Which again brings up the question: Why would we go?
Because (part 2) of this series is still true. But the place looks great. Some of the stuff is just us falling for the staging (see part 7), but a lot of it is getting all those things done that we planned to do ... for years.
We have shared the joke with many clients in the past: "It looks so nice we don't want to sell anymore." Perhaps surprisingly, it has only actually happened once. Unfortunately it was a case where we (Lee especially) were intimately involved in advising, supporting, calming and even doing -- Lee was off to Winners a couple of time to buy, for example, the perfect towel rack she had been trying to describe. A planned listing date had passed because the work wasn't quite done and the sellers were somewhat fried. And then ... "We've changed our minds ... we love the place now that we've done all this and we can't bear to leave it until we enjoy it a while longer".
But we, despite our emotional state at this point, are ready.
So, for posterity, bragging and marketing it's time to capture our beautiful home .
Video tours and photos.
[A little history, a rant or two and all credit to Alex.]
Not so many years ago, there was a single photo attached to a given listing. Even after MLS listings could be loaded electronically, the photo had to be sent to TREB, who took a day or so to add it to the listing. So, the first day or so, the top left corner of the listing said "Photo Not Available". One option to speed the process a touch was to use the TREB file photo of the property. Unfortunately, sometimes the staff photo guy didn't seem to have stopped the car, let alone get out of it, to snap the shot.
You may have guessed that the Google StreetView vehicles and their technology did not arrive for quite a while.
A technology that did arrive was digital video and the video tour. Treating potential buyers to a movie of the whole home on their computer was pretty snazzy and useful. But time consuming and expensive -- the first vid tour companies showed up at the house with a high tech van and a crew!
Next came "efficiency". A fisheye lens, tripod and motor allowed a single tech to stick the tripod in the middle of each room, start the motor, try to stay out of the frame, and stitch all the room pans together the next day.
Unfortunately, this technology made all the rooms look like bowls with bowed walls and seconds-long pans of blank wall before you got to the good stuff.
About the same time TREB caught up a bit and started allowing 9 photos to be attached to a listing. By now, we could directly upload the photos at the same time as the listing itself.
So we stopped using video tours. They not only distorted, but they disappointed buyers by making the places look bigger than reality. We prefer to under-promise by a hair, and over-deliver by a lot.
But then came Alex Morias of www.videolistings.ca. He was more advanced in the technology, but he regressed appropriately in technique. Armed with a video camera and a still camera, he took pans of the good stuff and key elements, put them together with stock footage, music and captions. And it was beautiful. An excellent representation of the property and a wonderful souvenir for buyers and sellers. Turned around the same day!
So, with all that available, how is it possible that there are still listings that, for the first two days, still have "Photo Not Available" in the top left corner?! It boggles the mind. You can almost here the internet generation (of buyer and agent) clicking "next" and I think I can also here the memory of that listing clattering down a dusty corridor of the mind, to be never heard from again.
Here's what Alex did for us: www.videolistings.ca/video/35anndale. Neat, eh?
Did you read the last blog post? (This one). Then you know what to do. Those "like" buttons are right here...
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