Are virtual tours worth it for estate agents?

The short answer: yes for video, sometimes for 360

Most of what ranks for this question is written by companies that sell tours, and it says they are essential. The pages we read either gave no figures at all or quoted US surveys. The best UK figure we found comes from Rightmove itself, and it is more modest than the sales pages suggest.

In its 2022 guide to creating the “ultimate sales listing”, Rightmove says sales listings with videos “receive on average 8% more views and 6% more leads than those without”, from its analysis of sales branches for its Best Estate Agent Guide 2021. In the same guide, branches with floorplans received on average 12% more leads, and branches with five or more photographs 11% more. These are averages across listings, not a controlled test, so better agents may simply do all three. They still put video in proportion: worth doing, and not before the photographs and the floorplan are right.

So our view is:

a narrated video walk-through, filmed well on a phone or by your photographer, is worth adding to most sales listings;
a 360 or 3D tour is worth paying for on the listings where it changes who can view, not as a blanket extra;
neither replaces a viewing, and neither does any good if it slows your website or misdescribes the home.

What the published figures show, and what they do not

Video on listings is no longer unusual. On 25 February 2021 Rightmove reported that 34% of properties for sale had a video or virtual tour, up from 2% in January 2020, and 17% of rentals, up from 1%. Agents had added its online viewing label to more than 400,000 properties, and of the interested buyers sent a video through its automated tool, 62% opened the email and 80% of those watched.

That growth came in lockdown, when a tour was the only way in. What has lasted is the use agents describe in the same report: screening. One London agency said the tool helped “everyone save on unnecessary journeys to unsuitable properties”, and avoided five viewings in a single week. A buyer who has walked through the video and still wants to come is a better use of a negotiator’s Saturday than one who would have ruled the house out from the hallway.

Be careful with bigger claims. In May 2021 The Negotiator reported research by a data company finding a “19.4% higher conversion rate” for listings with guided virtual viewings and a sale price “5.62% more”, the second figure from one client’s trial. The article gives no sample size, period or method, so we would not quote either figure to a vendor. The higher price premiums on tour suppliers’ own pages come with even less. We could not find a current, independent UK study that shows a tour sells a home faster or for more.

Which listings justify a 360 tour

A recorded walk-through shows the home in the order you chose. A 360 tour lets the buyer go where they like, which matters most when they cannot easily come in person. On the evidence above, the cost of a tour is easiest to justify where it widens the pool of buyers or saves wasted trips:

Buyers who live far away: relocations, second homes, coastal and rural listings where most interest comes from outside the area.
Viewings that are hard to arrange: tenanted homes, homes with vulnerable occupiers, and sellers who can only allow a few slots.
The instructions worth most: where the fee on one sale covers the tour many times over, and where the vendor will compare your marketing with a rival’s.
Lettings: where a tenant who rules a flat out from the video saves a viewing slot on a busy day.

For a typical two bedroom flat with local demand, good photographs, a floorplan with room dimensions and a short narrated video do the job, and the money a 360 tour would cost is better spent elsewhere.

Vendors will ask about it. Rightmove’s guide for sellers choosing an agent says enhanced marketing “might include professional photography, floorplans, video tours or premium listings on portals”, and tells sellers to judge “an agent’s website, photography and property descriptions”. A vendor comparing three agents will look for tours on your current listings. Have an example to show on your own website, and say plainly which homes you use them for and why. That reads better at a valuation than offering a tour on everything.

The same rules apply to every frame

A tour is a statement about the property. The Property Ombudsman’s code says you must take all reasonable steps to make sure that every statement you make about a property, “whether oral, pictorial or written”, is accurate and not misleading (paragraph 7i), and that all advertisements must be “legal, decent, honest and truthful in accordance with the ASA Codes” (paragraph 7n).

