Opening Up to Virtual Open Houses

April 1, 2020

- By Sabrina Lapointe

MAR is continuously looking at ways to help its members. We all know an important part of a real estate transaction is the open house process. But what happens when limitations are put into place and people can’t hold traditional open houses?

While MAR strongly encourages members NOT to host open houses in order to help prevent the spread of COVID-19, we are happy to share that there are some alternatives to conducting an open house we want you all to be aware of.

There are some great alternative methods to in-person open houses such as using three-dimensional interactive property scans via Matterport, Cupix, EyeSpy360. You can also do things like hosting a virtual tour via Skype or Facebook live. A third option is using virtual staging to showcase a property.

If you’re new to a lot of this, don’t worry, there are several companies out there to help you! Check out Kleard to help you with on-demand open houses. Kleard is an app that provides Smart Open House Technology, it is a toolkit for real estate agents that can help you verify all visitors who come through. If you’re looking to do some video tours, Immoviewer is an awesome resource, companies like BathBomb can help with things like video check-ins. Another option is FloorPlanOnline which gives virtual walk-throughs at any time, the features are very easy to use with its point & click FloorPlan Tour. These are all alternatives to the traditional way of conducting an open house.

NAR is encouraging anyone using this technology in their MLS listings to make sure that they have secured the proper permissions for the scans or videos before uploading to the MLS.

We hope you take advantage of some of these alternatives!