Spotlight Tour- Week #139

Spotlight Tour- Week #139

Outstanding Martha Lake Waterfront

LYNNWOOD, WA

See The Story of This Home

Outstanding Martha Lake waterfront playground just in time for summer fun! This home is amazing inside & out with 56′ of prime shoreline, private dock, outdoor shower, gorgeous landscaping, built-in BBQ/smoker on the new deck to watch the eagles & osprey fish the stocked lake & a built-in gas firepit for star gazing. Major/permitted house addition in 1988 showcasing the gorgeous lake views from every angle. Gourmet kitchen remodel in 2020 with Dacor 6-burner gas range, granite slab, sleek/modern style cabinetry with heated floors. Office/bedroom on the main and extra finished room. Stunning primary en suite and 2 beds/full bath on the upper level. Radiant heated floors, spacious garage, plenty of guest parking. Very quiet yet close in location!

 

 

 

Professional HDR photography by:Christine C.
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If you are interested in listing your home or have questions, please contact:

 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ashley Farrington

CRS, CNE, SRES, Luxury & Equestrian

Windermere Real Estate/HLC

13901 NE 175th St., Ste 100, Woodinville, WA 98072

 
 
 
 
 

Spotlight Tour- Week #138

Spotlight Tour- Week #138

Stunning Authentic Connecticut Farmhouse!

NEW CANAAN, CT

See The Story of This Home

This stunning authentic Connecticut farmhouse has been updated and modernized with exceptional style, quality and vision. The new state of the art eat-in kitchen with expansive center island, heated stone floors and high end appliances opens into the amazing Great Room with gorgeous wood floors, fabulous beams, loft (perfect for an at home office), full bath, laundry, mini kitchen, and designated sleeping area with generous closets and storage space (in-law suite potential). Charm abounds throughout the living and dining rooms with fireplaces and period details. There are four bedrooms, 3 additional full baths, original 12″ wood plank floors (walnut & pine) and new staircases in the main house. Beautiful one acre private property with stonewalls, numerous flowering trees, mature landscaping, new driveway, antique sheds, in-ground pool with new terracing and 3 car garage complete the picture of this storybook home. Conveniently located near schools, town center and train, this is a home to love and cherish forever.

 

 

Professional HDR photography by:Roy A. S., Jr.

If you are interested in listing your home or have questions, please contact:

 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mary Higgins

Brown Harris Stevens

183 Elm Street, New Canaan,, CT 06840

 
 
 
 

Spotlight Tour- Week #137

Spotlight Tour- Week #137

Welcome to Renaissance Ridge!

SAMMAMISH, WA

See The Story of This Home

Welcome to Renaissance Ridge! Light-filled spaces & a floor plan for the way we live today, define this stunning home. Soaring ceilings & a wall of windows create an airy atmosphere. Ready for entertaining, the open island kitchen boasts an informal eating area & access to the beautiful deck with gazebo, ideal for dining al-fresco this summer. For those working from home, there are ample flex spaces throughout including a bonus room & a loft. The primary suite comes fit with a large nook, ideal for an at home office, or study. The fully fenced backyard is ready for gathering, gardening & play. Sited in ideal locale, this home is minutes from the amenities of downtown Sammamish, regional parks & great schools. This home has it all!

 

 

Professional HDR photography by: Joel H.

 

If you are interested in listing your home or have questions, please contact:

 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shane and Anne Coulter

Compass Washington

800 Bellevue Way NE Suite 500, Bellevue, WA 98004

 
 
 

Spotlight Tour- Week #134

Spotlight Tour- Week #134

Greenspace Views and Peaceful Relaxation!

