Today’s Tools of the Trade: 360 Virtual Tour from your iPhone

One of the tools we find invaluable at M Realty for today’s Real Estate agent is the smartphone. While you can do most of the things we discuss with any old smartphone, we’re partial to the iPhone. I don’t want to get into the reasons why I personally think the iPhone is superior, I’m pretty sure there’s an app for that.   But, in all seriousness, here’s an app that someone (Thanks Jeff!) showed me today that I think you may want to add to your personal repertoire, assuming you’re cool and own an iPhone.

The Sfera 360 Degree Photo Maker allows you to quickly and easily create 360 degree panoramic “images” that can be emailed to clients, or embedded directly into your website.

Check out this quick sample I made of the M Realty office:

While this is no substitute for a professional 360 degree virtual tour that you’d use on a million dollar listing, it’s definitely worth the $1.99 spent for something that you can quickly create yourself (and for A LOT less money).  Under proper lighting conditions, and a steady hand, the quality turns out pretty good. Email it to an out of town client, embed it into your WordPress blog, etc.

I did have a little bit of trouble using the embed code that the app spits out, but hopefully Sfera will work the bugs out. In the meantime, if you’re an M agent and need help using this snazzy new tool, let me know.