Floor Plan Based Virtual Tour Using Highslide JS

Yesterday Pablo Glorioso of Marbella, Spain showed me his floor plan based tour that he just built for a home near Valencia. Click on the image above to go directly to his tour. I like the simple, straight forward design. Pablo used the Highslide Java Script Thumbnail software by Torstein Honsi. Although there is a little delay the first time you click on each of the links I find the navigation of Pablo’s tour very intuitive. I like the way Pablo has included a regional map, close-up map and a high (birds-eye view). Note that you can find a birds-eye view of most properties at maps.live.com

You need to be able to do some basic HTML work to make use of this slick little Java script package. This is another example where being comfortable working in HTML can be very useful in creating a virtual tour product that you can include with real estate photography services.

New Tech Blog for Realtors: Geekestateblog.com

There was a new Zillow founded blog called Geek Estate Blog, launched on back on July 31 that is intended to bring together real estate professionals and tech professionals who are interested in learning how technology can increase their business.

I’ve recently been invited to be a contributor to geekestateblog.com in the area of Photography so I’m planning on doing a real estate photography post over there about once every two weeks. This will be a great opportunity for me to have an even wider audience and spread the word to more Realtors about improving the level of their photography. The first post is going to be today 8/14.

Agencylogic.com – a Turnkey Way to Build Property Sites

On my morning bike ride this morning I passed a real estate sign that had a URL of a property site (www.568inverness.com) so when I got home I checked it out to have a look at who in the neighborhood is building property sites. Much to my surprise it was done by a Realtor.

It was done by a local Realtor himself using a site called agencylogic.com. This is a pretty inexpensive way for a Realtor to put up their own property site or for even less technically oriented Realtors (there are plenty Realtors that choose not to do this themselves) a real estate photographer could add this service into their photo shoot. I like this better than many virtual tours. It cost $50 for a single property site for a year with the price decreasing down to $35 per site if you build 25 property sites. I think it is important for people out there doing property sites and standard virtual tours to know what the competition is.

Great Client Closing Gift Idea From Susanne Hayek

Susanne Hayek sent me a great suggestion for a product to market to your Realtor clients as closing gifts. Susanne says she uses mypublisher.com to make beautifully printed coffee table style books. These books also work nicely as an elegant way to present your portfolio of images. Another similar site that a portrait photographer friend of Susanne’s uses and likes is www.digi-labs.net.

Real Estate Photography Resources

Last week I got several good reader suggestions for products that real estate photographers and Realtors might want to use. I’ve decided to make a page to list all these reader suggested resources and things that I comment on. This page can be accessed directory by just clicking on the “Resources” link in the horizontal link bar just below the main banner of this blog.

If  you have something you’d like to add to this list just leave a comment on this page in the comment form at the bottom. As time permits I’ll go back and add the resources I’ve commented on in the past.