Blog

Built specifically for residential estate agents, Made Snappy 360 is the silent partner to nearly 400 agents: streamlining and simplifying their in-house listing processes. There are four key services: floorplans , virtual tools , photo editing , and vendor/buyer prospecting .

As we enter a buyers market , we focus here on the relevant arguments our clients use when pitching for vendor instructions against the local competition using Made Snappy as their silent partner.

1. More buyer (and vendor) leads on property portals

2. Listed next working day

3. Aerial shots to impress vendors with outside space

4. Private virtual viewing feedback

5. Working in a bigger market compared to the competition

6. The only local agent to guarantee 360-degree sunshine

Examples & Testimonials

For examples each of our services, please click on the relevant link: floorplans virtual tools photo editing

We have hundreds of loyal estate agent fans. Please visit our testimonials page to watch some of the videos

Interested in finding out more?

If you’re not quite ready to speak to sales yet, why not watch at 76 second video of an agent using the Made Snappy at an actual take on in Bristol? Watch Demo

To book a 15 minute consultation with one of our senior team, please click here .

“We’re absolutely thrilled to have won” said Made Snappy 360 CEO Mark McCorrie. “Our whole ethos is based on innovation and outstanding customer service. Since April we’ve been providing a 98%+ accurate floorplan and photo editing with every virtual tour and we’ve never missed a next working day deadline for our clients”.

Made Snappy client and ESTAS Gold Winner for Yorkshire (South & West) James Clarke, director of Hodsons Property Wakefield comments:

“Made Snappy have always gone out of their way to provide an outstanding level of service. The quality of the floorplans, virtual tours and photo editing has been exceptional, and the turnaround times have often been quicker than the next working day turnaround promised. Just as importantly when I make a suggestion, it either gets done or is added to their schedule of updates”.

Fellow ESTAS award winner and Made Snappy client Daniel Thomas, director of Thomas & Thomas in Gloucester believes the speed and quality of the Made Snappy service is the key to its success.

“I think of Made Snappy 360 as our silent listing partner. We take the photos and 360 shots, and they deliver the floorplan, virtual tour and photo edits next day. Both the quality and turnaround speed are hugely impressive. Our vendors want their properties on the market quickly and Made Snappy always deliver for us”.

About Made Snappy 360

Built specifically for residential estate agents, Made Snappy 360 is the silent partner to nearly 400 agents: streamlining and simplifying their in-house listing processes.

For examples each of our services, please click on the relevant link:

Floorplans

Virtual tools

Photo editing

Agents use any 360 camera at each property take-on to create 360 images which Made Snappy then use to create 98%+ accurate floorplan and virtual tour without the need for room measurement or floorplan software. A three-bedroom house takes around 10 minutes to complete and Made Snappy deliver to the agent next working day.

As well as winning “Best Virtual Tours Provider” at this years ESTAS, Made Snappy 360 was voted excellent at Best EA Supplier Awards 2023 as well being listed in Kerfuffle’s Top 6 estate agency supplier innovations in 2022 .

Interested in finding out more?

Why not watch at 76 second video of an agent using the Made Snappy at an actual take on in Bristol? Watch Demo

To book a 15 minute consultation with one of our senior team, please click here .

McCorrie believes that his innovation will make a dramatic cost difference for agents. “Made Snappy 360‘s ability to work with any 360 camera on the market makes our solution significantly more affordable than other offerings on the market, offering agents flexibility and avoiding lock into a specific proprietary camera manufacturer. Our camera packs start at £375 compared to many thousands of pounds when paying for 3D scanners through other providers”. As well as enhancing 2D photos, our clients get a virtual tour as part of their listing package when they create a floorplan.

The service uses mathematical formulas based on the height of the camera to calculate distances. It takes around ten minutes on-site to complete a three-bedroom house and his team do the rest, delivering a completed floorplan to clients the next working day. Clients also receive an own-branded virtual tour and enhancements to their 2D photos as part of the package.

About Made Snappy 360

Mark McCorrie, CEO Made Snappy Limited, got the highest score in the UK at A-level maths in 2012. After a career as a software developer in the aerospace industry, he launched his own letting agency, building up a portfolio of 140 tenancies in the Midlands. He founded Made Snappy 360 in 2018 originally as a virtual tours platform and his client base has grown to over 300 agents including many household names such as Hunters, Martin & Co, Pattinsons and Sothebys London.

