I talked about before the show is I’ll drive, I’ll take us through the tour. As I take us through the tour, why don’t you feel free, if there’s something that I’m not showing in that particular tour that you want to redirect me to go take a look at, I’m perfectly fine with it.

- Yeah, sounds good. I’ve got some old school notes on an old school notepad here for ya.

- Okay.

- So I’ll make sure to chime in with some of my commentary as well.

- Okay. And let me see if I can just go share my screen. Okay. And I’m not sure if you can, can you see this screen here?

- I can. You’re scrolling up and down.

- Yes. Okay, great. Got two screens for today’s purpose. So, this is where all the links to all 16 tours, actually 18 tours. And this is obviously a long URL. So if you want to get to this page, you can simply type in:

www.WGAN.info/VirtualTourExamples

And, so our viewers can get right back to this page. And here’s the list here. So we’re going to go through each of these tours, and we’ll just take a few minutes on each, but this way our viewers can come back and do a really deep dive into each tour.

So the first one we’re going to look at is, we’ll take them in alphabetical order, is Asteroom, using the RICOH THETA Z1. Brandon.

- Yep. Here we go. So right off the get go, I mean we can see that we’ve got a dollhouse here. It’s got clean lines at the end. So not jaded or anything.

Obviously when we pull around, it’s not an actual representation, it’s kind of like a blow up of one of those panos kind of stretched. But it gives you an idea of what the room is. It’s very clear that that’s a basketball court, that you just jumped into the living room. So navigation on this platform, I would say, is very intuitive. I was able to create the labels. Actually the company created the labels for me, so that made it even easier.

But Asteroom is something that you can do yourself. And in this case, so full disclosure for everyone watching, I did do all the shots.

So I went around with the Ricoh THETA Z1 in this case, and then I uploaded those to Dropbox. And so I shared that same Dropbox link with Asteroom, BoxBrownie, and CloudPano. And so if you see similarities, it’s because-

- And I want to say RICOH360 Tours. Yes.

- Yeah. So that is true for THETA. Yep. And then-

- Yeah, so we’re going to look at four different tours that are using the exact same 360 panos shot with the RICOH THETA Z1.

- Correct. And so it gives us an idea of the difference in the navigation, as well as the quality, and how they processed it.

So the same images, just shot the same way, shot at the exact same time. And then not to jump ahead, but the next tour will be with the Insta360 X4. And so using that same

- Insta360-

- platforms, and then the different cameras, that allows us to kind of see-

- So, I’m

- what difference

- having this little

- Does the camera make sense?

- bit of audio, yeah, excuse me for-

- You’re frozen on my side.

- Yeah. Okay.

- Now you’re fine.

- As long as you can see the screen, we’ll keep moving. Okay.

- Yep.

- Was there anything else on that Asteroom tour?

- Yeah, so I would say that the navigation of Asteroom was great. The quality I would say was the average, they’re the same shots, so it makes sense that they would be about the same as others. So yeah, it’s an overall very good tour experience.

- The only thing different with this tour is it was shot with an Insta360 X4, you shot it with an Insta360 X4.

- Correct. Yeah. And a nice thing too with the THETA and the Insta360 is that we’re able to go outside, so we could get into the backyard, which I thought was good. And then honestly side-by-side, it’s very difficult to tell the difference between the Ricoh THETA Z1 and the Insta360 X4.

- Yeah-

- The new, the 360-

- Excuse me, not quite fair to Asteroom, but I’m having some technical trouble, which is making the tour a little bit herky jerky. It’s not Asteroom.

- Ah.

- It’s just me on my end.

Very easy to do-it-yourself. But it’s more professional to hire a professional. Connect with a local professional [real estate photographer].

Brandon Doyle

REALTOR and Doyle Real Estate Team Leader RE/MAX Results www.DoyleRealEstateTeam.com | www.DoyleMN.com

- Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. Also, they’re pretty, it’s a pretty large tour so, it’s loading quite a bit. But yeah, if we’re comparing camera to camera, gosh I think they’re pretty darn close. And I would have a hard time differentiating between the two if I didn’t know myself, which one was which.

The Insta360 X4 currently is not officially supported with Matterport with the iPhone for capture. I did see an article on the WGAN Forum that a user was able to get it working with their Android device. So, that would be able to be used there.

These ones were shot in 72 megapixels. 72 megapixels. So the maximum that the camera was able to do, whereas when I shot with Urbanimmersive, it does force you to put it in a lower resolution.

So I don’t recall off the top of my head what the resolution of the Ricoh THETA Z1 is, but I know it is pretty high. [23 Megapixels] So again, they’re very, very, very similar. And if we’re looking at the dollhouse view of Asteroom versus Matterport, I’m sure Matterport’s Dollhouse is slightly better because it’s pulling the 3D rendering, but I don’t think your typical consumer is going to notice. And then navigation wise, yeah it was, it was easy to use. So.

- This is BoxBrownie.com shot with a RICOH THETA Z1. And I want to say these images are the identical images that you sent to Asteroom to build the first Asteroom tour that we looked at.

