BoxBrownie has been offering virtual staging and image enhancing services to the real estate industry for many years. Their services have become a mainstay in real estate marketing by properly enhancing the appeal of properties for sale. As 360° virtual reality tours like Matterport and the now defunct GeoCV emerged, BoxBrownie applied their services to enhancing those tours with their virtual staging and image enhancement. Now BoxBrownie plans to compile and host those tours too.
BoxBrownie is now offering an assembly and hosting service that will take scans from 360° cameras like the Ricoh Theta V and Ricoh Z1 and turn them into beautiful 360° virtual reality tours. Here is a nice example of an empty house.
If you or your owner/tenant has a late model smart phone, you can download an app called Google Street View (free). It creates a 360° panorama without requiring a 360° camera . That panorama can be loaded into the BoxBrownie 360° Virtual Tour Platform to create a tour. Here is a link to an iPhone 11 example.
Another key component to these 360° tours is the floor plan, which can be ordered as an additional feature of the tour. We like the floor plans a lot because they act as a map that orientates you to navigate the home. I may be mistaken, but my takeaway from past discussion with BoxBrownie is that these floorplans are remarkably accurate to scale.
At What Cost?
For most homes, you can probably get away with their basic package. You upload 15 photos to BoxBrownie (think 15 rooms) and the price is $16 for them to develop the tour. Larger homes may need up to 25 scans or images, which they price at $24. Over 25, and you pay a few cents extra to have your tour built.
Remember, the price for image enhancement—like balancing the color or whatever—is $4 per image. Virtual Staging to remove the ugly furniture and insert beautiful stuff is $64 per image.
If you are creating virtual tours that you want to have hosted for years, like your office, they charge $12 for hosting that the first year, then it goes down to $8 per year thereafter. Some agents create goodwill in their business by creating tours for local businesses, art galleries, or other community and lifestyle features. #smartmarketing
In this time of virtual everything, real estate agents are creatively finding ways to deliver the best possible digital presentation experience to market properties. BoxBrownie may have an offer worth looking into, especially for do-it-yourself agents who are not using professional photographers. BoxBrownie may be able to make your photography look like that of a pro.
Nothing like a Matterport. It is a series of 360 photos placed around a floorplan. I was using my iPhone 11 and the tour would not even allow me to click on the other scans to move between scan.
Thanks Billy – I tried it on my computer. Not sure if you have tried BoxBrownie’s virtual staging – it is something that many brokers and agents really love. This product is new. I am excited to learn how people use it. Totally fans of Matterport.