NORWALK, CT

See The Story of This Home

Rare offering located in the prestigious Sasqua Hills neighborhood – quiet privacy & active lifestyle bonus of minutes to Westport amenities & walks to Marvin Beach, School, Country Clubs, golf, beach, boating, restaurants, metro-north and shopping. A natural stone exterior also presents other special architectural elements. fireplace, gabled roof lines, bluestone/beadboard ceiling porch combine for picture perfect curb appeal. This home is sited on level landscaped property for recreation, greenspace views & peaceful relaxation. The interior’s 1st level has an open floor plan perfect for daily living and special holiday entertaining. All rooms have views of the soaring hand cut natural stone fireplace or the outdoors through beautiful marvin glass windows. The refurbished cook’s kitchen has a new dishwasher, 6 burner gas stove and room to feed a crowd. A thoughtful side entry mud-room has direct access to the epoxy floored two-car garage and half-bath.The first level boasts a primary suite with an enviable custom closet and large full bath with double sinks and separate shower. This private wing has another room for you to designate for an office, hobby, nursery or den. A second level includes another suite with a 5-piece bath and fabulous closet. The 3rd&4th bedrooms are served by a full bath. Oversized Bonus Room-above the Garage is additional flexible space for in-home office, media, playroom etc.

 

Professional HDR photography by Larry M.

 

If you are interested in listing your home or have questions, please contact:

 
 
 

 

Roe Colletti, GRI

Brown Harris Stevens

56 Post Road East, WESTPORT, CT 06880

 
 
 
 
2022 Update

2022 Update

Welcome to the Spring 2022 Listing Season

As we begin our 17th year serving you, we are recommitting that we will provide the BEST customer service and home-related platform in the world, offering you features and functionality you will not find anywhere else, including:

  • Brandkeepr – our patented process that keeps YOUR brand on YOUR tour on the top sites like Zillow, Realtor.com and Trulia.  In fact, 98% of the Top 10 real estate search sites can display your brand on our tour.  This leaves “breadcrumbs” back to you, and has proven to get agents more business, both on the sell and buy side.
  • Real-time editing tools to configure your tour, edit your flyer, sequence/enhance your video and even edit/enhance your floor plans on demand.  No other tour provider has their own floor plan tool because they all use a 3rd party to create just a floor plan image or PDF file.  We create a true 3D model that can be used by you and the owner throughout the whole ownership lifecycle, including on our tour with the drag and drop furniture planner and in HomeDiary as a management tool for the owner, or keepsake for the seller.  Coming soon – Gross living area calculations for each property that adds wall factors in addition to the internal area, so you will have a more comparable result against the tax records or appraisals (which can, and often, are not correct).
  • HomeDiary integration that lets the content live on post sale – through our “Claim Home” menu option, the photos and the 3D floor plan model are copied to the buyer and seller’s private HomeDiary account upon request (and your approval).  Soon, we will also have ways you can create a digital closing gift and more on the buy and living side with our transition to HomeDiary PRO.  This will keep you in front of your clients by enabling you to add relevant content into your client’s HomeDiary accounts for their lifetime of ownership.

You can see the full list of the value of our tour , platform and the various services we provide in our feature list below.

 

We want your feedback.

We want to be your go to provider for all your property needs.  So we have implemented a new quick feedback mechanism.  Please submit your feeback here.
5 stars

  Check Out Our New or Coming Soon Value Adds:

  • BLUE SKY GUARANTEE. Weather less than desirable? We have you covered.  Starting now, we will replace those gray skies with pretty blue ones for NO CHARGE for all exterior photos.  Other companies charge extra for this included service.
  • LIVE: Beta Testing of the new Order Management System with new features for HomeDiary PRO, an industry first platform that not only allows you to create tours, or Stories, for your listings, but you can curate content for the buy or living side with our Sponsored Diaries option.  Over the past year plus, we completely recoded our whole system we spent the last 17 years building, with new functionality you will not find anywhere else in the world.  So stay relevant by populating the Diary with closing docs, a recommended “To Do’s” list from the inspection report and more.  You can even add quarterly or annual professional CMA’s right into a user’s HomeDiary, compliments of, and branded by, you as a way to stay relevent with your key clients over time.
  • The best floor plan tool will get even better in 2022 with gross living area (“GLA“) calculations in addition to the internal measured area, so you can corroborate the county tax records or the calculations of an appraisal. Stay tuned for this in the coming months.
  • Added a Voiceover Service starting at $25 that can be ordered on any of our video services
  • Added a Matterport Walkthrough Video add-on service for just $50 when you order a 3D Walkthrough Tour
  • Added Virtual Staging Service  with the ability to add similar furniture to the space on the floor plan tool, starting at just $65 per image.  We can even convert an unfinished basement into a finished space for $20 more.
  • Added a new Custom Brochure process – We are now leveraging Canva to create custom flyers that you can then edit and get printed at your local FedEx store for cheaper and faster turn around.  We also created an editable handout using Canva you can provide your prospective sellers – Download it here.
  • We are working to update the social media videos to a “story” format that is portrait sized so it matches Facebook, Instagram and TikTok specs for story videos.

