Now every buyer can claim their new home right from the FloorPlanOnline virtual tour. With the click of a button, the buyer sends a request to you as the listing agent to approve giving a copy of the photos and floor plans (including the 3D Space planner) to the buyer in their own private HomeDiary account. Now, that great content created on the “For Sale” side of the transaction can live on with the “For Living” side! No other virtual tour platform has this capability because no one else has their own 3D floor plan tool that can do the amazing things the FloorPlanOnline tool can do!
Right now, the Claim Home feature is live on the Full Screen tour. We will be working to add it on other tour versions. If you want it on your tour now, simply go to Edit Details from the Manage Tours page and select the Full Screen tour option, then save at the bottom. The Claim Home button will then show under tools as you see in the above screen shot.
Then just look for the approval request from the buyer. You can also point out this feature to the buy side agent as a courtesy to them and their client.
We are currently working on some market research as part of our participation in the NAR REach program around HomeDiary options and integrations with some of the tools you already use, such as transaction management platforms, CRM systems and even some larger regional brokerages. So stay tuned for some interesting things to come as we approach the National Association of Realtors’ annual convention.
This is an update to my original post back in 2017.
Drone photo and video footage can add some cool and interesting views to real estate listings. But to create them for real estate purposes, which is considered a commercial use, the person controlling the drone (the “Pilot in Command”) must be legal, which means they should have an FAA issued Remove Pilot certificate (small UAV license). Failure to do so can mean fines as well as possible jail time. To get a certificate, you must pass the remote pilot knowledge test, which asks questions about airspace, weather, who qualifies, airport operations, emergency procedures and pre-flight/flight procedures, to name a few. just because you do have a license does not mean you can fly everywhere. Many areas around larger cities do have airspace class restrictions and if you do not know what they are or how to get approval, you are putting your client, and yourself at huge risk, by not only fines by the FAA, but possibly personal liability if something bad happened.
I passed my test in 2017, so I am a sUAV pilot! I thought I would pass along my experience if you are interested. I will say, I think it is a good idea that people have to go through this whole process, and in fact, I would almost suggest a hobbyist have to go though it as well, given the consequences of someone doing something stupid with another plane in the sky….but that is for another day. I did learn a lot and have a good appreciation for why there is a need for this process.
Studying. I started to read some different documents (like the Pilots Handbook), but could barely keep myself awake. So I finally broke down and bought access to a video tutorial site. I used these guys. http://remotepilot101.com Jason does a great job going through the material and emphasizing what is important and what is likely to be on the test. It is $149 and well worth it because you will need to retake the test every 2 years and your initial purchase covers you for future years. After each section there are sample questions, that look very similar to the real test questions. There is a final exam at the end as well. Here is my drone tutorial I created. But to get the full effect you need to buy the video course and then you can understand what these are all about.
This is all I did. I would suggest reading at least the summary to the Part 107 rules & regulations. There are a few questions about eligibility. Here are some helpful resources:
Taking the test. You need to go to an official testing station to take the computer test.
Need to schedule the test first. There is a list of testing centers below but I was told you have to call PSI to schedule it. 800-211-2754 – It costs $150. They also said you need to be a member of www.aopa.org and you get $10 off if you are member too. I signed up for the free student membership. see the test centers here
The Test. It was pretty much like the sample questions in the RemotePilot101. They had some images as part of the questions. Note…I was provided a test supplement, but I thought it was really more for a real pilot’s test as the lady also gave me some other measuring tools and she did not mention that the images ARE IN THE BOOK…so I did not even use it…but the images in the test questions ARE in the book, and this makes answering the questions a lot easier, as I could not really read some of the details on the computer. So, while I did pass, I probably would have gotten at least 3 or 4 questions right had I just looked in the book! It took me about 45 minutes. I answered most questions, I flagged a few and then went back through each question using the 1990’s style navigation…so you do have an opportunity to go revisit any question again. When you are done, close out and the testing person gets your results, and then prints your certificate if you pass!
Getting the Remote Pilot License. Register and then go through the process here iacra.faa.gov. Note – you need the Knowledge Test ID and this is not available until 48 hours after your test…I guess someone needs to put in a punch card or something into the old government computers…
I finalized my application at iacra.faa.gov. The process was a little clunky, but it found my test and you digitally sign the documents. So, I believe at this point I am an official Drone Pilot! Not that I will be doing a lot, but given I run the company I thought it would be good to have the knowledge and capability…and hey, I have to admit, it is fun (except when there is a fly away…which I did experience playing around at Weatherby Lake). Remember the return to home button.
After a few days you can log back in and print off your temporary certificate! You do not need to wait to fly to get yours in the mail.
