If you were interested in a home, which would you do?

Question

Go to an actual live open house? Or, take a virtual tour online?

Please state why, and give your age and sex. This information is intended for a research paper. Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

A lot of my house shopping is done online so I would love a virtual tour to draw me to an actual open house, but that wasn't your question.

I would select the actual open house. I need to "feel" the house, if that makes sense.

38
female

Answer 2

I would start with the virtual tour online, to see if I could be interested. This would protect me from apparent commitment until my interest was clearer. Once interested, I would take the live tour. Although I would prefer a private tour with an agent than go to an "open house" where all sorts of people were looking at the same time.
EDIT:
57 male

Answer 3

Live open house.

I always have horrible experience with virtual tour online. If a place only show virtual online tour and have no open house, I quickly assume the place is actually a dump and avoid it.
Here's the reason:

-It's easy to borrow other pictures similar to the hosue and claim it's the same house.

-They can show only the best part but hide the worse part. What if they only show bedrooms, one bathroom out of three, living rooms that are in good condition but every thing else is a mess?

-They often heavily photoshop the pictures to make it look more attractive.

-Virtual online tour also offer the seller more opporunity to fog your mind up. For example they can only talk about good things so much that you forget about realistic. Then you'll get your hope too high.

-At live open house, it'll be very difficult to leave negatives out of it because it'll be open in view.

There's just so many reasons. Basically my view is online virtual tour is usually a effort to mold your view on the house. I don't want to live in a house that others convince me is perfect. I want to live in a house that I want!

I'm 22 male.

Answer 4

I would take the virtual tour online and if I liked what I saw then I would go see it at the open house. I'm a 24 year old female.

Answer 5

I would definately go to the open house. It is very important you see all the details of the home to confirm or deny the reasons you are interested in the home. For such a major interest, one must take all necessary steps to ensure you know what you are getting into. You would definately come up with some questions during the open house that can be readily answered for you versus having to wait for an answer while virtually touring.
37m

Answer 6

Go to a live open house. You can see stuff up close that wouldnt show up on an online virtual tour.

30, female.

Answer 7

Both. The virtual tour first, to see if I like the layout. It saves a lot of time. Then open house to check out the details (damage, neighborhood, etc) if I really like what I saw.

Female 27

Answer 8

Go to an open house, you will get a better feel for the house than an online tour, you could inspect it better, online tours can hide lots of faults that you won;'t see in real life.

Answer 9

An actual live open house, they can doctor up the virtual tour and you can't see things as well, plus they can use camera angle to their advantage♥

Answer 10

I would take a live open house that way i can estimate where furniture can go and you get a feel of your new to be neighbourhood.
Virtual tours are ok, but your not seeing everything in 3d effect. plus they could miss out parts of the house you don't want to see
Female/21