Quick Read
- Realtor.com has launched FlyAround, a new low-altitude satellite tour feature developed with TopHap and Google 3D Maps, providing buyers interactive views of homes and neighborhoods
- The tool responds to a 2025 study showing 50 percent of recent buyers would consider purchasing sight-unseen, rising to 52 percent among first-time buyers
- FlyAround complements trends in digital twins, AI and virtual tours, helping buyer agents reduce physical home visits and enabling earlier option elimination
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FlyAround is an update to Realtor.com listings, in partnership with TopHap and Google Maps, that provides low-altitude satellite views.
While Zillow and Homes.com bicker about who can access what home tour technology, Realtor.com is taking homeshoppers to new heights.
The home search portal has released a new feature in partnership with mapping technology providers TopHap and Google 3D Maps. The tour technology is called FlyAround, and it’s designed to offer low-altitude satellite views of homes and their surrounding communities.
While neighborhood-long lines to attend open houses and 2.5 percent mortgages no longer define the market, one COVID-era byproduct still lingering is the willingness of buyers to make offers sight-unseen. Realtor.com said that statistic helped drive the creation of FlyAround.
Realtor.com FlyAround
“According to Realtor.com’s 2025 Consumer Attitudes & Usage Study, half of buyers who purchased or tried to purchase a home in the past year said they would consider buying a home without seeing it in person, up from 44 percent in 2023. Among first-time homebuyers, that number rises to 52 percent,” according to the Oct. 30 media statement.
The experience nicely ties together a series of industry-wide advancements that have been emerging in the past few years. Digital twins, geospatial data visualizations, AI computer vision, collaborative online tours, virtual staging, reactive digital floor plans and now tools like FlyAround are collectively helping consumers understand more about a home and its surroundings than ever before.
FlyAround’s underlying technology isn’t new. A number of digital navigation and land analysis applications have deployed such perspectives to assist surveyors, outdoor adventurers and land brokers. Land id, for example, recently updated its web and mobile applications to accommodate low-altitude satellite tours. However, Realtor.com’s application of that capability to residential search adds a compelling marketing asset to any listing.
Realtor.com partnered with TopHap last year to empower enhanced map-based search and property insights. Inman reviewed the application in 2019.
“We are focused on giving homeshoppers the right tools, confidence and expert edge to make confident home decisions,” said Dave Herman, SVP of Product and AI innovation, in the release. “FlyAround brings listings to life in a way that helps home shoppers see not just the home, but its entire environment—turning what was once a 2D online experience into an interactive exploration.”
FlyAround, like digital twins and interactive floorplans, can assist buyer agents in reducing their time physically touring homes and communities. Every buyer should experience a new home in person to some extent before buying, but the ever-growing availability of immersive marketing tools can help buyers eliminate options earlier in the process.
Natural language search is helping, too, an AI-powered search input technology that Realtor.com and its competitors have deployed.
Realtor.com will fully release FlyAround in a few weeks. It will be available for “MLS-sourced listings on Realtor.com with geo-coordinates, as well as on off-market and recently sold property pages,” it said. It can be launched from the listing’s detail page via the FlyAround button on the property’s primary image.
Email Craig Rowe