3D tours for property managers: vacant unit showings

Showings. Every showing of a vacant unit is a staff member driving to the building, unlocking, waiting, walking, and locking up, often for a prospect who decides in the first thirty seconds that the kitchen is too small. A tour moves that thirty seconds online. The prospect who books after walking the tour has already accepted the layout; the conversation at the door is about the application, not the floor plan.

It also fills the gap between listing and first available showing. A unit listed on a Friday with showings on Tuesday loses prospects to listings they can see today. A tour is something to send them today.

After cleaning, before keys go to the next tenant. The unit is empty, lit, and clean for roughly a day, and that is the window. Make the walk part of the move-out checklist: inspect, clean, film, list.

Two to three minutes covers most apartments. Walk from the entry, through every room, open closets, show the view from the main window, step onto the balcony if there is one. The shot guide covers pace and light. An empty unit is the easiest possible subject: no furniture to work around, nothing personal to keep out of frame.

If the unit will be shown furnished by a staging company, film it staged. Otherwise film it empty; prospects are used to empty units and a tour of one is honest.

• The listing, where the site allows it. Zillow Rentals, Apartments.com, Rentals.ca, Craigslist, Kijiji, and your own site each handle media differently; most accept a link, a few accept an embed. Paste the URL wherever a "virtual tour" field exists.
• Enquiry replies. A template reply with the tour link, the application link, and the next showing slot handles most first messages.
• Your own availability page, as an iframe embed next to the floor plan and the rent.

The link should stay live for the entire vacancy and ideally for the next one. Hosting terms matter here; see the plan notes below.

Yes, if nothing changed. A unit that turns over every twelve months with the same paint, flooring, and appliances is the same tour. Re-shoot when something material changes: a renovation, new flooring, a different view after construction next door. Re-shooting after a damage claim is also sensible, because the tour then doubles as the dated "after" record.

That second use is underrated. A 3D walkthrough shot at move-out, timestamped, is a far better condition record than a dozen phone photos. It is not a legal survey and has no measurements, but it shows the state of every surface from every angle on a given day.

By making the walk a standard step rather than a project. One person with a phone can film six or eight units in an afternoon at the building. Upload at the office, paste links into listings the same day.

A small manager with a handful of vacancies a month fits Solo at $99 for five tours. A company turning over twenty units a month fits Team at $299 for twenty tours and three seats, with extra tours at $39 each. Team also gives you one shared library so the leasing staff see every tour, roles so a leasing agent can create but not delete, and roll-up analytics across the portfolio. The property management page has the full picture.