How To Get More Views as a Real Estate Agent

I'm going to say something that's going to potentially trigger a defensive response from a lot of real estate agents. If you aren't famous nobody will stop scrolling for you talking to the camera. Put simply: nobody cares (and that's okay because we can fix that). That cinematic listing video - the drone shot, the slow push through the front door, the agent in a blazer talking to camera for the first five seconds about how "this stunning property offers an exceptional opportunity" - is one of the least effective formats you could possibly choose for social media.

I know. It looks expensive. It looks professional. Your boomer boss probably loves it. But "approved in a pitch meeting" and "going to get views" are two completely different things, and almost every agent I see is optimizing for the wrong one.

Let me show you what people actually want to see when they stop on a property video. Because once you understand it, you'll never film a listing the same way again.

If you have access to a great property: use it to your advantage.

Most Agents Are Overcomplicating This

Here's the pattern I see over and over. An agent gets a nice listing, they want to do it justice, so they bring in a crew or they break out every trick they know. Colour grading. Sweeping gimbal moves. A music track that swells. Text overlays announcing the square footage. A slow-motion shot of the kitchen tap running for some reason. And right at the front, the agent standing in the driveway introducing themselves and the property.

It's polished. It's also completely backwards.

Because the viewer scrolling past your video doesn't know who you are, doesn't care about your intro, or your production budget. They are unlikely to stop scrolling, and anyone who has stopped scrolling has one question in their head: what does this place actually look like to walk through? That's it. That is the entire reason a normal person stops on a property video. Not to admire your editing or your fabulous presenting skills (I'm sure you're great - and if you're not please check out our crash course to become great on camera). They want to imagine themselves inside the house.

Every second you spend on the intro, the branding, the cinematic establishing shots - that's a second you're making them wait for the only thing they came for. And on social media, people don't wait. They scroll.

The agents getting millions of views on property content aren't the ones with the best gear. They're the ones who understood the assignment: get me inside the house, fast, and let me feel like I'm walking through it.

What People Psychologically Want: A Simple Walkaround

Think about what your brain is doing when it watches a property video. It's not evaluating cinematography. It's trying to build a map. Where's the front door? Okay, that leads into the hallway. Hallway opens into the living room - so the living room is at the front. Kitchen's through the back, looks out onto the garden. Stairs are here. Bedrooms are up and to the left.

That mapping process is deeply satisfying to watch when it's done well, and deeply frustrating when it isn't. And here's the thing: a chopped-up, heavily edited "cinematic" video actively prevents your brain from doing it. You cut from a drone shot to a close-up of a tap to a wide of the bedroom to the agent talking - and the viewer has no idea how any of these rooms connect to each other. They've seen pretty pictures of a house. They have no sense of the house.

A natural, continuous walkaround solves this completely. You start at the front door, you walk in, and you don't stop. You move through the space the way a real human being would actually move through it on a viewing. Down the hallway, into the living room, turn, into the kitchen, look out at the garden, back through, up the stairs, into each bedroom. One flowing path.

When you do this, the viewer understands exactly where every room is and how the layout works. They've effectively done a viewing from their phone. And that feeling - "oh, I get it, I can picture living here" - is enormously powerful. It's the feeling that makes someone send the video to their partner and say "what do you think of this one." It's the feeling that gets you saved, shared, and remembered.

You're giving someone a map they can feel.

A continuous walkaround lets viewers build a mental map of how the space flows.

Speed Up the Boring Parts, Don't Cut Them Out

Now, the obvious objection: "If I do one continuous walkaround, the boring bits will tank my retention. Nobody wants to watch me walk down a hallway for four seconds."

Correct. They don't. But the solution isn't to cut the hallway out - because the hallway is part of the map, and if you cut it, the viewer loses the connection between rooms. The solution is to speed it up.

This is the single most useful editing technique for property content and almost nobody uses it properly. The transitional moments - walking down hallways, crossing landings, moving between rooms - get sped up to two, three, four times speed. The rooms themselves, the parts people actually care about, play at normal speed so they can take it in.

What this does is brilliant. It preserves the entire spatial journey - the viewer still understands how everything connects, because they saw you travel between every space - but it removes all the dead air. You get the best of both worlds: a complete, coherent walkaround with zero boring moments. The pacing stays snappy, the retention stays high, and the layout stays clear.

The viewer never has the thought "okay, get on with it," because by the time that thought could form, you've already zipped through the hallway and you're standing in the next room. That's exactly the principle behind every video that holds attention: no dead air, every second either building toward something or paying it off. A sped-up hallway is the cheapest, easiest way to apply that principle to a house tour.

Film the whole walk in one go. Speed up the connective tissue in the edit. Leave the rooms to breathe. Done.

Stop Starting With Your Face

Here's the part I really need you to hear, because it's the biggest single change most agents could make.

Stop opening your videos by talking to the camera.

I see it constantly. The agent stands in front of the property, faces the camera, and spends the first five seconds on some version of "Hi, I'm [name] with [brokerage], and today I'm so excited to show you this incredible four-bedroom family home in…" And by the time they've finished that sentence, half the people who would've watched have already scrolled away.

Those first five seconds are the most valuable real estate you own - more valuable than any listing - and you're spending them on an introduction nobody asked for. The viewer didn't stop to meet you. They stopped because they might be interested in a house. So show them the house. Immediately.

The best property hook in the world is almost absurdly simple: open the front door and walk in. That's it. The very first frame is your hand on the door handle or the door swinging open to reveal the entryway. No intro. No name. No blazer monologue. You drop the viewer straight into the experience they came for, and you let curiosity about the rest of the house pull them through the video.