- Indeed they are. And so one thing we’ll note here is that if you click on the little photo looking icon on the top left there, well the top icon on the left, I suppose, we can jump between edited and unedited. And so these tours were all shot here.

- I’m sorry. I don’t see the icon that you’re referring to.

- So on the left side of the screen there.

- Ah, on the left side. Okay.

- Oh, down, down, down.

- Yeah, so-

- There you go. There’s four icons there. It’s the top one that’s a landscape looking photo in the photo.

- Ah, okay.

- Yeah, that one there. So that will allow you to go to the unedited. And so yes, these were shot in winter in Minnesota, they don’t have a lot of snow yet, but you can see they made some effort at changing the grass. They made the grass green, which to me I think the grass is over the top, but appreciate the effort I suppose.

- Yeah.

- And the inside of the house, I think the edited versus editing,

- I’m having trouble actually walking through the door there. That’s interesting,

- Right. I’m thinking that might be on your end.

- Yeah.

- Try going to the bottom and selecting a different room.

- Yeah.

- So when you, when you pull up that too, you can see that they’ve created a floor plan. And so you can create a floor plan on BoxBrownie.com by submitting anything from a drawing to an actual blueprint. It doesn’t create the floor plan automatically.

So that was a different expense. So what’s interesting is that all-in with edited images, and a floor plan, and the tour. I mean we’re looking at $500 or more for just this one tour. However, if I was going to be just doing no floor plan, and just doing the 360s, then it starts at $16. But I think since there were 60 scans for this one, it would be $52.

So, BoxBrownie.com is really nice for quick and dirty, but it can scale up really fast if you’re adding in their additional editing services and all that. And then they continued to refine this over and over. So their team was working on it. And from beginning to end it was a week. So.

- And-

- A long time on this. So, if I’m trying to get something up for the weekend, I don’t have a week to wait. But if I have enough time, or I have an existing tour and I want to enhance it, they do have virtual staging, they have furniture removal, things like that. And so, I think this is an interesting tool if you have multiple iterations of something.

One of the things I was talking about with them is that for a builder, if you’ve gotten multiple scans of the same floor plan and you go to the same spot, or you shot it at the multiple stages of the build process, you could have a toggle for which pano you’re looking at.

And so I could be at the front of the house, and then I could change over, and just see different options and stuff. So it could be an interesting sales tool for showing the different options that people have, whether it’s a different kitchen, or a different addon, “This is a bonus room.” And then you click and toggle it on or off. You could in theory do that all within the same tour. So I thought that was pretty slick.

- Okay.

- And then, yeah, the navigation on this one is pretty similar.

- Pretty smart. Sorry, BoxBrownie.com shot with an INSTA360 X4.

- Yeah. So, yeah, again, very similar. Edited versus unedited.

- So it looks like it’s unedited.

- Yeah. Then you’re switching back over there.

- Yeah, I think I’m having, my problem has nothing to do with BoxBrownie.com, it’s just, yeah, okay. So I think that gives us enough on that one. Let me close it out too. All right, so then the next-

- Yeah, so BoxBrownie.com, again, a very easy do-it-yourself solution. So if I had a property I always wanted to shoot somebody.

And actually during the pandemic, I was shooting 360 tours of other people’s listings for my buyers, because it was so easy to do.

And so I would just run through with the 360 camera, get the high levels, and then stitch together a tour for them, and ship it off. And it worked well for people out of state as well. And so even if the other agent isn’t doing quality work, I can go in, and for $16, I was able to create a pretty comprehensive tour. So.

- Using BoxBrownie.com

- Yeah.

- Okay.

- And just a 360 camera. a Ricoh THETA. And that was, back then it was a different THETA camera, but now I would use the Ricoh THETA Z1. So now we’re looking at CloudPano. What’s cool with them is that you can import the tour, the shots directly through the app, you can upload it on the website.

And so what I did actually was while I was there, I uploaded as I was driving away. So I had it going in the background because it was on my phone and so you can see the camera in the mirror there. But I would say that the navigation on this one is really good. It’s got easy features. There’s not a floor plan in the corner some of the other ones have.

But sometimes I find that that can be distracting. One interesting thing with this is that you do have to go in and manually add all the navigation points. So I was placing this room connected to this room, and then it would link back to that one.

And so you don’t have to, for example right there, I don’t have to show all the different outside points. I could just pick which ones are logical to jump to next, and then put the different labels. And so on one hand that was rather time consuming for me.

Very easy to do-it-yourself. But it’s more professional to hire a professional. Connect with a local professional [real estate photographer].

Brandon Doyle

REALTOR and Doyle Real Estate Team Leader RE/MAX Results www.DoyleRealEstateTeam.com | www.DoyleMN.com

Between an hour to two hours for a property of this size. But on the other side of that is that, it’s more customizable. And so I was able to go in and do it myself. And then I had all the control. I wasn’t worried about outsourcing.

