Introducing Virtual Open Houses & Tours of Homes
During this period of rapid change and uncertainty, we’re here to help you serve your customers while also keeping yourself, your family and community healthy and safe. The necessary restrictions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic make customary, in-person interactions like Open Houses and Home Tours difficult, if not impossible. Adapting to these restrictions while continuing to make the market work, many MLSs, including Metro MLS, are canceling in-person open houses and exploring all possibilities to hold “virtual” open houses online. To facilitate, we’ve added the ability for you to schedule virtual open houses and tours of homes in Flexmls Web.
Who Does This Benefit?
Agents who want to show a home virtually instead of in-person will benefit from this feature. Use it to host an open house for prospective buyers or to schedule a virtual tour of homes for a group of agents in your market. You can use any online communication service or event tools, such as Facebook, Zoom, or Microsoft Teams, to schedule a live online walkthrough of the home. Homebuyers or agents can join your virtual open house/tour of homes and view the video via the camera on your phone, or via a shared presentation. Anyone who participates will be able to ask you questions in real-time.
Pro tip: Save time and effort by recording the event and uploading the recording to the listing as a virtual tour or video, so you don’t have to hold the virtual open house repeatedly!
What Are My Options?
You have multiple options for adding digital media (other than photos) to your listings. With the introduction of virtual open houses/tours, we wanted to give you a refresher on how to use each option in Flexmls.
Open House/Tour of Homes
:
A live, scheduled event that is either virtual or in-person.
*Available in the Scheduled Marketing Activities section of the Change Listing
Page.
Virtual Tour:
A slide show or other interactive media that is pre-recorded or created and
not
scheduled.
*Available in the Media section of the Change Listing Page.
Video:
A walkthrough or presentation that is pre-recorded or created and
not
scheduled.
*Available in the Media section of the Change Listing Page.
