5 Tips to Make the Most of a Virtual Home Tour

Virtual tours of new homes are not just a fad or fluff: They are an important tool to help new buyers find their perfect place to live.

Indeed, approximately 90% of home buyers want homes to feature a virtual tour.

That’s why all Atlantic Builder home styles have a virtual tour available.

Many of our virtual tours feature fully furnished models like our Bridgewater floor plan, while some are before the furniture moves in like our Kemper floor plan.

Both are equally valuable, as they let you, the new home buyer, explore our home styles from the comfort of… wherever you are!

But as a virtual home tourist, you need to know how to use this tool most efficiently in your home search. Here are 5 tips to make the most of a virtual home tour.

1. Examine an overview of the entire home

The virtual tour experience has multiple settings to let you view the home, one of which is called “View Dollhouse.” This gives you a unique way to see how the space in the home is distributed amongst the floors. This view will also let you examine which rooms are over or under which other rooms, helpful when planning such things as who will have each bedroom (i.e., you might not want to put the baby’s room right over the one that will have your large television in it). You’ll just never get this sort of view any other way.

2. See how the rooms connect

Moving through a virtual tour gives you a better understanding of how the rooms flow together. You’ll be able to fluidly fly from the foyer into the living room, for example, and on to the dining room. You’ll begin to imagine your own paths through the home and can evaluate if they work for your family based on past traffic patterns. And you’ll more easily see if the rooms you want close to each other really are as close as you’d desire.   

3. View the home from all angles

When homes are scanned for virtual tours, our professional team knows exactly where to place the cameras to capture each room from every angle you’d want to see. Take advantage of their keen eye to “look around” the home from each viewpoint. In the above Bridgewater, for example, you can stand in the kitchen and see how easy it would be to keep an eye on the kids doing their homework in the morning room or keep track of guests in your family room while you’re whipping up snacks during the big game.

4. Take measurements

Not only can you jump around from floor to floor and glide from room to room, but you can also take custom measurements. With just a few clicks, you can add points on the tour, and it will automatically measure the line between those points. This tool is invaluable when you have specific pieces of furniture you want to move in (or, even, are just really curious how far it is from the front door to the kitchen island to estimate how many steps you’ll take bringing in the groceries).

5. Generate questions for when you tour in person

Other than narrowing down your list of new homes to take a closer look at, the main thing a virtual tour is good for is producing questions. And that’s perfect. Write these questions down. Then, when you give us a call or come for an in-person tour, our exceptional Atlantic Builders Sales Managers can make sure each and every question is answered.

Bonus: Surround yourself with VR

All of our virtual tours are compatible with VR headsets! (The Oculus Quest is the most recommended, but they also work with Oculus Go and possibly any VR headset that supports the WebXR standard.) Navigate your VR browser to the Atlantic Builders website, view our home plans and virtual tours page, and click on the home style you wish to explore. One more click once the tour starts, and you’ll be virtually standing inside the home and can enjoy a much more immersive experience. 

Explore Atlantic Builders homes virtually. And then, and when you’re ready to tour them in person or have your list of questions, contact us so we can welcome you home.