Most agents are still paying for Zillow leads, cold-calling expireds, and grinding for every appointment, while a small group figured out how to have inbound leads show up in their inbox every single week, and they are doing it for free. That group is winning right now, and their edge comes down to one thing: real estate agent content creation built around home tour videos.
The numbers back this up. Research from PhotoUp found that listings with video receive significantly more inquiries than those without, and agents who use video consistently are far more likely to win listing presentations. Yet most agents still haven’t built a real content system. That gap is your opportunity.
At the 2026 RealtyHack Summit in Austin, Bay Area agents Matt Petullo and Roland Osage broke down the exact framework they’ve used to generate over 250 leads from TikTok alone, grow their followings from zero, and build businesses where clients come to them already knowing, liking, and trusting them. This post covers their full system, covering everything from picking the right homes to film, to batching content in a single morning, to converting viewers into closings.
If you’re looking for a real estate marketing system that compounds over time and doesn’t require a paid ad budget, this is it. Let’s get into it.
Table of Contents
Why Home Tour Videos Are One of the Most Effective Lead Generation Tools Right Now
The Numbers Don’t Lie
Video has reshaped how buyers and sellers find agents. According to data compiled by PhotoUp, homes marketed with video generate dramatically more inquiries, and a significant majority of homeowners say they are more likely to list with an agent who uses video as part of their marketing approach. That’s not a soft preference. It’s a business differentiator that shows up directly in listing conversion rates.
What makes home tour video specifically powerful is that it does something static content can’t: it builds trust at scale, passively, around the clock. Every video you post is working for you while you’re sleeping, showing appointments, or spending time with your family.
What the Early Movers Are Already Proving
Matt and Roland started their home tour content from zero followers, no existing audience, no media team, and no production budget. Within roughly two years, both had built followings of tens of thousands of highly targeted viewers and were generating a consistent stream of inbound buyer and seller leads directly from their content. Roland’s listings were pulling in DMs, comment leads, and form submissions on a near-daily basis.
The agents doing this now in markets like Austin, the Bay Area, and South Florida are building serious first-mover advantages. The listing strategy advantage alone, being the agent sellers already know before they’re ready to list, worth the investment of time ten times over.
Why Video Builds Faster Trust Than Any Other Medium
When a potential client watches five to ten minutes of you walking through a home, talking about the architecture, the neighborhood, the market context, they have already decided they like you before they ever send a message. The know-like-trust framework that every sales trainer talks about gets compressed dramatically by consistent video content. You’re not cold-calling someone who has never heard your name. You’re receiving an inbound from someone who already thinks of you as the expert.
Who’s Actually Watching Your Real Estate Videos (It’s Not Who You Think)
TikTok’s Audience Skews Toward First-Time Buyers
One of the most common objections agents have about TikTok is that it’s for teenagers. The platform’s own analytics tell a different story. When Matt pulled his audience data at 110,000 followers, the two largest age brackets watching his content were 25 to 34 and 35 to 44. Those are first-time buyers and move-up buyers, two of the most active segments in any residential market right now.
The 18 to 24 bracket matters too, even if they’re not buying today. If someone has been watching your home tours for two years and then they get a job offer, get married, or get a raise, you are the first agent they call. You’re already in their head. That is a pipeline play that most agents aren’t thinking about.
YouTube Shorts Flips the Demographic and Brings Sellers
Here’s where the strategy gets really interesting. When Roland analyzed his YouTube Shorts audience data, the demographics were almost the exact inverse of TikTok. The largest viewer segment on YouTube Shorts was 65 and older: investors, downsizers, parents helping their kids buy, and sellers sitting on equity-rich homes they’ve owned for decades.
So TikTok feeds your buyer pipeline. YouTube Shorts feeds your seller pipeline. Running both, which takes less than 10 extra minutes per week once you have the system down, giving you dual-channel lead generation that covers both sides of the transaction. That’s a complete business development system built into your content workflow.
How Omnipresence Replaces Cold Outreach
Roland had sellers in their 60s greet him at listing appointments by throwing up a peace sign and saying “What up”, his signature move from TikTok. Those weren’t cold leads. They were warm, qualified sellers who had been watching his content long enough to feel like they already knew him. That is omnipresence doing the work that cold outreach used to require.
When your past clients, sphere, and potential clients see you everywhere , on TikTok, in their Instagram feed, on YouTube, you stay top of mind without physically reaching out. Every video is a touchpoint. Agent growth at this level stops depending on your activity and starts depending on your systems.
How to Pick the Right Properties to Feature (This Is the First Golden Ticket)
Play to Visually Interesting Homes in Your Market
The fastest path to traction on short-form video is leading with properties that make people stop scrolling. Think about the houses people drive past on their way home from work and wonder about. That curiosity is your hook. Craftsman bungalows, Spanish revivals, mid-century moderns, Victorians, waterfront properties, homes with unusual features. Anything that makes someone say “I’ve always wanted to see inside that place” is worth filming.