You can introduce yourself later. You can put your name and contact on screen the whole time if you want. You can talk over the walkaround. But the opening should be the house, the door, the reveal - not you explaining who you are.

Open with the door, not your face: it's the one hook everyone on the planet understands.

Why "Entering the Property" Beats "Agent Talking" - The TAM Argument

There's a deeper reason the door-opening hook wins, and it comes down to something I think about constantly: total addressable market. TAM.

When you open a video with yourself talking to camera in English, you've just shrunk your potential audience to "people who speak English and want to listen to a real estate agent talk." That's a much smaller pool than you think. The algorithm could show that video to someone in Madrid, São Paulo, Seoul, Dubai, Jakarta - but the moment they hear English narration they don't follow, they're gone. You've language-locked your content in the first two seconds.

Now compare that to a video that opens with a hand pushing open a front door and walking into a beautiful home. Everybody on earth understands that. You don't need to speak a word. There is no language barrier on "a person entering a nice house." A viewer in any country, speaking any language, instantly understands what they're watching and whether they want to keep watching. The total addressable market for that video is, roughly, everyone on the platform.

I've seen exactly this dynamic make and break content in my own work. One of the reasons a video can travel globally is that it's built on something universally understood - a visual everyone recognises - rather than something that only lands if you speak the right language. When you start with the property, you're making globally-understood content. When you start with yourself talking, you're making content for one language group. Same house. Wildly different ceiling on reach.

This is the bit agents underrate the most. You are not just competing for attention - you're competing for distribution, and the algorithm distributes furthest the things the most people can engage with. A door opening into a stunning home is engaging to a planet. An agent introducing themselves in English is engaging to a fraction of one country.

Lead with the universal thing. Save the talking for the people who've already decided to stay.

A Quick Word on the "But This Is a Luxury Listing" Objection

I can already hear the high-end agents: "That's fine for a normal three-bed, but my listings are seven-figure properties and they deserve cinematic treatment."

I'd gently push back on that, the same way I push back on high-end restaurants posting moody empty-room shots instead of their food. Prestige and effectiveness are not the same thing, and confusing them is exactly how premium brands end up with beautiful content that nobody watches. A buyer for a seven-figure home is still a human being with the same scrolling brain as everyone else. They still want to understand the layout. They still bounce off a five-second talking intro. They still find a clear, well-paced walkaround more compelling than a disjointed montage of pretty shots that never lets them grasp how the house actually flows.

You can absolutely make a luxury walkaround feel premium - beautiful natural light, a steady smooth movement through the space, letting genuinely stunning rooms breathe a beat longer. The premium feeling should come from the home and the quality of the footage, not from cramming in drone shots and a talking-head intro that fight against the one thing the viewer actually wants. Lead with the experience of moving through an extraordinary space. That sells the luxury far better than narration ever will.

What This Looks Like in Practice

Let me make this concrete, because I don't want to leave you with theory.

Your next listing video should look something like this. Frame one: your hand on the front door, or the door already opening. You walk in. Phone held steady, moving smoothly - you don't need a gimbal, you need a steady hand and to walk slowly. You move through the home in one continuous path, the way a buyer would on a viewing. Front rooms first, then through to the back, out to any outdoor space, then upstairs, then through the bedrooms and bathrooms in a logical order. One journey. No teleporting between rooms.

In the edit, you speed up every hallway, staircase, and transition to 2-4x so there's no dead air, and you let each actual room play at normal speed for two or three seconds so it registers. You keep the whole thing tight - a house this size probably wants to be 30 to 60 seconds, not three minutes. If you want to talk, narrate over the top, but keep the visuals leading. And put one genuinely interesting detail near the front to reward the people who stayed - the view, the unusual kitchen, the thing that makes this house different from the other forty in the area.

That's the whole formula. Open with the door. Walk it like a viewing. Speed up the boring connective bits. Let the rooms breathe. Don't language-lock yourself with a talking intro. Lead with the universally understood thing so your TAM is the whole platform, not one language.

It is so much less work than the cinematic production you've been doing, and it will consistently outperform it. That's the part agents struggle to accept - that the simpler version wins. But it does. It wins because it matches what the viewer's brain actually wants, instead of what looks impressive in a listing pitch.

Stop overcomplicating it. Open the door, walk me through the house, and get out of the way of the thing people came to see.

Frequently asked questions

Why aren't my real estate videos getting views?

You're overcomplicating it. People want a simple walkaround of the property, not you talking to camera. Let them walk through the door and see the space.

How should I start a property video?

By entering the property, not with your face. "Entering the property" beats "agent talking" because it gives the viewer what they actually came for - the home - immediately.

Should I cut out the boring parts of a walkthrough?

Don't cut them, speed them up. Fast-forward the hallways and filler so the tour stays continuous but never drags. Cutting them out breaks the sense of walking through.

Does this work for luxury listings too?

Yes. The "but this is a luxury listing" objection doesn't hold - a clean walkaround sells a high-end home just as well, often better, than an over-produced cinematic edit.

Do I need to be on camera to get views as an agent?

No. The property is the star. Your face can come later; leading with it just delays what the viewer wants and gives them a reason to scroll.

Let's get more views.

Remember, you can sign up for our free newsletter to stay up-to-date with my blog posts, or if you want to take it a step further and level up your game you can join our Creator Quest - our $25/month platform with Masterclasses, a Gamified Platform and Powerful AI tools trained by Sergi Galiano (www.howtogetmoreviews.com/creatorquest). Let's get more views!

-Sergi Galiano