McCorrie is passionate about virtual tours and rapid provision of floorplans “Our vision is for every property listing in the UK to contain a virtual tour. Just 12.2% of listings on Rightmove currently contain a virtual tour and it’s our mission to change that by making it easier and more cost effective for agents to create them”.

For our clients, this has created an opportunity in their efforts to convince vendors to list with them over the local competition. For a map of which of your local competitors use virtual tours, click here.

The article that follows is summary of the most compelling arguments they use to win over vendors.

1. Working in a bigger market compared to the competition

2. Quicker vendor feedback

3. Vendor time savings

4. A potentially higher sale price

5. A potentially quicker sale

6. Ready to list in under an hour

7. Showcase outside space with drone-like footage

8. Showcase features important to your vendors

9. Referrals from your branded tours on social media and Whatsapp

10. 360 degree sunshine

References

¹ On 5th January 2022, Made Snappy analysed 170, 185 sale listings across Rightmove, Zoopla and On The Market. 20679 listings were found to contain a virtual or video tour equating to 12.15% of the total.

² Research conducted by realtor.com

Copy has always of the most controversial property listing topics.

You’d struggle to find a decent agent who thinks they can get away with blurry, badly composed photos.

Many agents build their professional reputation on their skill as valuers, making sure their pricing is always on point.

But many agents still refuse to accept that property listing copy is worth worrying about.

Before opening my letting agency in 2007 I came from a direct marketing background. In this world copy is king.

The best copywriters can command 6 figures plus royalties for writing a single sales letter or landing page!

It should come as no surprise that I firmly believe a well-written property listing copy can make a BIG difference.

The Problem With Listing Copy

Unfortunately, few UK based agents know how to write good listing copy.

And they don’t see the benefit because all their competitors are doing it the same crappy way too. There’s nothing better to compare themselves against.

What’s even worse is that many agents are messages from their Buyers and Tenants that confirms this view!

What do I mean by that? Their Buyers or Tenants will say to them that all the listing copy is the same, full of jargon and that they don’t pay it much attention.

That’s because it DOES all look the same! Because it IS all full of jargon! Because it doesn’t demand their attention!

Buyers and Tenants get so used to wading through bland, cliché & jargon-ridden copy. It doesn’t tell them much and doesn’t connect with them. So they learn to switch off or skim over the copy.

This presents you with a GREAT opportunity to stand out.

The bar will be so low that even a small improvement will lift your listing way above your competitors.

In The Kingdom Of The Blind, The One-Eyed Man Is King…

Small Changes. Big Improvements.

It really doesn’t take much to make a big difference to your listing copy

The full description is important – but on sites like Rightmove where they show a couple of lines of copy on the search summary – just changing the first two sentences can make a huge impact.

That’s because the search summary copy is the best way to get inside the head of your prospective Buyer or Tenant. And get them to click.

Legendary adman HW Hepner put it far better than I could;

“Catching attention should lead to capturing the mind. Effective advertising means that the reader’s mind, as well as his eye, must be captured.”

And to capture the mind, you need a good copy.

Actually, I’d disagree with old HW a little here – because he overlooks the importance of emotion in the buying (and clicking) process.

People make decisions based on emotion and justify with logic and fact. That’s a fact.

So when writing the first two lines of your listing ditch the standard “Blah De Blah Estates Are Proud To Be Instructed And Bring To The Market This…” vanity nonsense.

Instead, make your ideal Buyer or Tenant sit up and notice your property is exactly what they are looking for. And get them sufficiently interested to click to find out more.

Listing Copy For New Business

But there are other benefits, besides engaging emotionally with your potential Buyers or Tenants.

Crafting your listing copy can help you to attract Landlords & Vendors too.

One of the soapbox issues that I’ll rant about for hours is agents having little or no real point of difference.

This means Landlords and Vendors struggle to tell one agent from another. So they base their decisions on price.

I call it “Vanilla Sludge” marketing. Everyone is so similar and bland it hurts.

The frustrating thing is, there are plenty of ways to differentiate your agency.

One way is to become known locally for your well written, interesting listings.

OK…that alone may not win you an instruction – but it will make you stand out as different from the competition AND provide a unique angle to justify charging a decent fee.

Thanks for reading!

With many viewings over the last year being virtual, the lettings team spent less time out on the road with groups viewing and more time working from home.