One last thing I thought was funny. One of the test questions involved my home town in Iowa – Onawa. Population 3000. What are the odds of that??? I thought it was destiny that I should become a Drone Pilot, aka DronebyCone.
Getting a Drone. In the Seattle area, we have 4 different drones. Two DJI Phantom 3 Advanced and two DJI Mavic Pros. Based on my experience, the Mavic is easier to use and there is less risk of it losing connection and having the drone go crazy. DJI is to come out with an update to the Mavic soon (as of April 2018), so I may get one of those. DJI, Amazon or eBay are good sources to buy. If you buy the drone other than from the DJI website, you can still buy the DJI Care, which is crash protection but you need to activate it BEFORE you ever fly. Check our their service options here. I am not sure you really need 4K video since most computers are NOT 4K and 60% of users are on mobile anyway. But the Mavic does shoot in 4K video and good photo size.
Insurance. To work with FloorPlanOnline, you need insurance. I would imagine the larger brokerages will require some kind of coverage as well. I am investigating options, including a possibility to have an overall umbrella policy to cover all activities within our network. I was told this group www.modelaircraft.org comes with $2.5 million of liability insurance, but when you look at the details, it DOES NOT cover business pursuits. So investigating other options. I found an app called Verifly where you can buy insurance on demand for $10-$25 for 1 hour within 1/2 mile radius of your flight (price varies based on where you are and the risk to them). So this might be a good option starting out. I have read some other posts that insurance can run $800 to $1000 per year and one of our providers mentioned a renewal bill for $1500! So, price accordingly! Your break even on number of jobs at $10 each for insurance is 120 or so…
Preflight Checklist. As I am helping out as the PIC before our Seattle provider Christine gets certified, my first job was to be today. Well, like a good certified PIC, I first checked the airspace, and low and behold, the area I was going to shoot in is a class D space that is controlled from the ground to 2500 feet! So, I had to refresh myself on the process AND get approval from the Renton ATC. Note…the new process is you have to submit an airspace authorization through the FAA’s website. There is a small UAV button on the main page that takes you to this form https://www.faa.gov/uas/request_waiver/ you have to fill out IF you need airspace authorization. So I thought I would just include this in a checklist that could be used every time. See my Checklist. Feel free to print it out or request a copy.
If the first item comes back you will be in a class G, then you can stop and go shoot after checking the Notams/weather, but otherwise, you need to get clearance. It turns out a lot of high priced property (like all of Mercer Island, WA) is included in Class D airspace in the Seattle area as you can see. The dashed blue line means Class D airspace and the [25] means it is from the surface to 2500 feet. So to fly in these areas you must get clearance to be legal. It is a good idea to go to Skyvector and just look around the areas you normally will serve to get a feel for what kind of airspace you will be dealing with. If we do a lot of Mercer Island stuff, it will become a pain in the butt fast having to call every time…and the 90 days in advance thing does not fly with real estate, so warn your clients of the possibility of reshoots! But hey…we are being legal and I know I do not look good in an orange jump suit.
That is about it. I think there is lots of opportunity to provide some cool aerial images, videos and even expand the services of what we do and who we work with. So get going, start studying and get your remote pilot license!
How to sell it. We are rolling out a new order from that can merchandise anything you might want to sell. We are experimenting in Seattle with some custom videos. You can see some examples of the videos on our Vimeo channel: https://vimeo.com/floorplanonline If you want to provide this kind of content we can leverage our production group, and when the new order from comes to your market, it will be part of the order flow. Contact us for questions there.
If you missed the training session for drawing 2D and 3d floorplans, you can view this video that goes over many of the things discussed. Its a lot of info to absorb but hopefully it helps you draw faster and more efficiently!
The FloorPlan created during the training is below <iframe src="http://sd3.vifp.com/en/project/e8cf28145274b08b8cfbab235649519d1fd515b6" width="945px" height="615px" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>
I just saw this blog post on Linkedin, and thought it was an interesting, and applicable read, to what we are doing with helping to market real estate. It basically says a human has an attention span of 8 seconds, so if you can’t capture the user within that timeframe, they move on. You can read the full post here.
The post says to follow these rules for content marketing some parts copied verbatim):
1. Capture the attention quickly. In our case – the tour has to load quickly to display the content.
2. Content needs to be engaging (e.g. shareable) in the ecosystem it lives in. Eg We focus on floorplan content, something that buyers want to see as it shows how their family can live in a home.
3. Content needs to be authentic. For FPO, each house is different and unique.
4. Employees are your best ambassadors: with FPO, we run an employee-owned company and strive to provide helpful, US-based customer service.
5. It’s a marriage, not a one night stand. If your brand starts producing content for social media, its a commitment to your audience, not an experiment.
