How to Deal With Kids When Your House is on the Market

When you are in the process of selling your house, it can be quite a stressful time in your life. The process can also create extra pressure on your family to make sure that the house looks perfect all of the time.  When you are trying to get just yourself prepared to sell a house it is hard enough.  Those problems are magnified when you are dealing with your family and trying to market a property.  If you have children, you have even more difficulties to overcome.

As a parent, you have tried to make your children do chores, and sometimes the process is not worth it.  You may find yourself begging and pleading for your kids to do something like make their beds or put away their toys. This process of negotiating with your children becomes even more aggravating when you are trying to look perfect for real estate purposes.

When you have your house on the market, a buyer expects the house to look like it did in the virtual tour they saw online, such as on our demo account.  If you are already trying to rush kids in the morning to eat breakfast, get dressed, and out the door to make it to school on time, if can nearly impossible to get them to also make their beds before they get on the bus to get to school.  Forget about hospital corners, you will be struggling just to get the blankets pulled up to the pillows.

One tip that you can use with your kids, is to create an adventure for them about the home selling process.  Let them know that for the period that the home is on the market, they get to sleep in their sleeping bags on top of their beds.  This way, you can make the bed as tightly and crisply as you need to, and they won’t mess up the beds while they sleep in them overnight.  In the morning, instead of making their beds, they can simply stuff the sleeping bag back into its bag and into the closet.  If that doesn’t work, you can also think about just smoothing the sleeping bag flat on top of the bed, or folded once at the foot of the bed.  With this simple trick, you won’t have to worry about tucking in sheets, whether the dust ruffle is straight or if the pillow cases match.  You get everything perfect once, and don’t have to think about it again.  Your children think that this is a great technique, because they think it is like they are camping or sleeping at a friend’s house every night.  Instead of thinking of the home-selling experience as a huge hassle, your kids will start to brag at school about how awesome having a house for sale actually is.

The real tip for having an effective strategy for dealing with kids during the home selling process is to not let your stress impact them.  If you can create tips to make their part of the process simple and easy, they will help you with the project, instead of making it worse.

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Creating a Fresh and Clean Look to Your Home

Most of us tend to grow into the space we live.  No matter how many times you go through a Spring-cleaning process, or try another home reorganization project, it is all too easy to grow and expand to the edges of our living space.  This is all well and good when you are living in the house, but once it comes time to sell your home, all of this clutter can seem overwhelming to a buyer.

So much of today’s real estate market occurs online, through sites like Realtor.com, homes.com and other sites out there that our virtual tours can be found on.  Because of this new online shopping experience, the photographs of the space are going to make the difference to the buyer as to whether or not they make an appointment to see your property.  To help seal the deal, you should consider eliminating as much of your household stuff and clutter as possible.

First, you can go through the normal process of donating things you don’t need any more to your local thrift store.  Then, you can throw away those things that are not worth donating to a thrift store or a salvage yard.  Next, consider if you have the financial resources to go ahead and move to your new home.  If you can, then you can move a lot of the everyday things that can make your house appear messy, and just leave furniture and accessories that can help to stage the house for buyers.  If moving to your new place is not a reasonable alternative, one thing that you can do is to rent a storage unit.  Send off season clothes, books you don’t need regular access to, and holiday decorations to the storage unit.  Try to get by with just the items you use on a daily basis that are essential to your happy home life.

Don’t stop at just the exposed surfaces, like your shelves or counter-tops. When someone is viewing your house and considering whether they want to buy it, they are trying to picture exactly how they are going to live in it, and how their own stuff will fit in the space.  When they come to look at your house during a showing, you need to anticipate that they will look in your drawers and your closets.  So even your closets need to be organized, and extra clutter should be removed.  If your closets are stuffed and overflowing, then the buyer may think that their own wardrobe is too much for the available storage.  Try to leave just enough clothes for one week.

Remove any personal things if you can, such as lots of pictures, or very identifiable accent pieces.  Although this may speak to your style, it may make it more difficult for the buyer to think about how they would live in the space.  If they are always thinking about how your stuff impacts the space, they will have a hard time imagining living in the house.

Some of these steps may seem extreme, but in today’s tight housing market, anything to stay ahead of the competition can be a point in your favor.

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Real Estate Virtual Tours: Best Tips And Methods

Are you looking to use the virtual tours to sell your home immediately? The people who want to sell their homes immediately should contact with the real estate companies and agents. But you can make an effort without getting their help. What are the methods that don’t need the help of real estate companies and agents?