Roland discovered this when he shifted from featuring standard track homes to unique properties in Oakland’s historic districts. The moment he made that shift, his content started gaining real traction. The visual hook of an interesting home keeps viewers watching long enough to hear your personality and expertise. Once they stay for the house, they stay for you.
What to Do If Your Market Doesn’t Have “Wow” Homes
Matt’s early market was built primarily on late 1970s and early 1980s track homes, not exactly the kind of architecture that goes viral. He struggled until he got more intentional about finding the most interesting properties available to him, even within a less architecturally diverse market. Once he stopped trying to feature whatever was convenient and started hunting for the most visually compelling homes his area had to offer, his content performance changed almost immediately.
In markets like Austin, the angle might be new construction with distinctive design elements. In coastal Florida, it’s beachfront condos. On Lake Michigan, it’s lakefront properties. Every market has a version of “interesting” . Your job is to find it and make it the centerpiece of your content. Views are secondary to clients, and even modest view counts in niche markets can still generate meaningful lead flow when your audience is the right audience.
How to Approach Listing Agents and Get 80 to 90 Percent Yes Rates
You don’t need to own or co-list every property you feature. Matt and Roland send a simple, professional text to listing agents explaining what they do and offering to feature the home on their platforms. Their yes rate runs between 80 and 90 percent. Most listing agents are happy to have more eyes on their listings. The ones who push back usually come around once they see your content in action.
If you hit resistance with an agent you don’t know, show up to their broker’s open. Introduce yourself. Show them what your content looks like. A conversation in person is worth ten cold texts. Over time, you’ll build agent relationships that flip. Listing agents will start reaching out to you asking to feature their homes because their own sellers are requesting it.
The Batching System That Makes Daily Content Actually Sustainable
One Filming Day Equals a Full Week of Content
The most common concern agents have about content creation is time. The batching system Matt and Roland use eliminates that concern almost entirely. Roland leaves his house at 9:00 a.m. on Tuesdays and is home by 1:30 p.m. That single morning gives him everything he needs to post every day for a full week across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube Shorts. Here’s how to structure your filming day:
- Pick your filming day and protect it. One consistent day per week is all you need. Roland uses Tuesdays. Block it on your calendar like a listing appointment.
- Route by geography. Map your target properties the same way you’d route buyer showings — tightest geography first to minimize windshield time.
- Batch 6 to 7 homes in one outing. That’s one video per day for the week, with a buffer. Film silently — no live commentary needed on-site.
- Line up permissions in advance. Text listing agents the day before. An 80 to 90 percent yes rate means you’ll rarely be short on content.
Systematizing your content creation the same way you systematize lead follow-up is what separates agents who build a real platform from agents who post sporadically and wonder why nothing is working.
The Voiceover Strategy That Makes You Sound Like an Expert
Matt and Roland don’t record live commentary while walking through homes. They film silently on-site, go home, pull up the MLS, research the property, and record the voiceover from their notes. This produces better content and makes you sound more authoritative. Two reasons it works:
- You can include details you couldn’t know on-site — architectural history, specific upgrades, permits, neighborhood context — which makes your commentary far richer than anything you could ad-lib on the spot.
- You can record in pieces. Stumble on a stat? Stop. Look it up. Re-record just that sentence. The final cut sounds polished because you had full information in front of you the whole time.
As a bonus, researching each property accelerates your own market knowledge faster than almost anything else you could do. You become a better agent simply by doing the content.
Cross-Posting to Instagram and YouTube Shorts in Under 10 Minutes a Day
For cross-platform distribution, Roland films a separate three-minute walkthrough of each property specifically for Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts. He doesn’t edit down the longer TikTok version. He simply walks back outside and does a faster, condensed version. At three videos posted to Instagram and YouTube per week, that adds roughly nine total minutes to his weekly production time. Nine minutes for two additional distribution channels. That math is hard to argue with.
According to research on real estate content strategy, agents who commit to consistent posting and batch their production see compounding results over 90-day cycles. The first 30 days are slow. The second 30 days pick up. By day 90, the algorithm starts understanding your niche, and the right viewers start finding your content consistently.
How to Convert Viewers Into Leads (The Tech Stack and Lead Flow)
Setting Up Your Link-in-Bio Lead Form Correctly
The link in your TikTok and Instagram bio is your primary conversion point. Roland uses a direct.me link tree with two simple options — buying or selling — and a nine-question intake form. About 80 percent of inbound leads hit the buyer form. Keep forms short. Every extra question is a reason for someone to bail. Conversion killers to eliminate:
- Forms with more than 10 questions
- Email-only contact options
- Buried or hard-to-find contact pages
- Any friction between a viewer’s interest and their ability to reach you
Path of least resistance is the goal. A clean, two-option link tree with a short form lets leads flow in without you manually managing each touchpoint.
