How to Make a Property Video (the Ultimate Real Estate Videography Guide)

What are real estate property videos?

In a fast-paced online world, your property listing needs to stand out. Attention spans are only getting shorter, and when you’ve got the opportunity to show potential buyers your property, you need to grab their interest, and quickly!

Property videos made using real estate photography are the ideal solution for getting eyes on your property and making it look even more appealing. Your buyers can picture themselves living there — which might make them more likely to buy. It’s a win-win situation.

Why do property professionals need marketing videos?

Still images can only give so much information. Buyers want to really get a feel for what properties look like, what the layout and floor plan looks like, and the general vibes of a house. That’s why property professionals — that’s you, by the way — need marketing videos to make sure the properties you’re selling make the maximum impact and leave a lasting impression on your buyers.

Still not sure? Here are 5 more reasons to embrace the power of video.

1. People LOVE video: According to Cisco, global internet video traffic will represent a whopping 82% of all consumer internet traffic in 2022.
2. Stand out from the crowd: A branded video can be the icing on the cake of your listing! Are your competitors using videos? No? Then your listing will be all the more enticing!
3. Win more instructions: When pitching for your vendor’s business, just drop in: “Oh yeah, and we’ll be marketing your property with a beautiful 1080p HD video on the portals and our social media channels”. See what happens.
4. Better for your SEO: Google loves engaging content and pages with videos often rank better than ones without. Property videos are good for your audience and good for SEO.
5. Tyre kickers: Some kinds of property video will give an excellent overview of the house, weeding out people who would have booked a viewing and wasted your time but now, after watching the video tour, know not to bother.

What are my options for property videos?

When it comes to making a property video, you’ve got a few options. Let’s explore some of them.

Property video using only your smartphone

Smartphones are a great option for making a property video on a budget, but the quality of the footage inevitably won’t match the kind of video that a pro could shoot with all their high-level gear. For your more ‘typical’ home, however, this kind of self-filmed video walkthrough with you talking over it could be just the ticket.

As the agent, you can save time by filming the footage on the same day you visit the property for other things like taking photos, measuring up, preparing descriptions etc.

And because you’re doing all the work yourself, you’ll save a pretty penny that a pro would charge to film this.

How do I make a property video walkthrough using a smartphone?

You film all the clips, export them to your computer and stitch them together using a tool like Adobe Premiere Pro, Final Cut or iMovie.

We’re considering offering the ‘stitching part’ as a service. You go and film everything, send us your footage and you get back a lovely professional video. Would this be of interest? If so, please let us know your thoughts.

360° virtual tour video for your property

This one feels a bit sci-fi but it’s very impressive. 3D Virtual Reality Tours allow potential buyers to explore the inside of the property through a full 3D 360° walkthrough. If you’ve ever looked at a company’s internal Street View on Google Maps, it’s just like that.

People can navigate through the property, going from room to room as if they were actually there. They get a good feel for the property’s size and layout, and can view the rooms from any angle. If you’re feeling particularly fancy, you can use a VR headset for a totally immersive experience.

A high-quality 3D 360° property tour isn’t cheap, so they’re better suited to luxury properties with a higher return on investment. VR tours also work best on properties that are well presented throughout, rather than those trickier ‘viewing strongly recommended’ listings.

Want to see one in action? See this stunning Montpellier home via a Matterport 3D 360° tour.

How do I make a 360° virtual video tour?

Popular video making and photography company Matterport is a leader in the field of 360° property tours. The property is photographed using 360° cameras. Special software is then used to stitch the images together, creating a virtual property. You can also highlight areas of interest like hardwood floors or brand-new fitted appliances that you don’t want people to miss!

Professional property walkthrough video tour

A Professional Video Tour is a recorded walkthrough of the property, taking viewers into each room individually. You can even include the surrounding area or neighbourhood in your video, giving your potential buyers a flavour of the location.

Specialist camera and recording equipment is used to keep the camera still and smoothly glide around the house. Then, the footage is professionally edited in software like Adobe Premiere Pro, music and graphics are added, and ta-da! Your Pro Video Tour is ready to wow.

Pro Video Tours are still better suited for the higher end properties, but that does depend on your location — which will also determine the value and your commission and budget.

These professionally made property videos help to give a clear idea of size and layout, allowing viewers to feel as though they’ve already visited the property.

If you want to ditch the ‘Pro’ aspect of the video tour, then you could do it yourself by just walking around the house and record it on your smartphone. However, the difference between your video tour and a Pro Video Tour will be kind of noticeable.

How do I make a professional property walkthrough video tour?

Someone physically walks around the property, filming their point of view as they go. Whether that’s a professional videographer or someone with a smartphone is up to you and your budget — but we’d always recommend a professional.

Your video can be a simple walkthrough or something with higher production value, using tracking shots or even drone footage. You can edit the video after with branding, music and narration if you like.

How to make a Video Slideshow for your property in 3 simple steps

A Video Slideshow is the easiest and cheapest way to make a video tour. They simply transform property photos into video, playing them one after the other like a slideshow. While these may now sound pretty basic compared to the other 2 options, they can still look very cool!

Photos of the property are displayed alongside various transitions, motion effects, and music. You can also encourage people to contact you by adding your own custom branding and a CTA. Good video slideshows are much more dynamic and engaging than photos, and can help you to get real people through those doors!

• Take the property photos yourself or arrange a pro to help you.
• Load the property photos into a video software programme.
• Add motion graphics and music to the transitions, add your branding and a call to action and you’re all set.

How long should the video be?

That’s entirely up to you and your audience. If you want a dynamic-looking video to show off a luxury penthouse apartment, for example, we’d recommend keeping that on the shorter side. Think of attention-grabbing videos on Youtube and TikTok — that demographic wants fast-paced excitement. If you’re selling a mansion set in a sprawling estate filled with lush gardens and a tennis court — make sure your video is long enough to show every single detail. Your viewers won’t want to miss a thing.

Can videos help me sell more property?

The short answer is ‘yes’! Matterport, who we mentioned earlier, found that 74% of estate agents using its famous 360° video system win more listings — which means more sales.

Its survey also discovered that almost 80% of the 1,000 property buyers asked said they would switch to an estate agent offering immersive 3D property tours. So it’s easy to see the benefits of property videos on your potential sales!

When should you hire a professional videographer?

Hiring a professional videographer isn’t 100% necessary, but it’s something that we’d strongly recommend. It can be expensive, and we understand the temptation to do it yourself, but the professional finish you get from someone who knows all the tricks of the trade just can’t be matched.

Video Slideshows from Elements Property

If you like the look of property videos and want to learn more about what we can do, head over to our Video Slideshow page for more info and to see further examples, or get in touch if you’ve got any questions.

Simply send us your images and we’ll transform them into an engaging HD video in as little as just 3 hours! We’ll customise it with your logo and brand colours, a CTA to encourage viewers to take the next step, and you can even pick the music!

Want to try us out for free? We can offer you a free trial on 3 Video Slideshow orders. Just enter BLOG30 when you create an account.

Here are a few more examples that showcase our Video Slideshows…