If the house on Jessup Lane in Westhampton Beach could
talk, it might be heard uttering Norma Desmond's famous movie line, "I'm ready
for my close-up, Mr. DeMille."
Broker Loretta Besser recently worked with Hal Kench of HK Web Productions
to create a customized three-minute video home tour that shows every room in
the house and features narration with a classical music soundtrack.
Kench has uploaded the streaming video to YouTube .com and WellcomeMat.com
and posted it to Besser's Web site, the Multiple Listing Service of Long
Island, as well as Real tor.com, HREO.com, CraigsList .com and
PropertiesoftheHamp tons.com, and his own site, HamptonHomeTours.com.
With more than 70 million videos seen on YouTube daily, Besser says she
believes Web-based video tours are the wave of the future and a winning
marketing strategy. "It makes a house come alive for prospective buyers," says
Besser, who burned DVD copies of the Jessup Lane video and handed them out like
candy at weekly open houses. "It eliminates wasted walk-throughs," she says,
"and hopefully will shorten the time a house is on the market." The house was
just rented for the summer, so she'll continue to distribute the DVDs after the
property goes back on the market after Labor Day.
Besser, whose firm, Loretta Besser Real Estate, is based in Centereach,
says she thinks her strategy will be helpful for weary house hunters who've
traipsed through a dozen open houses to visually remember her listing on Jessup
Lane.
"In today's market there's an abundance of inventory out there, and you
have to do everything in your power to give a house the proper exposure -
whether it's a $300,000 house or a $2-million estate," she says.
Targeting Net-savvy buyers
According to a survey last year conducted by the National Association of
Realtors, a record 80 percent of home buyers are now using the Internet to
search for a home. And 24 percent of those surveyed say they first learned
about the home they eventually purchased through the Internet.
While real estate Web sites have been using digital photos and 360-degree
panoramic tours to showcase listings for several years, Kench says this
approach falls short of what a video tour with motion-picture quality can offer
home buyers.
"My motto is, 'A picture is worth a thousand words,' but video tours sell
homes. With a video tour you get a true picture of every square inch of the
house and its flow."
Kench came up with the idea for his business while on a three-year
deployment with the Army Reserves in upstate Fort Drum. Working midnight shifts
alone in his patrol car, he says, he remembered his own house-hunting
experience in 2003, when he and his wife bought their first house in Center
Moriches.
"The online tours we saw were very cartoonish and had distorted images that
the computer stitched together from photographs," he says of the spinning,
fishbowl effect often experienced on 360-degree tours. "I knew there had to be
a better way to show the entire house."
Once back home, Kench, a technology education teacher in the East Islip
school district by day, began experimenting with his "basic camcorder,
bare-bones PC and Windows Movie Maker software," using his own house as his
guinea pig. He then invested $9,000 in upgraded computer, software, camera and
lighting equipment and began marketing his services. By January 2006 he had
landed his first client, Fillmore Real Estate, an agency with 20 offices in
Brooklyn and Staten Island.
Soon he was getting calls from agents like Patrick McLaughlin of Prudential
Douglas Elliman's Sag Harbor office, who wanted to do videos for his
multimillion-dollar listings in the Hamptons.
"I love that it's a streaming video, which is more fluid for people to
see," says McLaughlin. "I wouldn't give you two cents for those 360-tours that
freeze on your computer. As an ex-television producer, I know how important
good visuals are."
McLaughlin also gives high marks to Kench's wife, Rachel, a former
journalist at an NBC-TV affiliate in Maine who writes the scripts (using the
MLS broker sheets and any other information provided by an agent) and narrates
them. (Besser prefers to do her own narration.)
More brokers use service
McLaughlin helped spread the word among his colleagues, and now Prudential
is Kench's biggest customer. Working with six freelance videographers, Kench
films home tours on Long Island and New York City - averaging 10 to 15 shoots a
week - with the lion's share of his business based in the Hamptons.
He counts The Corcoran Group, RE/Max, Coldwell Banker, Hampton Estates
Realty and Curto and Curto home builders among his clients. Most homes are
listed for more than $1 million.
Kench charges clients a very affordable $150, which includes the video,
professional narration and music, as well as postings to numerous Web sites,
where it stays with no additional fees until the house is sold. For $20 more,
he will brand the video tour with an agent's name, photo, e-mail and phone
number. DVD copies are available for another $20. For most tours, Kench is able
to post the video to the Web within 24 to 48 hours of videotaping a house.
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