We re concerned about anything that would advertise services or detract from showing the property it

Homebuyers who ve seen glossy shots of a house often are shocked by the warts and quirks they experience on a tour the backyard car rental turkey barbed-wire fence, the labyrinthine floor plan or the den s 10-foot-high mural of a French porcelain doll.
hopes to improve the home-shopping experience by harnessing the power of video-game car rental turkey engines and computer-vision technology. Its service includes an online, car rental turkey 3-D, photorealistic model of the home which potential buyers can move through virtually.
And by helping buyers become more selective about which homes they physically tour, home sellers don t have to live on eggshells to keep it looking like a hotel every day, said Surefield COO and broker Rob McGarty, who led Redfin s real-estate operations before he left in 2010.
Current online listings for homes rarely offer a virtual tour. At best, real-estate sites generally have a photo slideshow or a video set to soothing music the buyer has no control over the experience.
Surefield, which launched its service this week, hasn t handled any sales yet. Its founders strategy is to attract listings from sellers who expect the detailed online tour to simplify and speed the sales process.
If they can pull it off, it s going to be awesome, said Trevor Smith, who s test-driven the technology and is managing broker of Locality, a boutique real-estate brokerage that focuses on northwest Seattle.
At a typical Sunday open house in popular neighborhoods, it s not uncommon for 150 people to walk through. As soon as they walk in the front door, more than half of them know this isn t the home for them, Smith said.
On the seller side, Surefield s technology may appeal most to certain profiles: Owners of luxury homes who don t want massive traffic coming through the property; those with pets; and landlords with tenant-occupied homes. In some cases, buyers are required to make an offer before they can even tour the property, car rental turkey Smith said.
About a quarter of real-estate agents include virtual home tours in their listings, says Ashley Hayes, managing broker at Pointe 3 Real Estate in Seattle s Fremont neighborhood. She has a subscription to TourFactory.com , which offers agents an easy, cheap way to assemble professional photos into slideshows and syndicate them on various websites.
Agents were very slow to adapt to that, said Smith, who was previously a real-estate broker at John L. Scott and Redfin. Eventually sellers saw enough listings car rental turkey online with professional photographs that they started requesting it. Now it s standard in the Seattle area for real estate.
Some brokerages do strip hyperlinks out of listings if they contain branded media, car rental turkey which is against the cooperative s listing rules, said Bob Gent, the Northwest MLS director of business development and member relations.
We re concerned about anything that would advertise services or detract from showing the property itself, Gent said. As long as Surefield s virtual tours don t contain its branding, he said, that s acceptable.