And so we did show the CloudPano with Ricoh THETA Z1 as well as the Insta360 X4. And honestly, I was shocked that they’re so similar. I had a really hard time telling you which one was which without looking at the actual notes to know. So, I think that speaks to the quality of both of those cameras. They were great. And so I noticed you had jumped to the CubiCasa Tour next.

- Yeah.

- And so CubiCasa is awesome for creating floor plans. The photographer that I use actually uses professional photos with a DSLR camera, then they use Matterport for the 360 to scan, but they don’t actually use Matterport to create the floor plans. They’re using CubiCasa Tour. And so they actually created this floor plan here for us.

And what I appreciate is the level of accuracy for the plans themselves. And so they’re using the ANSI standard, which is what the appraisers are going to use. And so what I think is cool here that they’re demonstrating is that we’re showing where the shot was taken.

And these are just obviously 2D photos, but they’re very high quality photos, and they’re sort of professionally shot photos.

And then compared to just seeing the photos themselves in an album, this is kind of giving me perspective of, for a potential

home buyer, “What am I looking at?” And of course the quality is a lot higher. So while not technically a 360 tour by definition, it does qualify as a virtual tour, and it’s certainly a step up from a slideshow, or some of these videos, where they’re basically just cutting from photo to photo.

And I love their floor plan. I definitely recommend using that. From talking to them, I think that where they’re going is that they will probably be able to drop in 360 panos in these same spots and kind of navigate that way.

The exact way that they plan on capturing that, if that’s a DIY, or a professional process is to be determined. I had lunch with them since some of them are located here in Minnesota. And it’s certainly on their roadmap, but they weren’t, there wasn’t anything that they could officially tell me on the record at this time. They just said to stay tuned, so.

- So that was CubiCasa Tour, shot with a DSLR. And it’s had some, it’s a relatively new solution, and it’s had some early buzz in the www.WeGetAroundNetworkForum.com as a solution that is relatively easy for a professional photographer to use the app, use their professional DSLR shot images, upload it to CubiCasa and get back the CubiCasa Tour. Do you recall how long it took to get the CubiCasa Tour back?

- It was overnight.

- Okay. EyeSpy360 using a RICOH THETA Z1. And-

- And I’m pretty sure that it was shot with-

- [Avatar] Welcome to 720 Lanewood Lane North

- the RICOH Z1.

- in Plymouth, Minnesota.

- I wasn’t that far in, so.

- Priced at $2.45 million, this brand new 2024-

- But I believe that’s what they said it was.

- built masterpiece sits on one private acre.

- I don’t know if this is a benefit or a distraction, but when you click into it, you get this gal navigating for you.

- Yeah. Can you hear her talking?

- I can. Yeah. So we’ll want to turn her off.

- Alright, well let me turn her back on so that our viewers can hear. Tell you what, as we walk around, she’ll pop up.

- Yeah.

- So, we’ll hear that.

- She sure does. So with this solution, I have used them years ago, and it was not to my quality standards at all, and not something I would ever recommend using. But now, we’ve circled back, and I think that this is a good quality tour. I love the navigation on the left corner there. I think that looks really slick. It’s not in our way, it’s not intrusive. I think the onscreen navigation here is pretty intuitive of which way to go. The map and the drone, I don’t think it’s a value add.

The drone shot isn’t even of the house. It’s a generic Plymouth video. Maybe the photographer could go in and add drone shots of their own, and then that would make sense. I don’t know. Maybe click on that Monogram oven and see what they’re telling us here. Okay. So it’s just more information about the range. I think there’s an opportunity here where a builder could have some value add, or an agent. But obviously, now we’re linking off YouTube.

So this wouldn’t be MLS compliant. We would need to have all those things turned off. And so looking at the windows, I would say that it’s got a good depth, I view this as a human would. The lighting feels warm to me. It feels natural to what the actual house is like, having spent a lot of time in this house. And then the floor plan, I would say, is very accurate to actual dimensions.

I think when I’m done with this, I will maybe even do a separate article, in which I dive into floor plans themselves, and what’s the right way to do it. Because sometimes agents are going to pull from tax records, sometimes they’re going to measure with, tape measure or laser.

And there are varying levels of accuracy, and what’s appropriate to use in the MLS, and what’s appropriate to use in our

marketing, those may be different things. So we just want to avoid getting sued. So yeah, this one, I mean the quality is definitely there. The navigation, I would almost want that writing to be a little bit lower, but very smooth transitions-

- [Avatar] Heading downstairs, the lower level features-

- I think it gives-

- a full-size sports court.

- There she is again.

- a cozy family room, exercise space, and a media room, ideal for active living and entertainment.

- Do you like that feature? Not like that feature?

- I think if it was me, the agent popped up, a talking guy, I would like it more. I don’t know who this person is, and it’s probably AI generated, but it’s interesting. So it’s not for me, but I think there are some use cases where that can make a lot of sense.

So, yeah, it’s a very, very interesting tour. And yeah, the dollhouse as you’re showing now, I think it’s a good representation of the rooms. Again, it’s not, it’s not using point clouds, right? So you can tell there’s some warping, or it’s just the actual image stretched out. But I still know what the room is, and have an idea of what we’re clicking into.

