There are a few different ways to accomplish a simple effective way to provide a web tour for a property:

1. Pay for it!
2. DIY! (do it yourself)
3. Just use Picasa

1. Pay for the service - There are many different companies out there now that will create a virtual tour for your properties. Two potential issues there: a.) High cost and b.) Loss of branding. To get something decent, you can expect to pay $300 per property -- which seems trivial but if you have lots of listings, it adds up. The loss of branding is that often these services will run your tours on their domain name, along with their ads. Seems like no big deal right? But all that traffic they're gathering is their long term benefit because search engines will reward them, not you. So if you are paying for it, at least make sure the tours have your domain name in the browser.

2. Build your own - Anyone who can operate a browser or find italicize in Word is qualified to build a website. HTML skills are no longer required. Sure, the site may not look all that professional, but what buyers want in a tour site is information, not all that flashy stuff. Fast loading pictures, relavent textual info, Google Maps integration and other links that relate to the property. Once you create a decent template, putting copy and images into it is a tiny/inexpensive effort.

Here's an example of someone who took the time to write a clever presentation about a home on the old west side. Something like this would take a full day to create because of all the copy, but what a great sales pitch. (Person that wrote this must have been some sorta good looking genius person!) Here's another site that was done with the same template. This one was finished in about 2 hours.

3. Just use Picasa! This is a program from Google (free download) that allows you to organize your digital images. If you're not using this now, stop reading and install it. It's a highly effective tool. To create a home tour with this all you would need to do is snap the pictures, upload them from your camera into Picasa, add comments, then export the ones you want to your website. Couldn't be any easier. If you're tight on space or bandwidth, you can even host the images on Google -- that's free too.

So bottom line, there's no excuse for not having a decent website to showcase a property.