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the way home

Many, especially in the cooler markets, are turning to video or professionally shot photos to help sell homes.Piotr Adamowicz/Getty Images/iStockphoto

In the market for a new home and want to know exactly where the baby's room would be in relation to yours? How much wiggle room there is between the kitchen island and the oven? Whether that ensuite bathroom is really as large as it looks?

Mike Simcoe's website can tell you. The realtor for RE/MAX Signature Properties in Okotoks, Alta., uses Matterport 3D software to create virtual home tours that go beyond the typical fisheye camera shot slowly scanning around a room. Mr. Simcoe's visitors and potential clients can move through the entire property and even use the software's "dollhouse" mode to look at a 3D stacked floor plan while swinging and swooping overhead.

"It's not the 1960s any more when people put on hardhats, go on a tour and walk around looking at homes to buy. It now can be done from your tablet," he explains.

Away from the blazing hot housing markets of Toronto and Vancouver, it's a buyer's market in other communities such as Calgary, Windsor, Ont., and Regina, where prices are either holding steady or falling. Even in sought-after neighbourhoods, some higher-end houses and condos linger on the market for months.

To avoid that fate and to ensure their listings get the maximum number of eyeballs, sellers and realtors are willing to try a few tricks to get people through the door. Even if that door is of the virtual, pixilated variety.

"People are looking for options to make their house stand out," says Mr. Simcoe, who has been a realtor for about a year and bought the Matterport software in December. "It's kind of Darwinian. It gives them more pop, and at the end of the day, the more looks you get, the better."

Adding the bells and whistles isn't cheap, though. Mr. Simcoe estimates that after buying the camera equipment, software and extras, such as lighting and a rolling tripod, realtors fork over between $5,000 and $10,000. The images are sent to the company in California, which stitches them together to make the model. He says he often receives the finished product within a couple of hours.

He is convinced that the technology's real benefit is for time-strapped buyers and sellers who don't want to be inconvenienced with last-minute showings or the cattle-call vibe of a weekend open house. Being able to give and get a true sense of how a home looks – albeit via a computer screen – cuts down on all of that.

"For the seller, it's great. They have more serious buyers coming in through the house who have already considered the property," says Mr. Simcoe. "It saves time on both ends."

Ted Greenhough, a realtor for RE/MAX Realty Professionals in Calgary, isn't so sure that giving away so much detailed information online is a prudent move. He is a big believer in a well-staged house and a handful of professional photographs. Just enough to entice buyers to inquire about the property – but not so many that they feel overwhelmed. Realtors are allowed to list up to 50 photos on REALTOR.ca, but he says no one should use more than 20 or 25. There are, after all, only so many photos of the same boring bathroom sink a person wants to click through.

And if the basement carpet looks a tad worn in one shot? That might be enough to avoid looking at the house entirely. He maintains that one of his own clients ended up buying a home he initially refused to see after looking at the virtual tour. Still, many sellers want them on their online listings.

"I think the sellers love to see the virtual and the video tours of their own house. But if you were to click and find out how many people watch the thing, it's, oh, seven," he says. "And that's because the owner looked at it five times."

Here's what he does think sells homes: professional photography. And he is not the only one. Hugh Saffa, a former software developer and photography hobbyist, started taking freelance real estate photos back in 2011 before launching HS Media in Thornhill, Ont.

He says when he first started, he was one of only a handful of photographers in the city doing professional real estate shots. The last time he checked, there were more than 40. Rates range from $80 for a basic condo to $2,000 for a spectacular home with many rooms.

He is not surprised that more realtors are booking professional photographers, particularly in markets where buyers from other provinces or even overseas make up a portion of sales. But even in that case, he thinks showing too many photos can hurt a sale. Instead, it pays to focus on a few spectacularly lit shots of the best rooms.

"It's lighting that makes everything beautiful, everything flattering," he explains. "But it's something I see lots of photographers ignore."

Lise Anne Janis, a sales representative for At Home Group Realty in Guelph, Ont., about 1.5 hours west of Toronto, has one more trick up her sleeve when selling a home in the $600,000-and-up range. She uses good old-fashioned advertising. But rather than hitting the local papers, she branches out to communities where she is more likely to get interested buyers: professionals in Toronto who are tired of bidding wars and ever escalating prices in the city.

"They feel like they've won the lottery when they come to Guelph," she explains, noting that about 68 per cent of all new Guelph buyers come from Toronto. The median sale price for homes in Guelph was $395,000 in the year's second quarter.

Ms. Janis says she spends thousands on print and online banner ads in publications such as Toronto Life, The Globe and Mail, House & Home, and even Cottage Life if the house has a particularly cottage-like feel.

Yet sometimes it's doing nothing at all that eventually sells the house. Or make that doing less than nothing.

Just this past summer, Ms. Janis decided to take an $800,000 house off the market after a couple of months. It made sense to try again in the fall. But the moment she settled into a cottage vacation for the weekend, her phone rang. It was an offer from a couple who had been watching the house and waiting for the price to drop. She thinks that word got out that the house was suddenly no longer for sale.

"It's funny," she says. "When you can't have what you think you want, suddenly it puts a fire under you, right?"

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