- [Avatar] As you enter-

- I wouldn’t be able to take this floorplan, and put it into different software because it’s, again, it doesn’t have point clouds.

But looking at the home, getting a feel for if I want to buy it or not, I think this, they do a great job. So, a massive, massive improvement over what they shared with me for the previous two and a half years ago. So, yeah.

- Okay. GIRAFFE360, using a GIRAFFE360 Gen 4 Camera.

- Great. Yeah, so this one was super easy to shoot. Very impressed with the quality. When we get into the house here, you’ll see that -- the door opening is kind of slick I guess. but yeah, it’s easy to get a good view out the window.

There’s maybe a little bit of fading on the edge where it’s overexposing, underexposing, trying to find the balance, but loads quickly. I don’t like the navigation on the left quite as much as some of the other tours, but it does give a good feel of the overall area.

Very easy to do-it-yourself. But it’s more professional to hire a professional. Connect with a local professional [real estate photographer].

Brandon Doyle

REALTOR and Doyle Real Estate Team Leader RE/MAX Results www.DoyleRealEstateTeam.com | www.DoyleMN.com

With this one you can go inside and out, which I thought was nice. I didn’t do a lot of the shooting outside, just with one, it was super cold that day.

And then there were also construction workers. They were burying a line right there, as you can see in the shot. And so, and somehow I managed to get myself in a couple of these shots even though it showed that I was out of there. But I liked that it blurred my face, so kind of funny.

- All right-

- Well this one, it’s a rotator too, so it’s rotating both around, and then both up and down. So it does take a significant amount more time to do a scan, but you’re doing less scans per room, and so I think that kind of works out. And you can actually take photos through the camera itself.

But since I was just really doing this for the 360 side of it, I decided not to do a bunch of the pictures. I also felt I’d have to move it to different parts of the room and stuff.

And so, I maybe would’ve spent more time exploring more of the features with that camera, but I really just wanted to focus on the 360. And that day there were other people in the home too, so I was just kind of trying to stay out of their way. So, as a courtesy to the builder, and the agent that let me go shoot there. So. Yeah.

- The iGUIDE, using the iGUIDE PLANIX R1 Camera System.

- Yeah, I really wish I was there to watch this one. But this was one that was shot by a professional. I like that they got all the builders’ information and included the logo.

They didn’t ask me for it or anything. So it was nice that they went and got it, and the photographer was saying how much he liked the house, and I think the photos themselves turned out incredible. As far as the navigation goes, yeah, that screen sure takes up a lot of real estate. You can hide it. It’s nice to be able to jump to the different clouds.

You can see that it took a lot of points. And this is true with a lot of solutions. When there’s so many dots on the ground, it can be kind of distracting honestly. So I would almost limit how many different dots you can see. So let me see the closest ones. But I don’t need to jump all the way to the end of the hall. When I look through that kitchen, it’s overwhelming.

- In the iGUIDE system, the photographer could actually hide some of the things-

- Oh, okay, good to know. See.

- If you’re engaging a photographer-

- This speaks to what we talked about earlier.

- Yeah, if you’re engaging the photographer for iGUIDE, you can simply say, “Hey, I’d like about half as many that you’re showing. It’s just not necessary to have all these intermediary shots here. Let’s get rid of this one.” So, anyway.

- Yeah. So that’s a great point, and something I think I definitely want to include in the article is that the more experience that you have with these tours, the better you can make them.

And so this guy, I don’t know. He’s the iGUIDE territory person or something, so I would hope he has a lot of experience with it, but maybe, maybe he didn’t know that. Yeah, I like that you’re demonstrating how some of these can measure and then others cannot.

So, as a real estate agent, a lot of times we’ll get requests from people that say, “I want to go back and measure the house for my furniture.” Or “I’m going to get quotes for flooring. And this and that. And it’s like, well that’s disruptive to the current owner when it’s an occupied property.

And so we kind of try to discourage that. And so if you have a tool that allows them to do that. And this has happened in the past where buyers say, “Oh, I want to go back in for this.” And I just send them something like this, and they’re like, “Oh okay, thank you, that’s enough. That’s all I needed.” maybe they’re-

- So this is a relatively new feature of Matterport to enable all the key measurements simply to be turned on.

- Yeah.

- So, that’s-

- And even just a floor plan in general I think is really helpful for buyers. “Okay, my couch is 10 feet long. It’s going to fit on that wall.” And this is kind of, and they can even draw on it honestly, where they’re going to put their stuff. I do think the future is augmented reality, in which we will scan our current stuff, and then I say, “Okay, I’m moving.”

And now all of those are 3D objects, and we can automatically deploy them in a 360 environment. Whether that’s using your phone as an overlay, whether it’s using a VR headset, or a tablet, or doing it on the computer. I think that that is, that definitely is the future.

And out at CES 2025, I was talking to Lowe’s, and they kind of have the same vision where it’s “Okay we can get real time quotes using these data points.” So you’re showing the Matterport Pro3 Camera currently.

- Yeah.