The virtual tours are the best methods that help the people to sell their homes immediately. There are many methods and tips to make the virtual tours but you have to select the tips and methods that are useful and economical for you. How to check the feasibility of a tip or methods to make the virtual tours? Well, few important factors should be given importance when checking feasibility of any tip or method. In order to get the best one the people should search online to amend and improve the methods and tips given in this article.

Get a high quality digital camera:

To make the real estate virtual tours it is important to have a camera. You can rent or buy the camera but it depends on your choice. When looking for the camera then select and prefer the digital cameras. I think a DV camera will be the best option. However, if you don’t have access or power to purchase DV cameras then you can buy or rent mini DV cameras (visit camera reviews to know more about DV Cameras). Handy-cams are popular and famous now days because these are inexpensive and easy to use.

Well, there are some options you can use so if you have got the digital camera then start to make virtual tour movie. It is very important for the makers to have good knowledge and experience of operating digital cameras. Remember, these cameras will give results if you will operate them properly. Operating the cameras in correct manners always gives better results otherwise the camera will not give good results and the real estate virtual tour will not impress the buyers. So keep this important point in mind and take care of it when making videos of your home.

Decide a DVD or CD format of the video:

When starting to make real estate virtual tour you should decide what should be the format of the video. Remember, the DV cameras will make the video in DVD format but if you want to make CD’s then you can convert the DVD format into CD format by using different software. It is not expensive so you can hire the services of professionals who will convert the formats for you.

The benefits of this conversion are that you can give a CD to every buyer because it doesn’t cost much. However, making the DVD format of the real estate virtual tours is expensive and costly. As you know the DVD’s are costly than CD’s so it will be difficult for you to give a DVD to every buyer. These are some important and common tips related to the making and formats of real estate virtual tours to sell your home.

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How To Make Your Real Estate Virtual Tour Interesting?

As you know there are different techniques and technologies that are being used by the people and companies to buy and sell real estate.  You don’t need to learn how to do everything in the online world. Do you have a real estate business or company? If yes then you need to know about the latest technologies and modern techniques that are commonly being used by popular real estate companies.

For the instance the term real estate virtual tour could be new to you but after reading this article you will know everything about it. Virtual tours are similar to the movies. These are commonly being used by the real estate companies to better show off the homes, apartments and commercial buildings that are available for sale and rent. In order to find techniques to make these tours interesting for the customers you can use following methods.

Online search about graphics:

Graphics is a common and popular term. It is used to make videos and clips interesting. There are so many graphics programs and software. These programs are important for the use of this technique. The people who are looking to find the related technologies should use the online searching tools. Internet can provide you information about these techniques and technologies so don’t waste your time to think about the methods and techniques. Just open your internet search browsers and search “real estate virtual tour” . Press enter and get the matching results within few seconds.

Remember, the basic purpose of the online search is to get basic ideas and plans about the use of graphics in real estate virtual tours. If you are a graphic designer or have experience about this technology then you have a plus point. You can get more authentic and useful graphics ideas and plans by searching online. There are different websites that allow the users to learn about the real estate graphics and virtual tours. Another method is there for the people who just want to get ideas from internet. They can use the image services of Google by inserting the keywords.  One nice thing about most real estate keywords is that you’ll find “Pixloo” our site in the top results for all those results.  This means that Google trusts us.

Incorporation of graphics and sounds:

If you want to use the latest technologies then you should use the graphics and sounds technologies. These are most important techniques that have potential to relief the minds. That’s why the real estate companies are using these techniques to make the virtual tours. When using sounds then you should take care about the sound quality and compatibility.

Remember, you are not making a horror or action movie so quality and nature of the sound should be amazing and heart touching. Always use the background sounds but the frequency of the sounds should be lower that don’t cause nuisance. You can use the focus and still photos in the video clips that help the buyers to watch every part of the home easily. Finally, you will be required to give a final touch to the real estate virtual tour video to remove the scenes that are not required.

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How Do I Export My Tour To Realtor.com?

This is a step-by-step guide on how to Export your Tour to Realtor.com with Pixloo.  To be able to export your tour to Realtor.com you need to have an MLS number.  To have an MLS number you have to be a licensed Broker or Agent with access to an MLS system.  If you are a homeowner, you can visit our Services section to find out more.

If you have an MLS number and your tour setup on the Pixloo website. Complete the following steps to export your tour to Realtor.com.

Step 1: Login to Pixloo.

Step 2: Click on “My Tours“.  This is located in the top Nav bar.

Step 3: Click on “Edit Tour“.  This will take you to the page where you can edit your virtual tour.

Step 4: Click on the “Exports” tab.

Step 5: Click on “Click here to export to realtor.com“  This will take you to a payment page where you will need to verify the address of the property.  Note, that you must have an MLS number.  If you do not have an MLS number we cannot export your tour till you have one setup in our system.  We also do not pull any information from any sites so you will need to manually enter this into the account.

