New Virtual Twilight Skies & Shoots, Agent Cameos and more…
We’ve been busy making enhancements to our platform and providing some new service options. This blog post goes into more detail on all the new things in the HomeDiary PRO Platform and how it can help you get the job done faster, more efficiently and more economically.
New Addons Include these available for any photos uploaded into the HomeDiary Platform:
- Updated skies for Virtual Twilights & Timelapse options
- New Virtual Twilight Shoot addon
- Animated Video Clips addon
- Coming Soon – Virtual Staging on the order form and a new lower price of $35/image.
We added some new Service Provider addons for select markets as well, including:
- Agent Cameo & Voiceover for any video (select markets)
- Updated GLA Reports for precise square footage calculations with updated report options
- Tweaks to some video options and the Zillow 3D Home addon
We go into more detail on some of these things below.
We also have created a more integrated Knowledge Base with instant search that highlights your key terms. In addition, we have a new Order Satisfaction survey, new text capabilities and more, so see the bottom for more on the customer support tool changes.
Virtual Twilight Skies
We are using a new editing process for the virtual twilights which creates some really amazing images. Many times you can’t tell they are not real twilight images, like you see in the below examples. Along with it, we have updated our sky library, so you can pick from various “twilight periods” as well as sky colors – pink, gold, purple or natural. Below are several Before and After examples – just move the slider to see the difference, or see more on our Virtual Twilight page.
New Ulm, Texas ranch listing for sale
Bainbridge Island, Washington Real Estate Listing
Alki Beach, West Seattle, Washington Condo Listing
Kirkland to Bellevue, Washington Aerial view for the Kirkland Condo Listing
Aerial photo converted to twilight for a Connecticut Listing
Virtual Twilight Shoots
This new addon is available for any photo option (full service where we create the photos for you, or self service where you upload the photos) and it transforms your daytime photos, both interior and exterior, into amazing twilight images. Add it to any one of our videos, including the Cinematic Video that is made completely from photos, and you have amazing marketing content that can literally save you $500 on every order. We did this addon in part because not every photographer, or agent, wants to spend their time at a property until 10 pm after a long day, and it also just adds to the cost of creating listing content, which we know in these rough real estate times, is an issue.
Now, for $100 we will convert sets of 10 interior and exterior photos into virtual twilight images. You can select up to 50 photos and pick the kind of sky you want, then the images are delivered with your regular order. That is 50% of our typical twilight shoot price (our Twilight Shoot price this price pretty consistent among our competitors, but some can be over $300 for a twilight shoot) and it is also a huge discount off our single Virtual Twilight Photo addon, normally priced at $35. So this addon can save you $250 if you ordered 10 virtual twilight images! So buy in bulk and wow your clients, customers and leads you get from our tour.
Below are a few examples of the before and after views, along with a Cinematic Video made completely from daytime still photos. It’s an amazing new addon that is capturing people’s attention. As one Windermere broker said after seeing this content for the first time:
Seeing the Cinematic Video with the Virtual Twilight Shoot addon created by the HomeDiary Team for a recent listing for Philip Heier was like seeing a color television program air for the first time in 1951. What a game changer!
Below are images from Philip Heier’s recent Seattle, Washington area listing. It showcases million dollar views for this over $1 million condo on Alki Beach in West Seattle. It just went pending this week after less than 3 weeks on the market.
For more info, contact:
Philip Heier, Managing Broker, Windermere Real Estate / Capitol Hill, Inc.
https://philip.withwre.com/ | Direct: (206) 372-7445
A Long Lake, Washington Listing featuring the new virtual twilights as well.
Cinematic Video with Virtual Twilight Shoot
This is the Cinematic Video created for Philip Heier’s listing that features the Virtual Twilight Shoot. Professionally edited by the HomeDiary Production team, set to music and hosted on Vimeo with branded and unbranded links, so you can use it as another virtual tour link if your MLS supports more than one tour link. If not, just use our virtual tour, because with Brandkeepr, we can automatically convert that unbranded tour back to branded on select top sites like Zillow to get you more free Seller and Buyer leads.
