What is a Zillow 3D Scan, and Why Do I Need One?

One of the most popular features among renters on the Zillow platform is the Zillow 3D Home® tour. Zillow 3D Home tours give prospective tenants a 360-degree view of each room inside the property, allowing them to experience what it’s like to move through the home and look around without having to visit in person.

So how do you create a Zillow 3D Home tour for your property? It starts with something called a Zillow 3D Scan, where you use either a smartphone or a special 360-degree camera to capture images of each room’s interior. Once captured, the images are uploaded to Zillow and the platform’s proprietary software converts them into an interactive tour.

PlanOmatic has created countless Zillow 3D Home tours for our single-family rental customers, and we’ve even tracked the way including them in property listings impacts visibility and vacancy days. The data is clear: properties with Zillow 3D Home tours get way more views and rent faster. In fact, we believe just about every property listed on Zillow should include 3D. Here are a few reasons why.

Why You Need Zillow 3D

Get More Exposure

Data from Zillow shows that 3D Home tours are one of the most popular on-platform features and that they have an outsized impact on rental decisions. For one thing, properties with 3D get higher placement in Zillow search results, while properties without 3D get pushed down the list.

Renters also report that a 3D Home tour is one of the primary things they look for in a property listing. Zillow even gives renters a “Must have 3D Tour” filtering option so that all listings without 3D are excluded from the results.

The results from our own research reflect this. When PlanOmatic studied the effect of 3D Home tours on our customers’ listings, we found that the inclusion of 3D increased leads by up to 48% compared to listings that didn’t include 3D, and reduced the number of days until first application by up to 36%.

Attract Serious Prospects

Offering a 3D Home tour allows prospective renters to get a much more realistic feel for what it’s like to be inside the property, so they can shortlist the homes that best fit their needs. This means that the people who visit your property are more likely to be highly interested. Weeding out low-interest visitors saves you time and resources, and helps you focus on your best prospects.

Renters Are Beginning To Expect Them

Today’s renters are more digitally savvy than ever before, and they increasingly expect more advanced options like 3D tours. COVID accelerated this trend by creating tremendous demand for virtual options, as renters sought ways to evaluate properties in the absence of in-person visits. Even now, with the pandemic in the rearview, renters continue to show strong preferences for features that allow them to evaluate properties remotely.

3D Tours Are Scalable

3D tours have an inherent advantage over in-person visits in that they are infinitely scalable. In-person visits take time. On the other hand, there is no functional limit on how many people can experience your property through a 3D tour.

Multi-Platform Marketing

Zillow 3D Home tours allow you to promote and share your 3D tour on multiple platforms, providing an unbranded link that you can share across social media and in your MLS. You can even embed 3D Home tours directly on your website.

Ready to Boost Your Engagement and Rent Faster?

PlanOmatic makes adding Zillow 3D Home tours to all of your single-family rental listings a breeze. Simply tell us where the property is, and we do the rest. With a team of professional photographers located in markets across the country, we deliver Photos, Interactive Floor Plans, 3D Tours and more in 2.5 days or less.

Place an order today or Book a meeting to learn more.