Happy Holidays

In this holidays I want to share with you this excellent paper from Brian Tracey, enjoy
Four Essentials for Happiness
Broker Agent News E-Letter - Updated for December 22, 2007
by Brian Tracy
You may have a thousand different goals over the course of your lifetime, but they all will fall into one of four basic categories. Everything you do is an attempt to enhance the quality of your life in one or more of these areas.
The Key to Happiness
The first category is your desire for happy relationships. You want to love and be loved by others. You want to have a happy, harmonious home life. You want to get along well with the people around you and you want to earn the respect of the people you respect. Your involvement in social and community affairs results from your desire to have happy interactions with others and to make a contribution to the society you live in.
Enjoy Your Work
The second category is your desire for interesting and challenging work. You want to make a good living, of course, but more than that, you want to really enjoy your occupation or profession. The very best times of your life are when you are completely absorbed in your work.
Become Financially Independent
The third category is your desire for financial independence. You want to be free from worries about money. You want to have enough money in the bank so you can make decisions without counting your pennies. You want to achieve a certain financial state so you can retire in comfort and never have to be concerned about whether or not you have enough money to support your lifestyle. Financial independence frees you from poverty and a need to depend upon others for your livelihood. If you save and invest regularly throughout your working life, you will eventually reach the point where you will never have to work again.
Enjoy Excellent Health
The fourth and final category is your desire for good health, to be free of pain and illness and to have a continuous flow of energy and feelings of well-being. In fact, your health is so central to your life that you take it for granted until something happens to disrupt it.
Peace of Mind is the Key
Peace of mind is essential for every one of these. The greater your peace of mind, the more relaxed and positive you are, the less stress you suffer, the better is your overall health. The more peace of mind you have, the better are your relationships, the more optimistic, friendly and confident you are with everyone in your life. When you feel good about yourself on the inside, you do your work better and take more pride in it. You are a better boss and coworker. And the greater your overall peace of mind, the more likely you are to earn a good living, save regularly for the future and ultimately achieve financial independence.
Control Your Attention
Life is very much a study of attention. Whatever you dwell upon and think about grows and expands in your life. The more you pay attention to your relationships, the quality and quantity of your work, your finances and your health, the better they will become and the happier you will be.
Action Exercises
Here are three things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action. First, take time on a regular basis to think about what would make you really happy in each of the four areas. Second, set specific, measurable goals for improvement in your relationships, your health, your work and your finances and write them down. Third, resolve to do something every day to increase the quality of some area of your life—and then keep your resolution.
Remember for you Internet needs you can contact us at: www.virtualfloridarealtours.com
or by phone at 305 331 8960

6 Costly Misconceptions about Virtual Tours

1. All virtual tours are the same.

Wrong. Virtual tours that use panoramic photos that just rotate are not true virtual tours. Most agents would refer to these type of tours as 'spinners'. Spinners lack a professional presentation and can at times do more to make the viewer nauseous than actually get them interested in the property being viewed. While spinners qualify as a virtual presentation in nature, they simply do not qualify as being a tour of any kind.


2. Virtual tours will not help with market exposure

Untrue. At any time you can take the number of listings that are currently on the market and compare that number to the number of listings with a virtual tour. This number almost never exceeds 10% of total properties on the market at any given time. But take into account that the National Association of Realtors Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers shows that use of the Internet to search for a home has risen from just 2% of buyers in 1995 to 77% in just 10 years time. Technology is clearly changing the way that consumers search for a home. The 2006 Realtor® technology survey shows that the Internet is the third most important source for new leads surpassed ONLY by referrals and repeat business.


3. Having a virtual tour professional produced costs too much money.

False. When searching for a virtual tour solution, keep in mind that you can either save more money or more time. There is an inherent downside to opting to save more money. You have to spend time. When you take into account all of the time that you would have to spend taking pictures, stitching the panoramas, ordering the pictures within the tour, adding text and graphics, not to mention uploading the tour, converting it to disc, and distributing the tour on the internet you have to consider what you COULD have done with that time. You could have been farming your area, keeping in contact with sellers, calling prospective buyers & sellers, following up on buyer leads, arranging showings and scheduling open houses. Instead you could have spent YOUR TIME listing and selling more homes. As a real estate agent you can always make more money, but you can never make more time. A small investment in a professionally produced virtual tour gives you a competitive edge over other agents that opt to waste time sitting on their computer while you go after that next listing.


4. Putting a virtual tour on realtor.corn and my website is good enough as far as virtual tours go.

False. This is essentially the same as saying that placing a sign and a classified ad is good enough. While it can work, it does not give you optimum exposure for your property listing. But the question here again is time. Do you have the time it will take to post your virtual tour to major Internet portals all over the internet.

When you opt to same money you are making a decision to spend time and reduce your return on investment. The 2006 Realtor technology survey show that 42% of realtors receive more than 10% of their leads from the internet, so doesn't it make sense that if you are going to place your virtual tour on the Internet that you should expose the virtual tour as widely as possible? A professional developed virtual tour can be produced and submitted to major portals without any additional expenditure of time, freeing you up to list and sell more homes while simultaneously bringing in new business.