In practice:

No editing that changes the home. The ASA’s advice on imagery says images “should not be altered in a way which exaggerates what the product can do”, and that this applies to filters too. Wide lenses that make a box room look like a double, sky replacement over a north facing garden, or AI furniture in an empty room all risk that.
Do not skip the awkward room. A walk-through that avoids the small bathroom or the view of the railway gives a misleading impression even if every frame is genuine.
Get the seller’s agreement. The code says the written details must be agreed with the seller before marketing starts (paragraph 7j). Show them the tour too, and check nothing private is on camera: post, family photographs, the alarm panel.
Keep the facts in writing. A tour does not replace the floorplan, the room dimensions or the material information on the listing.

Putting tours on your own website properly

Rightmove plays YouTube and Vimeo videos inside the listing and shows other tours as a link to external content, according to its agent hub. If your website takes the same links from your CRM feed and embeds them, check how it does it, because done carelessly that costs you speed, consent and access. Four things to check:

Load the player only when someone presses play. Google’s web.dev guidance says many popular embeds include “over 100 KB of JavaScript, sometimes even going up to 2 MB”, and that lazy loading a YouTube embed can save about 500 KB on the first load. Show a still image with a play button, and load the real player on the click.
Do not set cookies on page load. The ICO’s guidance says to configure embedded content “not to set storage and access technologies the instant someone visits the page”, to “tell the user underneath the embed that if they choose to press ‘play’, storage and access technologies will be used”, and to use a privacy mode where one exists. For YouTube that is the youtube-nocookie.com address, which Google says stops views being used to personalise the viewer’s YouTube experience. Our guide to whether your website needs a cookie banner covers the rest of the site.
Caption narrated videos. WCAG 2.2 success criterion 1.2.2 requires “captions are provided for all prerecorded audio content in synchronized media”, at its lowest level. Our guide to whether your website needs to be accessible explains why agency sites should work to it.
Do not expect video search traffic. Google says a video can appear in its video features only from a watch page, whose “main purpose is to show users a single video”, and that a page where the video is complementary to the rest of the content is not one. A property page is a page about a home with a video on it. The tour is there to help the buyer who has already arrived.

If your website shows the tour as a plain link that opens a stranger’s site, or loads a heavy player on every listing whether anyone watches or not, that is worth fixing before you pay for more tours. Each bespoke estate agent website we build takes its listings, tours included, from your CRM feed, for one agency per patch, and the pricing page sets out what it costs.

Sources

More guides for agency owners are on the guides page.

Questions

Do virtual tours help sell houses faster?

We found no independent, current UK figure that shows it. Rightmove's own analysis of sales branches for 2021 found listings with videos had on average 8% more views and 6% more leads than those without, which is a measure of interest rather than of speed or price. Claims of higher sale prices come mostly from tour suppliers and do not publish a method that can be checked.

What is the difference between a video tour and a virtual tour?

A video tour is a recorded walk-through that plays from start to finish, usually hosted on YouTube or Vimeo. A virtual tour, often called a 360 or 3D tour, lets the viewer move from room to room at their own pace. Rightmove plays YouTube and Vimeo videos inside the listing and shows other tours as a link to external content.

Do embedded property videos need cookie consent?

Often, yes, unless you set them up carefully. The ICO's guidance says to configure embedded content so it does not set storage and access technologies the instant someone visits the page, to tell users that pressing play will use them, and to use a privacy mode where one exists. Anything beyond what is needed to play the video needs consent.

Do property videos on an estate agency website need captions?

If they have narration, yes, to meet the accessibility standard. WCAG 2.2 success criterion 1.2.2, at its lowest level, requires captions for all prerecorded audio in synchronised media, so a site working to level AA must meet it too. A tour with music only should still sit beside a floorplan and photographs, so nobody depends on the video for the facts.

Will a video tour help a listing appear in Google's video results?

Unlikely, and it should not be the reason to make one. Google says a video can only appear in its video features from a watch page, whose main purpose is to show a single video, and a page where the video complements the rest of the content is not a watch page. A property page is the second kind.

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