The problem when searching for a house or apartment is real-estate websites' mere descriptions and photos of the property often don't do the space full justice.
Well, Zillow has added a new feature to rectify that issue. The real-estate company's update to its Premier Agent App now includes the ability to capture a video walkthrough.
The way the process works is simple. People download the app, find their listing and take a video using a smartphone camera. Pretty painless. As much as the feature is meant to give people a better sense and feel for the property, it's also being introduced for sheer convenience, empowering people to quickly film for a few seconds and use the app to upload their footage.
"Video walkthroughs provide interested buyers with a quick way to envision themselves in a home," Zillow says on its website. "Listings with video are prominently displayed and receive preferred placement in search results. Buyers with saved searches are notified when a new video is added."
The preferred placement guarantee for utilizing the video walkthrough on your listing is pretty vital because it's easy for listings to get completely buried and not seen by enough eyes — a frustrating situation which could become an ever-lingering issue as the property continues to fail to find a suitor.
This feature is significant for both buyers and sellers, considering sellers could capture the most unique parts of the space, while buyers in the market for a new home could see the best features of the property.
The only caution to this feature for potential buyers is sellers choose the areas of the property they wish to highlight with the video walkthrough and just because it's called a walkthrough doesn't mean the full space is being shown. That sets up the need for potential buyers to do a full physical walkthrough of the property, anyway. Still, at least the video walkthrough provides a start for the feel of the property.
Zillow isn't the first real-estate website to offer the ability to take footage of property, but given the name and the sizable audience it reaches, the video walkthrough element should be a welcome feature amongst the Premier Agent App's users.
