videotour
A screen shot of a video walkthrough on Zillow.

Listen up, all you tech workers trying to flee San Francisco’s high cost of living: Zillow has a new feature that should make it easier to tell if a home is right for you. A new feature from the company aims to make it easier for real estate agents and homeowners to create video walkthroughs for online listings, without much time or effort.

video-on-hdp-phoneZillow Group, the online real estate company based in Seattle, announced the new feature Tuesday morning. The goal is to make video walkthroughs much more common on the company’s Zillow and Trulia sites, alongside photo galleries on home listings, by simplifying what can be a time-consuming and complicated process for homeowners and agents.

Agents will be able to create the videos through a new feature in the Zillow Premier Agent App. The feature gives the agents the ability to shoot the video in segments, to create a smooth video tour of the home. The clips will be soundless and no more than 2 minutes in length. Built-in video stabilization will be added later, the company said.

In addition, homeowners and photographers will be able to create video tours through the Zillow Real Estate App, for approval by the agent before uploading.

Here’s an example of a video walkthrough of a home in Bellevue, Wash., and another of a home in Seattle.

One goal is to give video walkthroughs more consistency and succinctness. Walkthroughs can be found by the thousands on YouTube, but with varying length and quality. Video walkthroughs can provide a potential home buyer with an additional sense of a floor plan beyond still photographs, but they can’t replace a visit, Zillow said.

A real estate agent who has downloaded the aforementioned apps can use a smartphone or mobile device to capture the video and then upload to a listing. Video can be taken by a home seller or professional photographer, but must be approved by the listing agent before it is published on Zillow or Trulia, the company said.

The video walkthroughs are the most recent way that Zillow is trying to modernize the real estate sector through the use of technology.

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