As a company working on cloud-based systems, being almost paperless and having already rolled out the use of virtual tours back in 2018, meant we were already very much set up for these unprecedented times.

However, with nobody knowing what to expect from the market all we could do was try to plough through and take every day as it comes. We saw very little effect on the market when the country went into the first national lockdown as we were already two-thirds of our way through the letting season. Every agent’s main concern was what was to come following the 21/22 academic letting period.

Having already implemented virtual tours to our marketing meant we were able to get fully stuck in and crack on with everything as much as we could with the resources we already had. We were certainly at an advantage in the market as at the time some other agents were only just introducing virtual tours into the company.

With our best efforts and the team still at full capacity throughout the majority of the pandemic, during the easements of lockdowns, we made a conscious effort to visit each property that was still available to let to conduct a virtual tour with social distancing in place along with full PPE.

We found being able to provide a full 360 walk around of each property gave us some real quality applicants. As many other student agents out there will know, it’s very hard to balance out your conversion rate with so many students looking but unaware of what they want, you never want to turn down a viewing.

The hardest part for 2nd years living off-campus is understanding what the market is like and what kind of property they want. Initially, it’s a case of guiding them and running through a series of questions to help put them in the right direction and find their perfect student home. But with the tours, we were able to send them a full list, and just allow them to narrow down what they do and don’t like about each property to try and find them their perfect student home.

The tours have meant that students have been able to virtually walk through and look at the houses on our portfolio as if they were physically walking through the house.

We will continue to use virtual tours as a way of marketing whilst coming up with new and inventive ideas on the side.

Taking costs out of agency has often resulted in poor service. Can PropTech fill the gap and move the game on – and are agents willing to move it on?

Sales agency has barely changed in 200 years, having practiced for forty of those it’s not difficult to see why.

The vast majority of agents are small independents, mostly run by middle-aged men like me. Most have a good lifestyle business but little thought of succession planning. They may have a lettings book they can sell on but for most the profits they make don’t justify playing Russian roulette with Proptech. For example – CRM systems have been around for years, yet a significant minority of agents still use spreadsheets and hot boxes full of applicant cards.

I’m not criticising, if it still works that’s great BUT willingness to adapt to new service expectations will define how long this form of agency can survive. Many sales agents still seem to assume that buyers will come to them when it suits the agent with sketchy out of hours service at best, possibly the last industry that does.

Now that PropTech has been around for five years or so, the market is shaking out and established players are now offering solid solutions. Covid has helped accelerate the change of course but anyone arrogant enough to assume that what’s been normal since March ’20 will become the future is probably heading for a fall. Property is an obsession for Brits, getting involved as much a leisure activity as going shopping. Browsing and viewing, virtual or physical, will continue to both lead to business and waste agents’ time.

Falling fees has been a consistent problem for agents leading to an increase in hybrid and online operations, now accounting for, according to data, c. 10% of the market – personally I feel this is heavily underrated as I fail to see how the increasingly common practice of going ‘off high street’ is recorded.

Obviously taking costs out reaches a point where service suffers and there’s a silver lining in the PropTech era that most have missed, including suppliers themselves. Using my own business, Viewber, as an example we’ve created a platform that apes much of what an agent does but with massively less cost. My starting comment about 200 years’ worth of status quo is most obvious in the way agents still create details and manage instructions. If Viewber used the same methodology we’d need several hundred employees to cover c. 10,000 movements a month – but we do it nationally with six. The entire process of selling a property, from key collection to exchange can be managed using tech learnings for a fraction of what it costs now – all a corollary of PropTech development.

If you think your cost base has reached bottom – think again!

Most agents will agree that photos are one of the most important elements when listing a property For Sale or To Let. With that in mind I’m often appalled by the “Crimes Against Photography” committed by agents who should know better!

There’s a notable multi-branch agent close to me who has a habit of taking exterior photos from inside the car. With the window up. If the weather is so bad you can’t get out of the car then should you be taking photos in the first place? Are you so busy that you don’t even have time to step out of the car?

There’s no excuse for this. It all comes down to planning.

Make sure you allow enough time to take good-quality photos inside and outside the property. And that includes allowing enough time for preparation before you even get your camera out of the bag.

Preparation

It may be my own personal OCD coming to light but I would never publish a shot of a bathroom where the toilet seat was up. Or an outside front shot on bin day.