- And as I mentioned earlier, if you’re a real estate agent or a buyer, you probably don’t know the difference between the Ricoh THETA Z1, the Matterport Pro2 and the Pro3. But as someone that’s done it a bunch, I can tell you the Matterport Pro3 Camera definitely, there’s more points, right? The 3D model itself is much denser.

And they were able to go outside. And so that dollhouse that you were showing is really immersive because I can go all the way around the house, which I thought was awesome. That photographer didn’t shoot in the garage, and didn’t shoot in the storage area. So there are points where it just kind of shows up as black on there.

And then again, you see this a lot with the Matterport 360, so you get kind of this artifact looking thing where it’s scanning and

recognizing things that are outside of it. And so it kind of blows out past the windows. And I know that there is a way to clean that up, but-

- Yeah. I was just struggling there-

- From a cost standpoint though, the Pro3 is substantially more expensive. And from a shooting standpoint, it took him about half as much time as he said. So that was cool. One of the new things they were showcasing is the ability to remove furniture.

So I don’t know if you want to try that. I think for some rooms, it looks really good. That bedroom worked well. You can tell on the floor there it was a little messed up. I think it struggles a little bit with shelves. But again, that’s automatically doing that.

So it’s pretty impressive that their model can do that. One thing I always look for is the windows. And here we can see, you can see outside pretty darn well, occasionally with some photographers.

- Brandon, how would you use this show without furniture tool?

- Yeah, so I think sometimes you’re going to run into a house where they have furniture that may not be to everyone’s taste.

And so just giving that clean slate. But I think the next step is that, adding things back in. So in order to stage the property, first we have to remove everything, and then they have a blank slate of, and then you could get ideas for what you want to put in there. And I think really, the future is being able to buy things that way too.

So you scan the house once, now it’s valuable to you after the fact. You can put your furniture in, then you can try different things. You could do virtual remodeling.

- Yeah, that’s something Matterport has announced. In fact that was back in July of 2023, I want to say that this de-furnish tool would work, and furnish tool. So, it’s certainly on Matterport’s roadmap that the next thing would be to say, “Okay, now furnish this house in modern furniture, or contemporary furniture, or beach furniture.” Or whatever the appropriate style for this house might be.

- So I think Matterport really has brand recognition going for them. The Dollhouse is arguably one of the best. Navigation is very intuitive. There’s just so much you can do after the fact. There’s so many partners that support Matterport data, using it in different ways.

And so they’ve got a lot going for them. There’s certainly a reason they were selected for acquisition. So, in talking with them, they would not shine any more light, or give any commentary on that. Because no matter how hard I tried, or which way I phrased the question, that was not something they wanted to talk about.

Very easy to do-it-yourself. But it’s more professional to hire a professional. Connect with a local professional [real estate photographer].

Brandon Doyle

REALTOR and Doyle Real Estate Team Leader RE/MAX Results www.DoyleRealEstateTeam.com | www.DoyleMN.com

So, but I do appreciate them providing a Pro3 for us to use, and then they are covering the hosting for this for us. So.

- Yes, as a publicly traded company, they really can’t talk about anything publicly. So that doesn’t surprise me. You mentioned it. So CoStar has announced that it has plans to acquire Matterport. That plan was supposed to have happened by the end of 2024.

And I believe there’s some date in January that unless the two companies agree to extend it, that that the acquisition actually, offer could expire, is my understanding.

So we really, today is January 9th, 2025. We really should see something happen one way or the other shortly. It’s been held up for regulatory review. Let’s move on from Matterport to, well another Matterport with the RICOH THETA Z1.

- Yeah, with the Z1, yeah, very similar. I mean, I could tell the difference between this, the Matterport Pro2 Camera and the Matterport Pro3. But I tell ya, I don’t think your average consumer real estate agent is going to be able to do so.

And from talking with the provider, they usually use the Ricoh THETA Z1 because it’s smaller, it’s easier to deploy. But they were saying that the Matterport Pro3 was faster and stuff. So they’re looking at getting Pro3s for their contractors or employees.

- Also it’s, some of the little things that are not quite apples to apples when we look at the different tours. Matterport for example, has a Highlight Reel, and the photographer hasn’t enabled that feature. There are some plugins now for example,

where you can indicate, “This room is facing West or East. That may be important, adding a compass.

So there are other features that are built into Matterport natively. And then there are many third-party tools that enable all kinds of things that are possible with Matterport. Have you looked at any of those third-party solutions?

- Yeah, there’s just so many. So, currently those Matterport tours are hosted on that provider’s site, since he assisted me with the capture.

But I do have the demo account with all the extra features enabled. So, we will be transporting those ones over there, and then planning on playing around more on the back-end too to get a little more hands-on experience before finalizing my article.

But yeah, we’ve got the REALSEE pulled up here today. And I would say this is the closest comparison to the Pro3, right?

- Yeah, this is an example that’s from REALSEE, likely shot with the REALSEE Galois 3D LiDAR Camera. I know we have a tour from you of the same house.