Pricing Updates for 2022

As of April 1, we have adjusted our pricing in various markets.  Please use our price calculator to estimate a price for your area.  Just note the calculator does not reflect any custom pricing that may be in place for your company (login to your account to see custom pricing in effect).  

Costs have gone up significantly – from gas, to food, to people costs.  We have not increased our prices in over two years, so we will be increasing prices in most markets to ensure continued excellent service for you by our collective team.  We pay our service providers much more than most other national competitors, in some cases 2 times as much.  Why? Because we believe having a quality individual to service your needs year in, year out, is more important than squeezing as much money out of people as possible (which causes high churn of photographers in other companies).  In addition our proprietary photo process is more detailed and time consuming, but the end result really beats the competition in terms of a superior quality photo. Our production team spends upwards of 5 hours per tour producing the best content for your listing.

Why our Platform, and Service, is the Best

 
All Tours include:
  • Fast loading, optimized tours hosted for up to 1 year on Amazon Web Services with CDN content cashing for the optimial user experience (see below for Matterport hosting)
  • HD sized Photo gallery for big, full screen viewing of the photos, optimized with a scroll view on mobile
  • Downloadable photos with on demand custom sizing to fit every upload need
  • Editable & downloadable slideshow video with text explainer slides and floor plans sync’d and built-in (if applicable)*
  • Editable & downloadable flyers, with floor plans built-in (if applicable)
  • Embeddable code to post on your website or blog
  • Branded and unbranded versions for the MLS and beyond with auto linking of the virtual tour (and sometimes photos) for select MLS platforms
  • Brandkeepr* – our patented process that keeps your brand on your tour on the top sites like Zillow for free leads from the websites people actually use most
  • Claim Home to HomeDiary* – the buyer and seller can claim the home right from the tour and get a copy of the photos and floor plans (including our 3D Designer tool) put into their private HomeDiary, and you get attribution on the content provided (note you are NOT the “official sponsor” by default so there should be no “anit-competitive” issue here).
  • HomeDiary Sponsorship* – invite your clients first to HomeDiary to become the Sponsored agent when they claim the home, or invite all past clients using your HD invite code, and give each client a free HomeDiary account, a benefit of your free FloorPlanOnline account membership
  • Mobile responsive on any device – everything works, including the interactive floor plan* (unlike the competition)
  • Unlimited customer support, 8 am to 8 pm EST

* features you will not find on ANY other virtual tour platform

 

The Feartures aross the Ownership Lifecycle can be summarized in this table

We also put a lot of work into the production of a tour.  Here are things we do.


Photo Editing. Premium HDR Photography that uses a proprietary process to blend 2 flash and 5 ambient images into one crisp and stunning HDR (“high dynamic range”) image.  All HDR is NOT created equal so don’t be fooled by claims of automated tech or cheap pricing – you get what you pay for…  We take the HDR image and finish it with our standard editing processes done at no extra cost (whereas competitors charge extra for some of these tasks):

  • window replacement for clear views
  • exterior sky replacement – blue skies guaranteed!
  • TV black outs
  • fire in fireplaces
  • lighting and color adjustment
  • straightening and perspective correction
  • cloning out small imperfections such as dangling power cords or flash reflections
  • Blurring Agent Sign info, license plate numbers, pictures of children

Additional editing available for an extra free per photo

  • grass replacement/green grass
  • Recolor of skies, water, etc.
  • Blue skies through interior windows
  • Images on TV screens
  • cloning out larger items
  • removing items or other advanced Photoshop work
  • Aerial Property boundary lines/point of interest callouts

FloorPlan Production.  We draw the floor plan based on the source file and add basic details such as windows, doors, bath and kitchen layout.  We provide the total interior measured and drawn area, with gross living area (“GLA”) square footage coming in 2022 using a standard wall thickness of 6.5 inches, but we CAN adjust for wall thickness, so if a property does have thicker walls, it can be taken into account.  Standard output is a black and white plan in jpeg and PDF format with an included 3D model and 3D Designer, our drag and drop furniture planner/designer that brings an HGTV-like floor planning tool to every listing, and home. You can also edit the floor plan in real-time, enhance it on your own with flooring details or furniture, and even create unlimited 3D snapshot photos of the 2D and 3D views.

