Agent Resources

Facebook reported earlier this year that when it comes to video, its users were consuming 100 million hours of footage every day. This amazing figure is a testament to the fact that many people would far rather watch a video than read any kind of description, however engaging. As an agent, once you have a video, you can place it on your YouTube channel, website and Facebook page

However, while anyone can make a dull area video, making an engaging one that people will watch right through to the end is a bit more demanding. Potential buyers, landlords or renters are seeking many different kinds of information. Everyone wants an overview of the area in terms of its location, in relation to the rest of the town or city. Most people are also going to be interested in transport, parking or both.

But after that, people have diverse interests and it’s important to give them all the information they need. For example, if your video is entirely oriented towards families with children, young singles will get bored and click away from it.

So once you're getting down to the detail, it may be better to concentrate on a property type and let your viewers decide whether it interests them. With 2 to 3 bedroom terraced houses, for example, you can point out in your voice-over that these are popular with young families, landlords, home sharers and retired couples downsizing.

Remember that the specific detail can always be added as subtitles. If you're showing a bus interchange, you can show the average journey time to town or to the station, in a rolling subtitle at the bottom of the screen. The same goes for schools - you do need to mention them, but the actual names and age ranges can go along the bottom of the screen, because anybody without children is not interested.

What's unique and different?

Try and highlight anything interesting - it's great to say that an area is near the sea or a park, but everybody probably knows that already. Perhaps show some footage of a local marathon setting off from the park, or a Santa fun run, if there is one. If there are watersports, fishing or yachting available - show those, not just the sea.

Show, don't tell

Make sure that the pictures do the work, and keep people's attention by changing the type of shot. If you're talking about period properties, don't just have a boring long shot of a row of Victorian houses and drone on about when they were built. Focus in on quirky period architectural details.

Remember that people already have Google Street View, so they're looking for something different from your video - local insight. If you know that an area is up-and-coming, include shots of skips and houses being renovated, to illustrate your point.

Get professional help

Doing video well is extremely time-consuming and involves much more than just pointing a camcorder down a street. A cost-effective alternative is to use a company like nethouseprices.com, who offer video making as a service and are tuned in to the needs of property agents. They’re also aware of the opportunities to distribute your video across your various marketing channels and can give useful advice for getting added value from your investment in it.