This has a little bit more implemented, so I just wanted to call this up so that we could take a look at it. And then we’ll go into the tour that you shot earlier today, in fact. So there are some extra features in here. Here’s the floor plan. There’s the model. And switch floors.

- Examples of some “buy the camera now” feature showing annotations with a link. Not all the features have been implemented, but it gives you, there’s a path to follow to get to a destination. And, there’s the route, some tools, info.

I just wanted to show that because you actually shot the house today with the REALSEE 3D Galois LiDAR Camera.

And unfortunately the camera was supposed to arrive on Friday of last week. It arrived today, Thursday, January 9th.

The camera’s been on its own. What should we say? It’s been on vacation traveling the country. So, you did go out and shoot this one today. The furniture obviously has been removed. So, I want to say, the builder sold the house.

- Yeah. So congratulations to the builder, and the future homeowners. This house is now pending. And yeah, there was no furniture when I got there. So these things are certainly outside of our control, and do the best to include as many tours as possible, and get that apples to apples. But this is, this is the real world for you.

And so I will say that the capture process, I felt was very similar to the Matterport, very similar design honestly, with the REALSEE to the Matterport Pro3 Camera. So, I will go in in the backend, and add the labels and some of the different stuff that you kind of highlighted there prior to getting this live. But yeah, I don’t, do you know if REALSEE has much of a market share here in the US, or... This was the first time I had heard of it, so.

- Yeah, it’s a, the interesting way to describe it, is that REALSEE, the parent company, which is publicly traded, both on the New York Stock Exchange and in China, is actually a larger company than Matterport. We haven’t really heard much of REALSEE because it’s just starting to do marketing in the United States.

But it is actually, I believe if you compare the number of tours that Matterport has shot over time, that REALSEE, I believe, has three times as many models that have been shot with its platform compared to Matterport. So, it’s one of those things you haven’t really heard of, because they’re just really starting to market in the United States.

- Yeah, so I would say it’s like, it’s just like Matterport. One thing I thought that was kind of interesting, is that there’s almost a curve to the tour. I noticed on the upper level, that when I connected the third and fourth bedroom, there’s a common bathroom in between.

And it almost curved the house out. And so I don’t know how I could have fixed that. It’s more noticeable in the 360 model. I was kind of thinking that when I uploaded it, that maybe, it would align these things, but it didn’t. So, and again, this is me receiving this at 11 AM today, going to lunch, then going and shooting this property. So, let’s try to be fair to the platform here. It’s pretty impressive.

- I think it’s pretty impressive that you received the camera at literally 11 AM today, just as you were about to have lunch, after lunch, went and shot the house, and uploaded it to REALSEE, and it processed in time for us to show it on the show today.

- Yeah. And then the Urbanimmersive was also shot at the same time. And it has been processed.

- So we haven’t gotten-

- I’m having trouble opening it. So.

- So that’s on our list. We’ll get there and discuss that, and we’ll stay in order. The next one was Realvision shot with a DSLR camera. Brandon, any thoughts?

- Yeah, so as we’re going through this, I would say, I really like the navigation. I like that the floor plan’s kind of on the left, you can see where you’re going. Again, when I look at the windows. With this platform, I can see out the windows.

There’s no, it’s not blown out. As an agent, it’s nice that it’s one process. So they’re shooting the photos and the tour at the same time. So it’s a DSLR base. And they’re actually pulling the photos from the 360 panos. The caveat here is that you don’t always put the camera in the same spot for shooting a photo as you would to shoot a 360. So there is an argument that you should do these separately, but I think that it’s all packaged together.

And I would say as far as the 3D tour goes, since it’s a DSLR camera, the resolution is very high. The floor plan is very accurate. This is something that I would definitely use. And so personally, I actually, originally was a Matterport user. Then I partnered with a company locally, ended up selling them my Matterport camera, and continued to use that company. That company became a partner with Realvision, which at the time was called Toursler.

And then Toursler kind of changed their model. And they made it so that they, I don’t know if they’re contract people, or how the arrangement is, but there’s, it’s not a camera solution that you or I would buy as an agent.

So you just, you go through them directly. So to order I go to Realvision. And for years, it’s who I would go with. And then during the pandemic, a couple of their local photographers were no longer able to continue working due to health reasons.

And so they weren’t available to shoot some of my properties. I actually had to go find another provider, and that provider was using Matterport. And so, I’ve been using those guys ever since.

But yeah, Realvision was my go-to for years. I think, if you go to [Real.Vision] I think it shows I have 97 tours. I’m featured right on the front page there. So what’s cool too is they have a portfolio. So you can see every property I’ve ever shot, which from an agent perspective is kind of neat, because it shows “Hey, I’m an expert in this area.

This is kind of my geography.” And “Look at all these high-end homes I’ve shot.” But also we do Realvision for every property here. Here’s a $60,000 condo that was shot with Realvision, and here’s, entry level townhome,” and so on and so forth. So that’s pretty neat.

- Okay. And I’ll just point out that the website is Real.Vision if you want to go see that.

- Yeah, it’s confusing. They need to buy Realvision.com because top level domains don’t make sense.