Additional enhancements for an extra fee include:

  • Colored FloorPlans – we add a color scheme to the standard black and white floor plan
  • 3D Enhanced FloorPlan – we match flooring and wall colors of the property, add more detail to kitchen and bath layouts
  • Coming in 2022 – 3D Enhanched FloorPlan with Furniture – we virtually stage the floor plan with furniture to provide more perspective and show the layout to help people visualize the space more

Matterport/3D Walkthrough Production.  We sequence the walkthrough of the property based on how a user would conduct an actual physical visit of the home – starting at the front door and going through the whole house, top to bottom.  Most providers do nothing other than give you a link.  With the push of the Play button, users are taken through a typical home in around 2-3 minutes, saving them and you time and simplifying the 3D Matterport experience.

Additional enhancements for an extra fee include

  • Walkthrough Video – a recorded video of the walkthrough with floor plan overlays that can be separately downloaded and embedded, shown on social media, etc.
  • Separate downloads available for the Matterpak or E57 file on request and based on camera used for an extra fee

Matterport Hosting.  Please note the active Matterport portion of your tour is hosted for the shorter of the active listing period OR 12 months.  The Matterport does not need to be active on the tour after a short period of time post close, so in order to control your costs, and for the privacy of the new owner, we archive the Matterport portion of the tour once the property is marked either sold or off market. 

FYI, most homeowners do not want their tour visible on the Internet once closed. We receive requests weekly to remove tour and videos on sold properties. So, please, if you have a special need to keep a Matterport active after the property is off market, contact us for options in those unique cases.

Want to showcase a virtual tour with an active Matterport to show prospective sellers to win the listing?  No problem.  Each account has a free “Demo House” tour included, that is basically this virtual tour but with your branding.  It includes an active Matterport, so you can show people how you will market their home on your laptop or iPad in real-time, and “wow” them with the custom home website and all of the tools you will provide.  It is certainly a way to differentiate at the listing appointment, as well as online, and since we can show your brand and contact info on your tour (using Brandkeepr) on the top sites, it is a great way to get more business and win that silent interview with both sellers and buyers that go online first.

Post to Instagram from your computer

Post to Instagram from your computer

You can now post content like photos and videos to Instagram using your computer.  In the past, you had to use your mobile device to post, even though you could view from a computer.  With this change, it is much easier to download and then upload the video.

Add a Video (or Photo)

 

Download your slideshow video (which is under the Marketing Center) or the custom video you received to your computer, and then click the + icon and upload it into the post, like you see here.

Adjust the Video

 

Once you select your video, it will show a screen like you see here. If you do not have a square video (e.g. resolution at 1000×1000 pixels), you will have an opportuity to crop the video by moving it to the right or left.  By default it center crops, so in this example the address is right in the middle which works fine.

If you ordered a social media video from us, it is already in the right resolution.  If you ordered other videos, we also provide a social media version, and we will be adding a social media version to the Matterport Walkthrough Video as well.

With this crop option you can download the slideshow video and upload to Instagram. Add our voiceover service and you have a pretty cool video, or get the social media video for an optimized version.

Set the Default Image View

 

Once the video is uploaded you can then select the preview image when the video first loads.  Just drag the slider on the right to a scene and save to update the image.

Customize the Post

 

 Add some explanation text and adjust other settings and post.  One thing to add is text to tell people to turn the audio on, since it plays off by default (even though there is a setting for this). If your video does have a voice over, we suggest selecting the option to generate the captions as they will help with hearing impaired people, and since the audio is off by default, it can help still communicate the information in the voice over.

The end result is a post that looks like this.  You can even embed it on your own website or blog or send along in an email blast.