GUIDE · VIEW TOURS
Keeping show home and building tours accurate across a portfolio
By Chris Henderson, Framework View · 21 October 2026
Virtual tours are now expected on every development, but across a portfolio they quickly drift out of date: show homes are re-dressed, specifications change and flats are let. The answer is not more shoots. It is tours set up to be kept accurate by the people closest to each site.
Why tours go out of date
On a housing development, the show home is re-dressed, a house type is revised or the show home closes when the site sells out. In a build-to-rent or mixed-use building, flats are let within weeks of a tour being shot. Either way, buyers and renters are shown something that is no longer true, and on rental buildings that can include homes people now live in.
Reshooting every time something changes is not realistic across many sites, so tours tend to stay wrong or are quietly taken down.
Housing developments: show homes and house types
The most useful structure is one tour per house type and show home, placed against your own floor plans and linked from each plot in the plot selector, so a buyer goes from a plot to walking around inside in one tap.
Once a house type is built, a finished example can be toured for buyers considering that type, so buyers can look round the real thing even when their own plot is still under construction.
Rental and mixed-use buildings: shoot once, then switch
For build-to-rent, student, hotel and care buildings, every unit and communal space is captured once, in one tour of the whole building. When a unit is let or occupied, your team switches it to In use and it drops out of the tour straight away. When it is free again, it comes back with its original photos.
Plant rooms, staff areas and anywhere private are hidden permanently and cannot be switched on by mistake.
Who keeps it accurate
The site or building team, from one phone-friendly screen with a switch for each room or unit, limited to their own buildings. Every change is logged with who made it and when, so head office can see that tours are being maintained without chasing.
What tours tell you
Monthly reporting shows the most-visited rooms, time spent and how many visitors step inside from the exterior view, alongside the other plug-ins. That shows which house types and spaces are doing the selling, and where a show home layout or a building's amenities could work harder.
What to ask a supplier
Can our own teams keep the tours accurate without reshoots? Are occupied homes removed properly, not just hidden? Do tours link from our plot selector? Whose branding do they carry? And what reporting comes back to us?