- Big rental landlords are using Realync to show units through live video tours.
- Realync's advantages over video-chatting apps include instant messages, property data display and 'virtual open houses'
Think live video tours are overrated?
Perhaps you should revisit that view, at least if you work in the rental market.
Matt Mehon, a leasing manager at national property management and investment firm Waterton said in a statement that the company’s “closing percentage” is 75 percent when using Realync with prospects.
“Yes, 75 percent,” he said.
By enabling Waterton to showcase properties in real time and send recorded videos to prospects from smartphones, Realync has “completely changed the way we interact with our prospects to experience our community.”
Inman wasn’t able to learn how Waterton defines “closing percentage,” but the point is that the firm thinks Realync is a real find.
Mehon’s statement was included in an announcement from Realync that called attention to recent widespread adoption of the live-video showing and “virtual open house” app by institutional landlords. In the announcement, the startup said that it has switched focus from the real estate sales market to the multifamily property sector.
Screen shot of Realync promotional video.
LivCor, Fairfield and Waterton, Milhaus, Pan American Properties, JC Hart are among large apartment building owners that have rolled Realync out to over 60 communities, according to Realync.
Realync, whose direct competitors includes smart glasses-compatible SmartShow, offers several advantages over other live video apps like FaceTime, Skype and Google Hangouts.
Live videos are saved to the cloud, and agents and viewers can see property and neighborhood information, exchange instant messages and jot down notes during tours.
“Virtual open houses” — which can open the real-time video showings to over 1,000 viewers — may be the app’s biggest differentiator. The app also can be used to pre-record video walkthroughs to send prospects, offering a real estate-geared alternative to a smartphone’s default video-recording app.
Realync recently turned its attention away from the real estate sales market — though the app is still available to sales agents and brokerages — to the multifamily space “due to the nature of the short and aggressive sales cycles at communities,” the startup said.
Last month, Weirich said that real estate agents at brokerages in 43 states and 30 countries, including some affiliated with franchisors Keller Williams Realty and Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate, were using Realync to host live video tours and open houses.
The app had seen “700 live private tours between agent and client, and over 150 virtual open houses hosted on ReaLync in just the last 12 months,” Weirich said.