Step 6: Re-Verify Information of your property.  Make sure that your tour has all the possible information entered in.

Step 7: Enter in your payment information and press “Submit“.  This will charge your credit card $22.  If you are an “Enhanced Showcase” member/listing your tour should auto export to Realtor.com.

From here your tour will be exported to Realtor.com assuming all the information matches what is in the Realtor.com and MLS website database.  Note that if your tour isn’t exporting to Realtor.com to check your MLS and make sure everything on our site matches that.  We can only push tours to Realtor.com that match.  Assuming everything matches up, you tour should export to Realtor.com site withing 1-3 business days.

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Why Isn’t My Main Home Photo Showing Up on Realtor.com?

We get the question all the time why a Real Estate Agents main home photo isn’t showing up on the the listing on Realtor.com?

This photo is sent and uploaded to Realtor.com from your local MLS (Multiple Listing Service) and not by Pixloo.  We can’t do anything about this or upload a photo in it’s place.

Realtor.com does not allow Pixloo to upload or change anything to the listing on their site.  We only have the ability to post a virtual tour to their site.  We are charged $22 for this export service.  This is why we have to charge $22 to post your tour to Realtor.com if you are not an enhanced showcase listing member.

If you would like to export your tour to Realtor.com, simply Login to your Pixloo Account, and select which tour that you would like to export.

Click to learn how to export your virtual tour to Realtor.com

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Make Your Virtual Tour Stand Out

If you are looking for a great way to showcase your property online you need to get a virtual tour on it!  A Virtual Tour is one of the best ways for millions and millions of people to be able to see your tour online.  We export your tour to some of the top Real Estate sites on the internet.

Below is a example of a virtual tour that you can create in 5 minutes time.  You can visit the tour here or visit the demo account here.

If you notice that it puts your photo, company logo, and a beautiful picture of the home on the tour.  We try to showcase all the great things about the property that you’re trying to sell.  Below the property photo, you can enter in a description about the house for everyone to see.  This is very important to people interested in the house to have a very nice picture of the house with a description that is written to impress.

Make sure that when you are writing the description that you give the most accurate description of the house in the best light.  I personally wouldn’t point out the faults of the house unless you want people knowing about them.  Once the person knows a little bit more about the house (for example disclose more on the property details page) you can break all the other news about the house.

Most important is that you have a tour and photos of your house that will attract people to your house.  Make sure that you pick up your house and get rid of all the clutter before you take pictures of the house.  This is important to showing your house in the best light possible.

Our goal is to help you sell your home online.  Take good photographs and work with us to give your virtual tour the best possible chance at getting seen by the millions of people searching online for homes like yours!

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Pixloo Featured on TechCrunch

A special shout out goes to TechCrunch for featuring us on their site. We had the wonderful opportunity to be interviewed by TechCrunch and have our Pixloo story put up on their site.

TechCrunch for those who aren’t big into the tech world is one of the biggest and most prestigious sites online to write about new and upcoming startups in the tech world.  We thank them for recognizing us as a new and upcoming “hot startup” to watch and use our products.

The article titled “Pixloo Helps You Sell Your Home With Free Virtual Tours, Exports To Zillow, Trulia & More” was a perfect title for the story.  We at Pixloo want to help people to sell their home online in the cheapest way possible.

Thanks again to TechCrunch and team for putting up a great story about us!

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How to Edit Your Virtual Tour Details

If you would like to know how to edit your Pixloo virtual tour you can follow the simple instructions below and have a step-by-step guide on how to edit your virtual tour. To view other similar guides please visit our Virtual Tour Support Page for a full list of support topics.

Step 1:  Login to your Pixloo Account.

Step 2:  Click on “My Tours

Step 3: Go to the tour that you would like to edit and click on “Edit Tour

Step 4:  On this page you will be able to edit everything to do with your property or listing.  If you need to click on “Property Details” to see everything on your property.  If you would like to see your virtual tour, click on “View Tour“.

Step 5:  Once you have changed everything to do with your real estate virtual tour, you can click on “Save” this will save all the changes that you made.  These changes will be reflected on the sites that we export too in the next weekly update.  Some exports can take up to a month.  We don’t update other sites, we simply send the request to them to change the information, and they change it.

Here is a step-by-step video on how to edit your tour:

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Century 21 Super Bowl Commercial

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First of all we would like to congratulate Century 21 on being a great Real Estate partner and to all their agents that use our system, we love you!  We loved their Super Bowl 2012 Commercial.   If you haven’t seen … Continue reading

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