Inventory clerks: upgrade now to include virtual tours

Those working in the lettings industry have a number of processes to go through to start, manage and end a tenancy – far more than their residential sales counterparts. As a result, the compliance-led nature of lettings means a number of third-party suppliers are involved – gas safe engineers, EPC assessors and electrical testers, to name a few. 

The agent itself will also have to visit the property, to take marketing photographs and measurements in order to draw up a floor plan. Also included in the process are inventory clerks, whose reports provide crucial pieces of evidence at the start and the end of tenancies.

As well as an inconvenience to any incumbent tenant, these successive visits can become a drain on a letting agent’s time and create an access nightmare. Reducing the number of appointments is ideal for all involved and inventory clerks can do just this if they adopt Matterport technology, enhancing their own reports and offering agents a powerful new marketing asset at the same time.

An inventory clerk armed with a Matterport camera can cut down the number of different people who visit a let property, as well as reduce the amount of people a letting agent has to manage and decrease the workload of the agent itself. 

As well as producing pin-sharp, full-navigable virtual tours, our cameras also produce HDR-quality photographs; 3D property models; schematic floor plans and 3D measurements with 99% accuracy – all from a single visit. It really is the full suite of credentials every letting agent needs to market and manage a property. What’s more, it’s a time and cost saving proposition that agents will find hard to refuse. 

A complete package of marketing visual assets comes from the Matterport 3D digital twin

Inventory clerks should note that for an extra return on investment, the virtual tour can be sold on to the agent to create a new income stream. In fact, Matterport already has around 3,500 service providers who scan properties and supply, for a charge, the tour to others. In some cases, the clerk also charges the client a hosting fee.

In addition, a Matterport camera gives inventory clerks the ability to branch out into sales and provide real estate agents with an all-in-one virtual tour/photo/floor plan solution, creating a new property division to target.

Before you start worry about how long a scan takes, it’s possible to capture a property of over 3,000 square feet in less than 1 hour 15 minutes. And just how easy is it to produce and process a virtual tour? Well, we think clerks will be up-and-running less than 48 hours. To help, we have created a range of online resources and the Matterport Academy to help new users get started, which include training guides, webinars and an extensive FAQs area. Once the property visit is complete, using Matterport is an almost entirely push-button automated service, quickly delivering a complete model with no manual work required.

If you’d like to schedule a demo, contact us and we’ll arrange a convenient appointment.