Preparation is vital. It’s also something most of your competitors won’t bother with. So by getting this right your listings will stand out. Remove all bathroom shampoos, shower gels, toothpaste, bleach, cleaning products, towels, lotions, and potions.

In the kitchen, leave the work surfaces as clean and clear as possible. Remove everything but the toaster, microwave, and kettle. Remove the oven gloves and tea towels from the radiator or the oven door. Clear away childrens artwork stuck to the fridge. Also hide the washing up liquid, scourers, or cloths.

Remove everything but an attractive fruit bowl or vase from the kitchen or dining room table.

With living rooms and bedrooms, it’s often harder to remove the occupier’s personal effects. But keep things that shouldn’t be there to a minimum or hidden.

Ironing boards, piles of laundry, exercise equipment, that sort of thing. And make the bed! With experience, you’ll get to know what’s going to be visible in the final shot and what isn’t. This often means you don’t have to remove things completely, you can often get away with scooting them behind a bed or piece of furniture…

One final piece of advice on preparation. From the outset be strict with your Landlords & Vendors about what you expect from them.

Give them a checklist of what they need to do before the photo shoot. Tidying up, removing items, painting, etc. Stick to your guns if they haven’t lived up to their end of the bargain.

Call them the day before to check they’ve done everything. If they haven’t, rearrange the photo shoot.

If you’re in any doubt, ask them to take a quick couple of photos on their phone and send them over to you. Your time is precious – so be firm.

Test Shots

Before taking the ‘real’ shots in each room I would always suggest you get into position and take a test shot.

Then study the test shot on the screen of your camera. That way you can spot visible items, check the lighting was OK, think about moving furniture, etc.

Having the discipline to do this in every room will add around 5-10 minutes to each photo session. But it will save much more time by reducing the amount of editing needed back at the office.

Composition

It’s always best to shoot the room from corner to corner.

With small rooms, I would stand or set up your tripod outside the room. Shoot into the room through the open door towards the opposite corner. When I was taking our listing photos I developed a handy skill of using my front kneeling foot to wedge open the door so it didn’t appear in shot.

Property photography is often best done alone because some of the positions you have to contort your body into are not always best shared with an audience…

I’ve heard some photographers say you should never have a window in the shot. Others say never show an internal door. Do what works for you.

It’s up to you whether to have a window in the shot or not. But you should always avoid auto-focusing on the window. Given this is the lightest part of the room, if you do focus on it the rest of the room will look very dark.

When taking external shots they always tend to look better taken from an angle rather than face on. Especially if there’s a front garden or drive. I’d even take this approach with mid-terrace properties.

A final word on preparation for outside shots – it will look weird if you have some flashy supercar on the driveway of a not-very-impressive semi. I’ve seen this and it will just raise eyebrows that you don’t need. So even if the owner is very proud, respectfully ask them to move it before you take your photos.

How Many Photos?

I would always aim to take 3-5 ‘Good’ shots of each angle, of each room. This is having already undertaken the test shot exercise outlined earlier.

Outside try different angles and different distances. Alter the main focal point in the foreground. For the rear garden, I would also shoot away from and facing the property, straight-on and from many angles.

You’re aiming to have at least 5 – 9 superb photos per property – because that’s what the portals suggest maximises interest and click-through rates.

Thank you for reading, I hope these tips have been useful for you!

Today I want to share with you a question that I get asked by a lot of estate agents and letting agents, relating to how to create powerful e-guides which generate regular seller, landlord, buyer, and tenant leads.

“How do we know if we’re creating really good guides?”

We follow something called the S.A.G.E acronym, it’s something powerful that was shown to me some time ago and I thought I’d share it with you.

The S.A.G.E Acronym for creating great guides is as follows;

S stands for short

We suggest that you create a PDF, a cheat sheet, or something which is only a few pages long that someone can consume within a few minutes. Nowadays, people are looking for ‘snackable’ content, they haven’t got a lot of time, compared to perhaps in the past. People want to be able to consume information very quickly, if possible. So creating short PDFs or checklists that only take a few minutes to read works very well.

A stands for actionable

Give them a step to take and action towards a result. A lot of people will obviously try to get people from A to Z, just get them from A to B! Make sure that they are achieving something and perhaps getting further than they have ever got before, then they will come back to you and try to get to the end goal or objectives they’re trying to achieve because you have helped them get further than they have ever got.