5. Sellers don't care what kind of virtual tour is used

False. With ever increasing technology, home buyers and sellers are becoming more internet savvy than ever. The 2006 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers shows that over three quarters of buyers viewed the internet as a useful tool in their search for a home and that a majority of buyers drive by a home that they have seen online. A high-quality interactive virtual tour cannot only take these buyers on a full tour and get them to come by the property but can also turn motivated buyers into motivated sellers of their own home. Now that the motivated buyer is a motivated seller, with whom are they going to list their property? With an agent that uses classified ads or the agent that found them, their new home without leaving the couch.

6. Virtual Tours sell homes.

False again. Realtors sell homes. Realtors that use all available media to showcase and market their listings are those that sell homes. Virtual tours offer incredible marketing opportunities that simply were not available to the realtor or the consumer just 10 years ago. The use of a virtual tour simply increases your market penetration to bring you more leads for the property and for yourself. Your presentation on the internet is very important to both buyers and sellers and can mean the difference between a new lead and missed opportunity. Everyone knows what social networking can do for a real estate agent and this is evidenced by the high percentage of new business that comes from referrals. The question is, would you send a new referral a handwritten and crumpled business card or would you send them a presentation that speaks volumes of you and demonstrates your command of marketing tools that are significantly different from what other agents are offering. Spinners, dark pictures, unprofessional virtual tours and ineffective marketing can leave a lasting impression on your referral business.

Properly-distributed profession a I ly-prod uced virtual tours bring you more leads from a world-wide network of resources and free you up to follow-up on those leads. This gives you a major advantage over the competition that has yet to comprehend the difference between saving time and saving money.
If you want information on what to ask a virtual tour provider please send a comment containing your name, company, phone, e-mail address and the best way and times to contact you. or contact our company directly at 305 331 8960

The information that your competition does not want you to know

And now for the information that your competition does not want you to know

Virtual Florida Real Tours is a full service provider of Real Tour Vision, which is a recognized leader in interactive 3600 panoramic virtual tours and virtual tour software.

Over the past 7 years Real Tour Vision has built up one of the world's largest and most powerful networks of virtual tour providers. Each Real Tour Vision full service provider goes through specialized training in virtual tour technology before becoming authorized to produce tours with the Real Tour Vision name. Real Tour Vision authorized virtual tour providers are also provided with ongoing training throughout the year to keep in pace with changing technologies. Agents that use Real Tour Vision tours benefit from the experience of a worldwide network of virtual tour providers.

Intelligent business owners who demand the best virtual tour software to showcase their real estate business online choose RTV virtual tours over the others daily.

You won't find another virtual tour company online that can promise that you will get compliments from real estate home sellers. RTV providers utilize only company proprietary virtual tour software and precision virtual tour hardware, which is created in house by an RTV staff of 360' home tour engineers and virtual tour software developers.

RTV has been in the virtual tour software industry from the start, so when you select a Real Tour Vision Full Service Provider to produce your tours you know that the best virtual tour company in the world has trained your virtual tour provider.

If you would like to leave a message for a Real Tour Vision full service provider in your area, please leave your name and number after the tone and a Real Tour Vision virtual tour provider will call you to answer any questions that you may have about your new marketing strategy.

Thank you for visiting our blog and reading our virtual tour consumer awareness message.

If you want to receive more information please semnd a comment containing your name, phone, e-mail address, and the best way and times tocontact you.

4 Questions That You Should Ask Every Virtual Tour Company

1. What type of virtual tour do they provide?

Some 'virtual tour' companies capture only still pictures and then use these pictures to create a motion effect. Make sure you are not paying a virtual tour price for a motion slide show. There are companies that charge as much as $70-$100 for these tours and the final product is nothing more than a $20 photo presentation.

2. Is the final version of the virtual tour interactive?

How do they define 'interactive'? Make sure that the final product being created looks professional and has in-tour controls. Links to the side and the bottom of the tour are distracting and unprofessional. Interactive tours combine the power of a virtual tour with the 'point-and-click" functionality of the Internet. They have on tour 'hot-spots' that enable viewers to go from room to room without ever leaving the viewing area.

3. What kind of camera lens do they use?

If they use a fish-eye lens or a one-shot lens will the virtual tour software remove distortions in the tour (i.e. remove the fishbowl effect)? High-quality virtual tours should not distort any feature of your properties. If not corrected, fish eye lenses and one-shot lenses cause countertops and walls to look rounded and windows will look bowed. When shopping around for virtual tours, be sure to opt for companies that use a wide-angle lens. The wide-angle lens captures more of the property without sacrificing quality.


4. Are they experienced?

Find out right away if your virtual tour provider has experience. Although inexperienced companies will be very eager to sink their teeth into a job and will probably give you a very good 'deal', you do not want them 'practicing' on your dime. Make sure to get references or check out testimonials.
Thank you for visiting our blog and reading our virtual tour consumer awareness message.
If yo wish to obtain more information please add a comment containing your name, Company, phone, e-mail address, best way and times to contact you.