- Just just to make it a little bit easier for our viewers, all the links on the left are directly to the homepage of each of these virtual tour providers.

Very easy to do-it-yourself. But it’s more professional to hire a professional. Connect with a local professional [real estate photographer].

Brandon Doyle

REALTOR and Doyle Real Estate Team Leader RE/MAX Results www.DoyleRealEstateTeam.com | www.DoyleMN.com

And then each of these links is the actual example. So, and again, you can get to this page by going to this page we’re looking at here, in the www/WeGetAroundNetworkForum.com, by going to: www.WGAN.info/VirtualTourExamples In fact, since I just closed out that page, I need to go back to it.

- All good.

- There we go. All right, so back on this page. Going to, next up is RICOH360 Tours, and is this RICOH THETA Z1 example?

- Well let’s click it and find out. My guess is not, but.

- Okay, so we’re waiting for RICOH to activate that tour, is that correct?

- Yeah, so this is the same issue we ran into with them years ago, is that, they gave us an account, they said, “You’re set, it should load.”

I shoot the tour, the tour is great, and then the link stops working. So that was actually part of the reason I’m re-doing the article is that some of the old links no longer work. So as far as shooting it goes, it was easy, using their app, you’re demonstrating navigation on a different property here. And I would say it’s very similar to other solutions in that you’ve got the rooms along the bottom, and then you’ve got kind of that navigation window on the left.

And then it’s using their camera. I don’t think they’re doing much to enhance it after the fact. look at those windows. They’re extremely blown out. So, I love the RICOH THETA Z1 camera. I think you might want to invest in just using a different platform for hosting.

So. And I honestly don’t think that this is a very big focus of theirs. They just created this to demonstrate their product without relying on others, but that most of their business is selling the cameras and printers, and other imaging products, but...

- Okay, moving on to Urbanimmersive.

- Yeah. So Urbanimmersive, I shot today. And let me tell ya, I really struggled with this one. I had, I don’t know if it was the camera. I was using the Insta360 X4, but you do use their app.

And so I was having connectivity issues, I was having alignment issues, and I don’t do this day in and day out, but I’ve captured quite a few. And I hadn’t struggled quite like this. so I followed all the directions on their site, I watched the videos, I contacted support, and I still struggled.

I did manage to get the first floor captured, and then I was having issues on the second floor. So I just kind of gave up and headed home so I could join you guys on WGAN-TV Live at 5. But what a cool property that you’re showing. That is quite the staircase there.

- Yeah. This is actually a spiral slide. And this-

- What? Yeah. This is the icon to go downstairs. And when we go downstairs, we see the slide. And I want to say I saw an elevator here earlier.

- Ah, that is neat.

- There it is.

- Oh yeah, there you go.

- An elevator.

- Did you shoot this or is this just one you found?

- No, no, I took this off the Urbanimmersive website.

- Okay.

- so that we could show an Urbanimmersive tour. I don’t know -- the challenges that you had today attempting to shoot with Urbanimmersive the second time. I mean sometimes you say, “Well this is why you hire a professional.

- Yes, yes, I agree. And then honestly, the platform itself, it feels like it’s designed for photographers. I had to create an account, and upload a logo, and then in order to share the tour, I had to create a client, and then I had to create a date that the tour occurred and do all this. And, and so I just, I really got the feeling that their audience is photographers.

- Yeah, literally Urbanimmersive sells to professional real estate photographers. That’s their market. They really don’t sell directly to residential real estate agents. You’d really have to make an effort to, as an agent to sign up for this platform.

But this Urbanimmersive is specifically for professional real estate photographers. There are other use cases beyond residential real estate. But I thought we would take a look at a tour to say, “This is an example of a professional photographer who shoots Urbanimmersive day in/day out, and the kind of tour that they produce.” And-

- Yeah, visually, I mean, it looks very nice, and navigating, straightforward. So, and again, I kind of go back to your average agent and consumer isn’t going to know the difference between these platforms. And so it’s almost like finding one that economically works for you, and then end up intuitive to navigate, right? the quality is there, the user is able to figure it out.

And then from an operator perspective, it’s kind of time too. Can I effectively deploy this, or am I spending too much time on fixing issues or manually doing things that a different platform might just do automatically? So how much time does it take per tour?

What am I paying per tour? What can I charge per tour? Am I selling this as an add-on, or is this a full package? Those are the types of things I would think about if I was a photographer, which I am not.

- Okay. I was just showing off the feature there where you could take snapshots of it.

- Yeah. Cool.

- Okay. And last one on our list, a Zillow 3D Home tour shot with the RICOH THETA Z1 camera.

- Yeah, so the only thing that this tour has going for it, and I want to say the only thing, is that it makes it a featured listing on Zillow. Beyond that, like, ugh, I don’t know.

The navigation is inferior, the quality is inferior. One thing that’s interesting is you can pull it up on an Apple Vision Pro. So I have that behind me. And all the 360 listings show up.

So if it’s active. So I can go on there now, and there’s 10 of them here in Minnesota currently. and then I can look around. But it’s not a full pano. It’s cut off on the ceiling below, and the resolution is too low, so it looks weird. And it’s not stereoscopic, it’s a fixed image.