How to Use MiniChat to Pull People Off the Platforms
Platform risk is real. When TikTok went dark for 24 hours, agents with no off-platform database had a serious problem. Roland responded by building a MiniChat automation on Instagram that collects email addresses in exchange for value — a weekly email of the most interesting homes he tours. That list flows into his CRM and Constant Contact sequence automatically via Zapier.
MiniChat setup matters. Roland noted that his first attempt was ineffective until he rebuilt it with coaching support. If you’re setting up a MiniChat flow, work with someone who has already done it successfully. The system itself is powerful when it’s configured correctly. The setup is where most people get it wrong.
Connecting Your CRM So No Lead Falls Through
Here’s what the full lead flow looks like once the system is built:
- Viewer hits link in bio and fills out a short intake form
- Zapier pushes the lead automatically into Lofty (or your CRM of choice)
- An automated text and email sequence fires immediately
- A Zoom call or 15-minute intro call gets scheduled based on pre-approval status
- You show up for the conversation — the system handled everything else
This is what makes real estate systems like this worth building. The content generates the lead. The system captures and qualifies it. You close the deal.
Frequently Asked Questions About Real Estate Agent Content Creation
Do I Need to Live in a Market With Beautiful Homes to Make This Work?
No. Matt spent months trying to make 1980s track homes work on TikTok before he adjusted his approach. The principle is the same in every market: find the most visually interesting homes available to you, even if “interesting” is relative. New construction with unique design, luxury condos, lakefront properties, homes with unusual layouts, or historical significance. Every market has something worth featuring.
Agents in outer suburban markets have made this work too. The view counts may be smaller, but the audience is more targeted. A tighter, more local audience that converts into clients is worth more than a large audience that never calls you. Focus on clients over view,s and you’ll build the right kind of platform for your market.
How Long Does It Take to Start Getting Leads from TikTok?
It varies, and it’s worth being realistic about that. Roland gained traction relatively quickly. Matt took longer to find his footing. Several months of consistent posting before things really started moving. The most common pattern is: a slow first 30 to 60 days, a breakout video that changes your trajectory, and then compounding growth from there.
The agents who fail at this quit before the breakout moment. Consistency is the only variable you fully control. Post, learn, adjust, and keep going. The platform will eventually reward the effort. Matt sent Roland a text at one point saying he was ready to quit. Roland told him to keep going. A year later, Matt’s YouTube Shorts channel crossed 30,000 subscribers from scratch.
Should I Start With TikTok or YouTube First?
Start with TikTok if your market skews toward first-time buyers or if you’re in a relocation market where people are researching your city before they move. TikTok’s algorithm is still the most aggressive at pushing content to new audiences, which makes early growth faster. Roland noted he drove more relocation sales from TikTok than from two full years of long-form YouTube content.
Add YouTube Shorts once you have your TikTok workflow dialed in. It takes nine extra minutes per week and gives you access to an older demographic that skews toward sellers and investors. The two platforms together cover both sides of your business. If you’re pressed to pick one, pick TikTok and add YouTube Shorts within 60 to 90 days.
What Equipment Do I Actually Need to Get Started?
Less than you think. Here’s the complete setup Matt and Roland use to generate hundreds of leads from short-form video:
- Filming: DJI mic, gimbal, iPhone
- Editing: CapCut
- Distribution: TikTok, Instagram, YouTube Shorts
- Lead capture: MiniChat, direct.me or Linktree
- Automation: Zapier
- CRM: Lofty (or your existing CRM)
Don’t let equipment be your excuse for not starting. Viewers care far more about personality, expertise, and consistency than production quality. A video posted today on a three-year-old iPhone beats a polished production you’re still planning six months from now.
Start Building Your Content System Before Someone Else Does It in Your Market
Real estate agent content creation is not a trend. It’s a shift in how clients find and choose their agents, and it’s already well underway. The agents who get serious about home tour video now will own their markets online in 12 to 18 months. The ones who wait will be playing catch-up to someone who got started today.
Three things to take away from Matt and Roland’s framework: pick visually interesting homes, batch your content into one filming morning per week, and build the tech stack that captures and converts the leads your content generates. None of this requires a big following to start. Both of them started at zero.
For the full breakdown of their presentation at the 2026 RealtyHack Summit, including the specific scripts, the MiniChat setup walkthrough, and the platform analytics deep dive, check out the RealtyHack podcast episodes and explore the training resources available on the site. The system is proven. Now it’s your turn to build it.
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