G stands for goal oriented

Make sure that you know your guide, or your checklist is based around an objective or goal.

E stands for easy to implement

Make sure that whatever your guide is about or what your checklist is about, it is easy to implement by that person who is downloading it. Don’t give them something very complicated or something that takes a very long time. Just give them something that’s easy to implement, make them feel that they’ve achieved something. I can guarantee they are going to come back to you to try and move further along toward what they are trying to achieve.

It’s a really powerful acronym. Make sure you use that to create your guides or your checklists!

The other question I get asked is, “How can we promote that guide, what’s the best way to promote it?”

Well, the first thing you want to do is to make sure that you have got a system in place where someone can hand over their details in return for that guide. You don’t want to give a link on social media and just say, “there you go, there it is…” You want to make sure that for them to obtain that valuable information, they’ve at least got to hand over some information as well. That might be their email address, their name, telephone number, or anything else you decide. You need a system for that to take place. Now there are two very popular ways;

1. Using Facebook adverts and using something called a lead advert and using the lead objective. This is where Facebook will give you the tools that you need to get someone to hand over their details. Facebook will allow you to build a form that is like a landing page within Facebook, and within a few clicks, someone can hand over their name, email address, or phone number. It will actually auto-populate when they see the form so that means they don’t even have to type anything. It’s pulled in from their Facebook profile. It’s a very quick, high converting advert and a great way if you don’t want to spend money on perhaps creating a landing page.

2. The other way is to send traffic from social media and Facebook to a landing page. This is where you’re going to have to use software like ClickFunnels or get your web developer to create a landing page. On that landing page, they will see a form in which they can type their details in. So this time they actually have to type their details in and click submit. The most powerful thing about a landing page is that it does give you the opportunity to have an upsell or another message on the ‘thank you’ page. Once someone downloads the content, they are going to be pushed onto a ‘thank you’ page and at that point, you can have a message which can be to get someone to book an appointment, upsell to them, make them an offer, whatever you decide to use! It’s a very powerful place to have such a message and trying to get them to take action.

So there you have it, a few ideas to consider and think about when creating and promoting your guides. Remember you’ve got to attract people’s attention. You have got to make sure it’s the right guide and then need to consider how you are going to be distributing that guide and have you got a system in place which is going to obtain people’s details in exchange for that actual guide.

I hope you’ve found this helpful!

Our new user and branch management functionality has gone live.

User management allows you to give each person in your business their own login and control what they can do on your account, including whether they can change your subscription. Branch management allows you to organise your tours into individual branches, or split lettings and sales in a single branch into different sections.

In this guide we’ll look at how to convert your account to get the most of the new functionality.

Moving to Branches

First we need to create new branches. Go to the branches page in the side navigation. You’ll find you already have a branch called “Default Branch”. We recommend renaming this to one of your existing branches to reduce your workload later.

Click on the “New Branch” button to create a new branch.

Choose the name for your branch. You can also put a cap on the number of public tours this branch is allowed to prevent them using too much of your subscription.

Once you have created your branches, we need to move the tours to the correct branches. Go to the tours page, select a group of tours to move them to a different branch, then click the “Change Branch” button.

Choose the branch you want to move your tours to, and they will move to the correct branch.

Now your account is ready to go, you can switch between branches at the top of your tours page at any time to view the tours in a specific branch:

Moving Branding

When you move your tours into new branches, you will also need to make sure they have the correct branding on them.

If you have different branding per branches already, you can go into each brand and move it to the correct branch.

If you need to duplicate your branding into different branches, you can click the duplicate button on a brand and create a copy of it in a new branch.

Creating Users

To create accounts for each of your users, go to the Users page, and click on “New User”.

Set a name and email address for the new user. They will be emailed a link to setup their own password.

You have a choice of 3 different permissions. Billing management allows them to modify the subscription and cards on your account. User & branch management allows the users to create new branches and manage users on your account. This also allows them full management of all the tours. Full tour management allows a user to create and edit tours on every branch in your account.

If you want to add users to specific branches, put “No” in all of these permissions.

Once you have added a user, if you haven’t given them full tour management, you can add them to individual branches.

You can decide whether they are only allowed to view tours (View Only), are allowed to edit tours, or allowed to manage the users on the branch (Admin):