Animated Video Clips
We can also virtually stage your videos, add cool animation effects or even drop in a pool to showcase the “what if” for a bare backyard. The Animated Video Clip addon can leverage any photo to make it an engaging video, like you see in the below example. We will also provide you with the virtual twilight and virtual staging photos as well. 5 clips for $100, available for any tour option.
Agent Cameo & Voiceover
In select markets (Seattle, Austin, Raleigh to start), we can also do agent cameos with any video. We will be adding more markets down the road. It’s a $100 addon and can include you introducing the property (an intro), you talking about the property as the video plays, and the closing (an outro). We’ve even created a handy script you can use to help guide the dialog. Check out the Storyboard Template here. We are working on some more automated ways to add a voiceover, including cloning your voice and creating the voiceover from a text script, so stay tuned!
Check out the Social Media Reel that incorporates the Agent Cameo & Voiceover here, shot by Drake Binswanger, our Austin Area Manager and Lead Photographer.
New Area Report
We are the only virtual tour platform with their own robust 2D/3D floor plan tool that can be used to convert any original source floor plan or 3D scan into a interactive floor plan for a listing, that can be passed on to the buyer via our Claim Home menu option right on our tour, and that can be used by any homeowner via our HomeDiary.com consumer site. Everything is real-time editable, and it now includes robust area calculations to get the living area, garage, non living areas, etc. In some markets we can also create a Certified Square Footage Report where we certify the square footage to be at least 99.5% accurate. We just added Raleigh in addition to Austin, San Antonio, Dallas, Boston, Philadelphia, New York/Long Island, Seattle, and Portland. This addon requires the use of either the Matterport Pro camera or the iGuide camera, as both create highly accurate floor plan layouts AND room dimensions. This Certified Square Footage Report is different than the standard area report, which is something that will be coming soon for all floor plans we create, except for those where we converted a hand drawn sketch. This report we did in North Carolina recently was 30 sq ft off from an appraisal, and we believe ours is more accurate as it more correctly detailed the stair area which should count as livable square footage. You can download this area report here.
We recently added the iGuide camera system to our services in Dallas, Long Island and Raleigh. You can see how accurate the iGuide is compared to Matterport (Pro and 360 cameras), hand taken laser measurements, as well as other methods in our demo house benchmarking for room measurements and square footage. Click here to see the detailed analysis.
Note, Zillow is the least accurate, off OVER 13%….and it is not just the overall square footage. The room dimensions are also off. So Zillow really should not be used for anything other than maybe the layout without dimensions…but then what’s the point? Buyers want accurate square footage AND room dimensions, they want to experiment with furniture placement, and they want an interactive floor plan for their home when they buy it so they can use it as a tool for home improvement. So rather than risk misrepresentation, just have us do the complete, robust HomeDiary floor plan and get tied to it for life.
Here you see the area calculation that is build-in to every floor plan we create, but it is only good as the input.
New Updated and more integrated Knowledge Base & Care Tools
We have been using Hubspot for many years, but it’s a very expensive system, so we switched to Salesforce recently, which is about 1/5th the cost, but perhaps not as robust. This created a great opportunity to update the knowledge base on our website and integrate it better so the content lives natively on the HomeDiary.com/pro website. This helps for SEO purposes and it also makes the Knowledge Base more robust as there is better instant search to find what you need help on. We also updated our phone system by switching to Zoom Phone. As part of this we will have better integration of text messaging leveraging our main number, 206-384-4400. Because of this, and the fact no one pays for long distance anymore, we are eliminating our toll free number in April. So please update your contact info to just use our main number, 206-384-4400. You can call or text this number to get help.
The Knowledge Base can be accessed under Support, at https://homediary.com/pro/knowledge-base/ or click the button below.
New Order Satisfaction Survey
As mentioned, we have moved on from Hubspot. They were providing our survey tool, so we created our own. We are working to integrate it into the Tour Produced email and Order pages in your account, so all you will have to do is click and complete the survey without adding your name, tour ID or the service provider involved. Until then, if you would like to provide your feedback, or even just a testimony you would like to share with us, we would love to feature it on our website with a link back to you and your website. So just use the form below, we would love to hear from you!