During this period of rapid change and uncertainty, FlexMLS and CHS Regional MLS are here to help you serve your customers while also keeping yourself, your family and community healthy and safe. The necessary restrictions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic make business as usual, such as in-person showings, open houses and home tours unadvisable.
Adapting to these restrictions while continuing to make the market work, FlexMLS has added the ability for you to schedule virtual open houses and tours of homes.
HOW TO USE THIS NEW OPTION PROPERLY
You may use any tools from the list below to schedule a live online walkthrough of the home. Homebuyers or agents can join your virtual open house/tour of homes and view video via the camera on your phone, or via a shared presentation. Anyone who joins will be able to ask you questions in real time.
In the MLS Virtual Open House field, you'll need to paste in the URL to the scheduled online event. To ensure data accuracy, we’ve limited accepted URLs to the following services:
After you enter the date of your live event, you'll just need to select the start time and end time by clicking on the drop-down arrows, type in your comments and click Next when finished.
Note: URLs to prerecorded videos and virtual tours cannot be entered. This field is for LIVE CONTENT.
Pro tip: Save time and effort by recording the event and uploading the recording to the listing as a virtual tour or video so you don’t have to hold the virtual open house repeatedly!
HOW IS A VIRTUAL OPEN HOUSE DIFFERENT THAN A VIRTUAL TOUR?
A virtual open house is a scheduled, live event. A virtual tour is a pre-recorded media item showing the home. A slideshow or other interactive media that is pre-recorded or created and NOT scheduled. There is no live component for a virtual tour.
New Virtual Open House field in FlexMLS: may only contain scheduled, live event info
Pre-existing Virtual Tour field in FlexMLS: may contain pre-recorded tour media that is UNBRANDED.
WHAT ARE MY OPTIONS?
Open House/Tour of Homes:
A Virtual Open house is the same as an open house (a scheduled live event), except that it is conducted over a web conferencing service (see approved list above) and the host does not necessarily have to be at the subject property (they may show the property by screen sharing pre-recorded media such as photos, videos, Matterport, etc.).
*Available in the Scheduled Marketing Activities section of the Change Listing Page.
Virtual Tour:
A slide show or other interactive media that is pre-recorded or created and not scheduled.
*Available in the Media section of the Change Listing Page.
Video:
A walkthrough or presentation that is pre-recorded or created and not scheduled.
*Available in the Media section of the Change Listing Page.
HOW TO ENTER A VIRTUAL OPEN HOUSE When you’re viewing listings on the search results page, click the Detail tab, and then click the Open House or Tour of Homes link. For virtual open houses and tours of homes, a clickable link will be displayed in the new Link field.
To search for upcoming tours or open houses, under Daily Functions on the menu, click Tour/Open Houses and enter search parameters. The link to a virtual event will be available in the event details.