So whereas with the Matterport and the Realvision, if you look at them in VR, it’s a lot cooler and yeah, you’re showing the navigation there on the right. It’s kind of weird to me. I don’t know, I just, I just don’t think that the user experience is as good. Talking to the photographer though, they sell a lot of these things I guess. And people just buy them, because they’re featured on Zillow. So.

- Do you, do you ever buy a Zillow 3D hHome tour and another tour so that you are getting whatever you’re thinking?

- I would’ve a hard time doing that as an agent. I don’t know, I wouldn’t. I think for me, I’m shooting these because I want, it’s for the end user. And I just think the other tour solutions are just such a better example, and more valuable inside. I don’t, I don’t, I personally don’t care for the Zillow 3D Home tour, but kudos to those that do.

We also don’t do a ton with Zillow. We’re not premier agents. We don’t pay to advertise there. That kind of opens the door to what the future is with 360 tours in the real estate world in general too. You think about CoStar acquiring Matterport, potentially, and does that mean that real estate listings become more like eBay, or we see on the commercial side? CoStar has a huge presence in commercial, but not so much in residential. And so with them owning Homes.com, or are they going to have a process where the agent goes out?

Or potentially the homeowner directly. In other parts of the world, it’s the homeowner that’s paying for the marketing, and then to be on the listing. So I think we might see some changes ahead.

And so, and then for the other providers too, if CoStar, this deal to acquire Matterport does go through, are the other big platforms going to want to acquire their own?

Very easy to do-it-yourself. But it’s more professional to hire a professional. Connect with a local professional [real estate photographer].

Brandon Doyle

REALTOR and Doyle Real Estate Team Leader RE/MAX Results www.DoyleRealEstateTeam.com | www.DoyleMN.com

Zillow has their solution. Is REALTOR.com going to say, “Oh I want to be this provider is our preferred vendor for this, and if you use this one, and you go through our network of photographers, then you get this feature.” I think that is something we might see on the horizon, so.

- I think that’s actually a WGAN-TV Live at 5 show in itself, so.

- There you go.

- Perhaps you’ll let us invite you back to talk on that topic, if and when-

- I wish I was more of an expert, but more of just a word-thought experiment.

- Before we come back to your closing thoughts, I thought I would reiterate some of the links here. I mentioned, the Doyle Real Estate Team is at www.DoyleRealEstateTeam.com.

Brandon has his own website, www.DoyleMN.com. Do you want to comment on what that site is? Because it’s different than-

- Yeah, for sure, for sure. So, I’m a real estate agent by day, but I’ve also authored a number of books, and I am a national speaker in the real estate space. I also do videos and podcasts on smart home tech. And so essentially I needed a place to put everything that is not real estate sales related. So www.DoyleMN.com is where it all landed.

And yeah, you can go there, and get my contact information, learn about all these things, and kind of treat it like a Linktree in which I have all the links to all the other socials. But otherwise, @BrandonDoyleMN is actually my handle on all of the different social channels. So you can find me on YouTube. I do smart home tours, I do regular tours, I do tech reviews there.

On X, it’s the same. LinkedIn and Facebook are where I’m the most active. So, I enjoy connecting with others across the country and in the world, and geeking out about some of this stuff.

- Awesome. And then some other links for Brandon. If you want to see the show, the WGAN-TV Live at 5 show where Brandon literally went through 74 Reasons Real Estate Agents Buy Virtual Tours. It’s an awesome show.

Particularly if you’re a real estate photographer, and you’re trying to understand what the benefits are from the agent’s perspective. That’s at:

www.WGAN.info/BrandonDoyle

All the tour examples, if you wanted to go back to any of the tours and walk through them yourself. I know we only took a few minutes per tour. They’re at:

www.WGAN.info/VirtualTourExamples

And I think there was one other thing. Brandon is in the We Get Around Network Forum, among our first members of the We Get Around Network Forum going back to 2014.

You can find Brandon: @DoyleREALTOR And I can imagine there’ll be some comments about today’s show that may be of interest as you’re even writing your story. Brandon, final thoughts on virtual tours meet real estate agents.

- Yeah, so if you’re a real estate agent, you need to be doing 360 tours. Find a partner locally. Or, if you want to do it yourself, it’s not too difficult. Pick up either the Ricoh THETA Z1 or the Insta360 X4. And then, I had really good success using CloudPlano, Asteroom. Yeah, BoxBrownie.com ...

Very easy to do-it-yourself. But I am of the mindset that it’s more professional to hire a professional, and I would encourage you to do that. And, you know if any of these solutions are available in your area, yeah, connect with a local professional.

- Brandon, thanks for being back on the show.

- Thanks for having me.

- We’ve been visiting with Brandon Doyle, RE/MAX Results REALTOR, and Doyle Real Estate Team Leader.

For Brandon in Minnesota, I’m Dan Smigrod, Founder of the We Get Around Network Forum, and you’ve been watching WGANTV Live at 5.