How to make a property virtual tour (for sale or let)
How estate and letting agents make a 360° virtual tour of a property: the rooms to shoot, taking the photos, building the tour and listing it.
By Ben Kenyon, Founder of PanoramrUpdated 5 min read
In short
To make a virtual tour of a property, take one 360° photo in the middle of each room and in the hall, on the stairs and in the garden, with the camera on a tripod at about eye height, lights on and doors open. Export each photo as a 360° JPEG, upload them to a tour maker such as Panoramr, link the rooms so buyers can walk from one to the next, add a floor plan and notes, then put the tour's link or embed code on the listing. Making the tour is free; you pay only to host it without Panoramr's branding.
What you need
- A 360° camera. Any current 360° camera takes photos large enough for a property tour. How to choose a 360° camera compares nine of them. If you list often, owning one means a tour can go up the same day as the listing.
- A tripod or a light stand, so every room is shot level and from the same height, and you can step out of the photo.
- A tour maker. This guide uses Panoramr, which runs in the browser: you upload the photos, link the rooms and publish the tour, with nothing to install.
If you would rather not shoot it yourself, a 360° photographer can: Panoramr's Hire a Creator directory lists them, and many build the tour too and hand it over to your account.
Plan the rooms
A buyer wants to walk the property the way they would on a viewing. Take one 360° photo in each place they would stand:
- the front of the property, from the pavement
- the hall and the stairs
- the living and dining rooms, and the kitchen
- every bedroom, en-suite and bathroom
- the garden, the patio and the parking
- the garage, the loft or the cellar, when they help sell it
A one-bedroom flat might need eight photos; a large house twenty or more. A big room may need two, one at each end. The estate agents' page has the same list to keep on your phone.
Shoot the property
- Get the rooms ready. Lights on, blinds open, doors between rooms open, and anything personal out of sight: post, photos, the car in the drive with its number plate. Panoramr can blur faces and number plates it finds, but tidy first.
- Camera in the middle, at about eye height. Keep it level and at least a metre from furniture and walls, so nothing looks broken where the two lenses' pictures meet.
- Stay out of the shot. Fire the camera from its phone app in another room, or use the self-timer and step round a corner.
- Use HDR for bright windows. A room with daylight outside is the hardest shot; most 360° cameras have an HDR or bracketed mode for it.
How to take 360° photos for a virtual tour goes into each of these.
Build the tour
- Export each photo as a 360° JPEG, twice as wide as it is tall. Some cameras save one straight away; others need an export in the maker's app (the Insta360 and RICOH THETA guides show how).
- Upload them. In Panoramr, click Create Tour and drop the photos in. They are prepared on your computer and upload by themselves.
- Link the rooms with hotspots, so a buyer walks from the hall into the kitchen as they would on a viewing (link panoramas).
- Add a floor plan. Upload the listing's floor plan picture and place each photo on it: buyers see where they are and which way they face, and jump to any room (floor plans).
- Group the rooms by floor, so buyers go straight to the bedrooms or the garden.
- Add notes where they help: a room's size, what stays with the property, the age of the boiler, the view from the main bedroom.
On a paid plan, save your agency's colours, logo and buttons once under My Designs and use them on every listing.
Put it on the listing
- Share the link. Every published tour has its own address: put it on the listing, in emails to buyers and on social media.
- Embed it on your website. The tour's Publish tab gives you an embed code to paste into the property's page (embed a tour).
- Check what your property portal takes. Most take a link to a virtual tour in the listing; the portal's own help says where it goes.
- Off-market or not launched yet? Keep the tour open only to people who have its link, or behind a password on a hosted tour (tour privacy).
Each tour's Analytics tab counts its visitors, so you can tell a vendor how many people walked through their home.
When the property sells or lets
Take the tour out of your plan's hosting, and its room goes to the next listing. When a let property is let again, replace the photos of the rooms that changed: the tour keeps its links and notes.
What it costs
Making a tour in Panoramr is free: upload the photos, link the rooms, design it and preview it. A free account can publish 10 tours with Panoramr's branding. To host tours with your own branding, the Pro plan is £99 a year for 250 panoramas online at once, shared by every listing; the Agency plan (coming soon) hosts 360 for £360 a year. A single listing can also go in a Vault on any plan, from £36 for a year for up to 36 panoramas. How much a virtual tour costs sets out the camera and the other routes too.
Questions
Can I make a property tour with my phone?
Not with its panorama mode: a phone's panorama is a flat strip, not a full 360° photo, so it leaves out the ceiling and the floor. A tour needs a 360° camera, or a 360° photographer.
How many photos does a property tour need?
One for each place a buyer would stand: usually eight for a one-bedroom flat and twenty or more for a large house, with the hall, the stairs and the garden counted.
Can buyers walk through the tour on a phone?
Yes, on a phone, a tablet or a computer. They drag to look round and tap to walk from room to room, and the floor plan shows where they are.
Do I need a Matterport camera for a property tour?
No. Matterport scans a property into a 3D model you can measure; a tour of 360° photos is made with any 360° camera. Panoramr vs Matterport explains the difference.