I relate this 8 second stat to tours out there today. Matterport has received a lot of press in the last year….yet from a user perspective, it can take 20 to 30 seconds, or more, for it to load. And then, the user has to point and click, spending valuable time, just to screen a property. Don’t get me wrong, it is cool technology, but is it the right technology to use as THE base marketing tool? I say no. Per independent research, buyers want to see #1 – Big Photos and #2 – FloorPlans. Videos, 360s, and everything else are ancillary. That is why we created our Full Screen HD Tour…to showcase a property with big large content and to let people quickly screen properties, to then take the next step.
Great news for non-Showcase agents linking tours to Realtor.com
As of July 1, 2015, linking the FloorPlanOnline virtual tour to Realtor.com is now completely Free! In the past, Realtor.com charged us a fee to link non-Showcase tours to Realtor.com, and we therefore passed on this cost by charging $25 to link to Realtor.com. Going forward, linking to Realtor.com, whether you are a Showcase member with them or not, is free!
We made this change in our pricing system a little after the first of the month, and we did attempt to refund any charges for non-Showcase linking made from July 1 to July 7th. If you find a charge for Realtor.com linking in July that we missed, just shoot us an email at support@floorplanonline.com and we will issue a credit.
Behind Zillow/Trulia, Realtor.com is the 3rd most vistited real estate website, so it benefits you to link the tour. In additon, if you are a Showcase member only because of the tour linking savings (it was free), you might be able to save some bucks now with the nonShowcase membership.
How to link your tours to Realtor.com
It is easy, you just need to do a few things:
1) Update your linking profile to make sure Realtor.com selected.
To add Realtor.com, login, go to Edit Profile and click the Edit Tour Linking & Distribution button towards the top. Then just make sure Realtor.com is checked. Go to the bottom and save.
Then select the box for Realtor.com
2) Add Realtor.com to older tours.
Go to Manage Tours, then select the Edit Details link (it is a blue text link) under the Tour Details column, scroll to the bottom and make sure Realtor.com is selected for that particular listing (and that we have the valid MLS number) and then save.
3) Manually link to Realtor.com
Go back to Manage Tours an on the far right under Tour Actions, select See Tour Linking and hit the relink option to manually link the tour to Realtor.com.
You can also send us an email to support@floorplanonline.com with a request to set this up and relink for you. Note if you have a lot of tours, it might take a few days for us to complete this task.
For new tours, if we have the MLS number at the time you Approve & Publish the tour, the virtual tour will get added to Realtor.com within a few minutes automatically. It shows both on the small thumbnail view as well as on the lower right of the main photo slider. Granted…it is not that visible, but at least it is there on the listing!
Call2Action Photo
As a reminder, you can get more people clicking on the virtual tour by uploading the unbranded version of the Call2Action photo into your MLS photo gallery, which then will make its way to Realtor.com, Zillow and other sites to call out to the user to click on the virtual tour link. Click here to read more on the Call2Action Photo.
Note for the Northwest MLS
Some MLS systems (namely the NWMLS in the Seattle area) make you jump through some hoops to get your listings pulled into Realtor.com in the first place. If your listings are not on Realtor.com, we can’t link the tour there. So you need to make sure Realtor.com pulls your listings in from the MLS first.
What you need to do:
The following forms need to be completed and faxed back to MOVE® at 480-556-4508.
Introducing Co-Listing Support! In the past, you had to create a separate account to support the display of two agents and their contact info, which was time consuming and laborious. Now you can easily add another agent to a listing just by typing in their name or manually adding their contact info. This is done on a listing by listing basis, making it a lot easier and faster to add a co-listing agent. Once you add a co-list agent they will show up on the tour as well as on one of the co-listing flyers that we have added.
There are two points where you can add a co-listing agent to an account:
Creating a New Tour
1. The first is during the process of creating a new tour. When you reach the Customize Tour step you are able to add a co-listing agent to the listing, just by searching for an agent already in our system, or manually add them.
Managing Tours 2. The second is adding it to an already existing tour under the Manage Tours tab of your FloorPlan Online account. Click on the edit details link next to the Listing ID. You can then add/edit the co-listing information there.
As mentioned above, there are two ways to add an agent. Select from an already existing agent or manually add one, as you see below.
1. Choose from an Already Existing Agent
2. Manually Add an Agent
We have added 3 flyer templates that include the colist agents and the great photo and floor plan content we create too. We hope you enjoy this long anticipated enhancement! It has actually been on our list of things to develop for many years, so we are glad to put our manual work around to bed!
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own 3D floor plan tool that can do the amazing things the FloorPlanOnline tool can do!
You can also send us an email to support@floorplanonline.com with a request to set this up and relink for you. Note if you have a lot of tours, it might take a few days for us to complete this task.
