How to view properties from-out-of-state

Shopping for real estate from a distance can be a real challenge, for both the buyer and the agent. Internet listings don’t always provide an accurate picture of the property.  Some agents manage to make the property look better than the reality. And, sadly enough, some agents manage to make it look worse.

More importantly, the listing agent doesn’t know what features or aspects are important to the buyer.  That is the job of the buyer’s agent.

At Tellus Real Estate we’ve found a few methods to help our out-of-state and international clients get a better feel for a property.  One method is straightforward, take our own pictures… focussing on those features that we know are important to our clients.

Another method is to take a video camera and do a video walkthrough.  Here is an example of a walkthrough we did recently for an out-of-state client:

When doing this kind of walkthrough, we have some rough guidelines that we follow for posting:

1. We use YouTube, because most folks are familiar with it.
2. We don’t include info about the property in the video.  This avoids problems with agents and  owners.
3. We don’t ‘list’ the videos in our youtube feed, for same reason as previous.
4. When we take still photos, we include them in the video also, for convenience.
5. We try and work with a local contacts (like a family member or business partner) to have them do an in-person viewing to augment the video.
6. Make it public so client does not have to sign-in to youtube.  We go back and forth on this, because it would make it much more private if we did require sign in.  But, some clients don’t want to sign in, especially with the Google security concerns as of late.