The first showing now happens on a phone
Picture two listings on the same street in Byron. Same price, same square footage, same three bedrooms. One has 28 photos. The other has 28 photos and a button that says “Walk through this home.”
Which one does a buyer in Toronto, scrolling at 11 p.m. after the kids are asleep, actually spend time with? Which one gets sent to a spouse with the message “look at this kitchen”? Which one gets the Saturday showing?
Buyers already do most of their shortlisting on a screen. In the National Association of Realtors’ 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, 70% of buyers used a phone or tablet in their search, and the website features they rated most useful were the ones that help them understand a space: photos, detailed property information and floor plans. A 360° tour is all three at once — and it is the only one that lets the buyer move.
The same thing is true for vacation rentals, only more so. A guest booking a cottage in Grand Bend for August is committing real money to a place they will not see until they arrive. Anything that removes the guesswork before they click “Book” is worth having.
Photos show a home. A walkthrough lets someone imagine living in it. That is the whole difference, and it is worth real money.
What a 360° virtual tour is (and isn’t)
“Virtual tour” gets used for everything from a slideshow with music to a full digital twin of a building, so it helps to be precise. A 360° virtual tour is a set of panoramic images captured from points throughout the property and stitched together so the viewer can look in every direction — up, down and all the way around — and click to move from one spot to the next. Better tours add a 3D model (the “dollhouse” view).
Here is a single 360° panorama. Click it, then drag to look around:
A tour doesn’t replace photos or video — each does a different job. Photos win the click, aerial drone video wins the feeling, and the tour wins the decision. That is why we bundle them.
What the numbers say
There is a lot of recycled marketing data about virtual tours online. These are the figures we could trace back to a named study or a company’s own reported results:
A second, smaller comparison in the same Matterport report matched 350 listings with tours against 350 comparable listings without, and found the toured homes sold about 20% faster and for 4.8% more. Google has also long reported, from research it commissioned, that business listings with photos and a virtual tour are twice as likely to generate interest.
How to read these numbers honestly
Most of this data comes from companies that sell 3D capture, and it shows correlation: listings with tours sold faster, but agents who pay for tours also tend to price well and market hard. The Texas Tech regression controlled for size, bedrooms and commission, which helps, but no one has run a perfect randomized trial.
So don’t expect a tour to add 9% to a sale price on its own. Expect it to do something more reliable: put your listing in front of more serious people, for longer, with fewer wasted showings. That is the part every one of these studies agrees on.
Four benefits for real estate listings
1. Showings with buyers who have already said yes to the layout
A buyer who has walked through the home online and still books a showing has already ruled out the obvious deal-breakers: the bedroom that is smaller than it looked, the basement ceiling height, the kitchen that doesn’t open to the family room. Fewer showings, better showings — and less disruption for sellers who are still living in the home.
2. Reach for buyers who aren’t in London yet
London draws buyers from the GTA, Kitchener-Waterloo and further afield, along with families of students at Western and Fanshawe and staff relocating for hospitals and employers across the region. Many of them cannot drive over for a Tuesday showing. A tour lets them shortlist from wherever they are, and arrive for the in-person visit already serious.
3. Standing out in a buyer’s market
London’s market has cooled from its 2021–22 peak. The London and St. Thomas Association of REALTORS® reported 410 MLS sales in February 2026, down 18.7% year over year, at an average price of $622,414. By mid-2026 the region was sitting at roughly 4.6 months of inventory — buyer-leaning territory. When buyers have choices, the listing that answers their questions first gets the attention.
4. An open house that runs 24/7
Your Saturday open house reaches the people who are free on Saturday. A tour is open at midnight, on a lunch break, and on the commuter train — and it can be shared in one link with a parent, a partner or a mortgage broker who will never see the home in person.
Why vacation rentals need it even more
A homebuyer will almost always visit before they sign. A vacation rental guest almost never does. They are trusting your photos with their weekend, their family and a few hundred — or a few thousand — dollars. That is exactly the gap a walkthrough closes.
- Fewer surprises, better reviews. Most bad reviews start with “it wasn’t what we expected.” When guests have already walked through the place, expectations match reality and the review reflects the stay, not the shock.
- Layout questions answered up front. Who shares a bathroom, where the stairs are, whether the bunk room fits adults, how far the deck is from the water. Every question the tour answers is one less message and one less hesitant guest.
- Accessibility, honestly shown. Steps at the entrance, the width of a hallway, a walk-in shower. Guests with mobility needs can judge for themselves rather than guessing from a wide-angle photo.
- Longer time on your page. Vacasa reported guests spending three times as long with listings that had a 3D tour. Time on page is attention, and attention is what turns into a booking.
- A real reason to book direct. Airbnb does not currently let hosts embed a third-party 3D tour, and its off-platform rules restrict outside links in listings. That makes the tour a feature only your own website can offer — exactly the kind of thing we argued for in Your Airbnb Listing Is a Sales Channel, Not Your Business.
How to prepare a home for a 360° shoot
A normal photo hides whatever is behind the camera. A 360° camera has no “behind.” Every corner of every room is in the shot, so preparation matters more than for a standard photo session.
- Declutter every surface, not just the pretty onesCounters, the top of the fridge, bathroom vanities, the floor beside the bed. If it would bother you in a photo, it will bother a buyer in a tour — and they can zoom in.
- Turn on every light and match the blindsAll lamps and overheads on, burnt-out bulbs replaced, and blinds set the same way in every room so the tour feels consistent as viewers move through it.
- Close toilet lids, hide towels and binsThe small things show up far more in 360° than people expect. Fresh towels for a rental are fine; laundry on the bathroom floor is not.
- Plan for people and petsAnyone in the home will appear in the capture unless they move ahead of the camera. Pets are best out of the house for the shoot.
- Clear the driveway and tidy outsideCars off the driveway, bins out of sight, patio furniture set, the hose coiled. Outdoor stops are part of the tour too — especially for cottages.
- Put away anything personal or valuableFamily photos, mail, prescriptions, keys and jewellery. A tour is public, permanent and zoomable.
360° tours in London, Ontario and the surrounding area
VILLAM is based in London and captures 360° virtual tours, 3D models and floor plans for agents, private sellers, landlords and short-term rental owners across the city — Byron, Hyde Park, Masonville, Old North, Wortley Village, Lambeth, Westmount and everywhere in between — and the surrounding area, including St. Thomas, Strathroy, Komoka, Ilderton, Dorchester, Thorndale, Mount Brydges, Ingersoll and Woodstock, and the lakeshore vacation-rental towns of Port Stanley, Grand Bend and Bayfield.
Our 360° Virtual Tour package is $250 for a property up to 2,500 sq ft. It includes the immersive walkthrough, an AI-generated 3D model and floor plans, interactive room-to-room navigation, hosting with a shareable link, and embedding for listings and websites. Pair it with our $350 photography package and the stills, drone shots and tour can all be captured in one visit; a dedicated property website can be added to either for $150. Travel fees may apply outside London — tell us the address and we will quote it up front.
Want to see what you would get? Walk through a few finished properties in our 3D tour portfolio.