Virtual Tours vs. In-Person Showings: What You Can and Can't Learn Online
You've taken the virtual tour three times. You know the layout, you've measured the rooms, you understand how the spaces connect. You're ready to make an offer.
Except you've never smelled the basement. Or heard the road noise. Or felt how the floors slope under your feet.
Virtual tours are genuinely useful. They're also genuinely limited. Understanding what they do well and what they can't do helps you use them effectively without substituting them for experiences they can't replace.
What Virtual Tours Do Well
According to PhotoUp's virtual tour statistics, 75% of potential buyers consider virtual tours a major factor in purchasing decisions. Buyers aged 18-34 are 130% more likely to book a showing when a virtual tour is available. These tools have become standard for good reason.
Virtual tours excel at elimination. You can rule out homes that clearly don't work without driving to see them. Layout issues, room configurations, flow problems—these are visible in virtual tours. If the floor plan doesn't work for how you live, you'll know before scheduling a showing.
They're excellent preparation tools. When you do visit in person, you already know the layout. You can focus on what you can't assess online—condition, light quality, neighborhood feel—rather than spending your showing time figuring out which room is which.
3D tours offer capabilities photos can't match. They allow you to virtually walk through at your own pace, exploring layout and detail. Measuring tools let you check room dimensions or wall lengths for furniture placement. Some tours tag major selling features with labels explaining what you're seeing—useful for information that isn't obvious from imagery alone.
For out-of-state buyers, virtual tours provide spatial understanding before traveling. You can assess multiple properties remotely and focus your trip on serious contenders rather than wasting time on homes you'd eliminate in the first thirty seconds.
What Virtual Tours Cannot Show
A 2023 NAR report found that while 58% of buyers used virtual tours during their search, 82% said in-person showings were critical to their final decision. The gap between those numbers reflects what digital tools can't convey.
Smell. You can't detect mustiness, pet odors, smoke damage, or mold through a computer screen. These issues might indicate serious problems—or might simply make a home unpleasant to live in. Some of the most important condition information comes through senses that don't work remotely.
Sound. Road noise, neighbor noise, mechanical sounds from HVAC or well pumps, the specific silence of a rural property—none of this translates to virtual tours. You won't know if the beautiful location is under a flight path or next to a busy road until you're there.
Feel. Floors that slope. Doors that stick. Stairs that creak. Windows that don't seal properly. The physical condition of a home requires physical presence to assess.
True light quality. Virtual tours may be recorded at optimal times with optimal lighting. You don't know how a room feels on a cloudy afternoon or whether morning light actually reaches the kitchen. Lighting conditions matter for daily life in ways that digital tours can't capture.
Neighborhood context. What's across the road? What are the neighbors like? How does it feel to drive in? Does the location match your expectations for daily errands, commuting, or accessing services? The property exists in a context that virtual tours can't adequately represent.
Scale and proportion. Even 3D tours distort space perception. Rooms feel different when you're standing in them than when you're navigating them in a wide angle image on a screen.
The Out-of-State Buyer Challenge
Many buyers in Western Wyoming are relocating from other states. They can't easily visit for every showing, and virtual tours help them narrow options before traveling.
But the things virtual tours can't convey—condition issues, neighborhood feel, the reality of a remote location, what Wyoming winters actually mean for access and daily life—are exactly the things that matter most when you're making a life-changing decision.
Occasionally buyers make offers without seeing a property in person. When this happens, it’s helpful to include a viewing contingency so you can agree on price while retaining the freedom to void the contract after seeing it in person. If you're going to make an offer sight unseen, the combination of photos, virtual tour, and an agent-hosted video walk-through via Zoom provides the most comprehensive remote picture possible. In my experience, your best chance of getting a seller to accept a viewing contingency is to make the viewing contingency time-frame as short as possible. Sellers don't like the idea of taking their homes off the market for very long without reasonable assurance that you will move forward with the purchase.
Practical Recommendations
Use virtual tours for what they do well: understanding layout, eliminating unsuitable properties, preparing for in-person visits, and revisiting properties you've already seen.
Don't use virtual tours as substitutes for physical presence when making final decisions about where to live.
If you're relocating from out of state, budget time for at least one in-person showing if possible. If that isn't possible before making an offer, insist on a viewing contingency so you can walk away if reality doesn't match the digital representation.
For sight-unseen situations, combine every available tool: high-quality photos, comprehensive virtual tour, agent-hosted live video walk-through, and detailed conversation with someone who has actually been in the space.
Virtual tours show you the space. In-person visits show you the context. Both have value, but they're not the same thing.
~ Camden
Sources:
PhotoUp, "Powerful Real Estate Virtual Tour Statistics in 2025," April 2025
NAR, "2023 Profile of Home Staging," 2023
Prose Media, "Virtual tours are failing to replace in-person showings," April 2025
NextHome, "Unlocking Success: Why Every Real Estate Agent Needs To Invest In Virtual Tours," May 2024
Corporate Capture, "Virtual Tours vs In-person Showings," February 2025