September 25, 2026 · 9 min read

52% Shoot Drone Video. 88% Never Tried VR.

NAR counts 52% on drone photography/video and 88% who never tried AR/VR. A three-question test for which listing formats deserve your hours.

An agent putting together a marketing plan for the year runs into the same pitch from every direction: virtual tours, 3D walkthroughs, AR staging, VR open houses, AI video. Each one arrives with a headline about how buyers now expect it. The useful question is narrower and older than any of them: what are working REALTORS actually doing, week to week, with the money and hours they have?

The National Association of REALTORS answered that in its 2025 technology survey, and the answer is lopsided. One line of the chart sits at 52%. Another sits at 4%. The gap between them says more about what to buy than any vendor's adoption claim, and it is worth reading closely, including the parts of the chart that are not there.

What the NAR chart shows

NAR fielded the 2025 REALTORS Technology Survey in July 2025. It invited 49,233 active REALTORS and received 1,241 usable responses, a 2.5% response rate with a stated margin of error of plus or minus 2.78 percentage points at 95% confidence. Page 4 of the report charts which technologies respondents currently use in their business, as a multiple-response question. The percentages below are the chart's own data labels.

One caution before reading anything into it. "Drone photography/video" is a single line item. The survey does not split still photos from video, so 52% is not a video-adoption figure. It is a good number to hold anyway, and NAR's 18 September 2025 press release states the same 52%.

The survey also asked about augmented and virtual reality directly. On page 15, 88% of REALTORS said they have not actively tried AR/VR for their business, 8% use it a few times a month, and 83% said they have not observed any impact of AR/VR on their business. Ten percent reported a moderately positive impact.

A test agents can apply to any pitch

Our reading of this chart is an inference, not something NAR states, so treat it as one. The technologies at the top of the list are ones an agent can use with tools and habits already in place. A signature is a link. A social post goes to an audience that already exists. A drone shoot produces files that go into the same MLS photo fields and the same feed as everything else. The technologies at the bottom ask for something new on the other end: a headset, a scanning workflow, or a buyer who has changed how they look at homes.

That gives a three-question test for any new format someone is selling you:

1. Where does the finished file go? If the answer is a field, a feed or a link you already use, adoption costs almost nothing. If the answer is a new app the buyer must install, adoption depends on someone else changing a habit.
2. Who has to change what they do? Your workflow, the buyer's, or both.
3. What does the MLS or portal do with it? A format that has a slot in the listing record has a route to the buyer. A format without one needs its own audience.

The MLS side of question three is checkable. The RESO Data Dictionary, the standard that MLS data fields are mapped to, defines Virtual Tour URL Unbranded as "a text field that holds the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) for an unbranded virtual tour of the property," with a matching Virtual Tour URL Branded field. Both are plain URL fields. As far as the data standard is concerned, a tour is a link. Any format that can live at a link fits, and whether your board wants the branded or unbranded field is a local rule, so check yours.

Virtual tours at 38%: real, and different from video

Virtual tours sit at 38% in the same chart, and it is worth being exact about what that does and does not tell you. It says roughly four in ten respondents use some form of virtual tour. It does not say buyers prefer tours to video, and it does not say tours sell homes faster. The survey measures use, not results. NAR's free highlights for its 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers carry no buyer-preference figures for either format, which is the vacuum that numbers like "403% more inquiries" fill, and those trace to nothing you can check. We walked one of them back to its source in our fact-check of real estate video statistics.

What the chart does support is a narrower point about effort. A scanned 3D tour needs someone on site with equipment. A video built from existing photos needs the photos the seller already paid for. Those are different jobs at different points on the effort curve, which is why picking a Matterport alternative starts with the job, and an agent with limited hours can reasonably pick by workflow fit rather than by which buzzword is loudest.

The gap in the list

Look at what the chart does not have. It lists AI-generated content, with listing descriptions as its example, at 46%. It lists a CRM with AI insights at 21%. It has no line item for AI video. That does not mean nobody uses it. It means NAR did not ask about it as its own category in this survey. The honest reading is that AI in agents' hands today is mostly a text tool, and the visual side of listing marketing has not been measured yet.

The same survey found that adoption is wide and shallow. NAR's data has 46% of REALTORS reporting neutral or no noticeable impact from AI on their business. We covered that gap in our comparison of the 41% and 82% AI-use surveys. It applies here too: using a tool is not the same as the tool changing a result.

Where Pic2VidTour comes in

We think Pic2VidTour is the best AI photo-to-video tool for real estate listings, and the NAR chart is a good way to see why the category is shaped the way it is. The formats agents actually use are the ones that fit a workflow they already have. Pic2VidTour is built on that idea: photos in, video out, no scanning visit and no headset.

The more important argument is about what the tool is allowed to show. Some of the AI video tools competing for the same budget work by producing views the photographer never captured. That is where compliance risk lives. California's AB 723 defines a digitally altered image as one changed to add, remove or change elements of the property. Canopy MLS requires that an AI-enhanced virtual tour carry a clear disclosure "directly ON the image or within the virtual tour", and says caption-only disclosure is not acceptable. A tool that generates rooms and flyovers creates exactly the material those rules were written for.

Pic2VidTour does not generate rooms, drone flights or walkthroughs between rooms. Every scene is animated from one real photo of the actual property. Every clip is checked against the photo it came from for warped walls, furniture that moved, objects that appeared or doubled, a car that moved, a changed view through a window and a first frame that does not match. A scene that fails the check does not ship as a bad clip. It is re-filmed once free, and if it fails again it ships as a clean photo pan. As of 5 September 2026, none of the nine listing-video tools we surveyed published a description of a per-clip check against the source photo. If yours does, send us the page and we will update this.

On the workflow side, the tour comes back as a 16:9 master and a 9:16 vertical reel, plus a share link. The reel matters because Instagram says it makes certain reels less visible, naming "low-resolution or watermarked reels, reels that are muted or contain borders, reels that are majority text, or reels that have already been posted on Instagram." An AI-enhanced disclosure caption ships on by default and can be switched off. You can edit music, room order, trims, labels, address and price banner and contact card as often as you like at no charge. Only re-filming a scene with AI costs anything, at $0.65, quoted in the director chat before it runs.

The price is shown before anything runs: $1.50 per AI scene, with the photo pans, the music track and the branded closing contact card included. A 12-photo listing quotes as 12 AI scenes plus music, $18.00. Credit packs are $19, $45 and $120, with no subscription. Delivery is usually within the hour.

One ownership note, since a video built from photos is built from someone's work. NAR's Handbook defines listing content in Policy Statement 7.85 to include "photographs, images, graphics, audio and video recordings, virtual tours" and says the listing broker should own or have authority to license it. Pic2VidTour only uses the photos you upload, so the licence question stays with you, and we walk through it in our post on who owns the photos you feed the AI. This is general information, not legal advice. MLS and board rules vary and change, so check your own board and a lawyer.

What to do next

1. Pull up NAR's page 4 chart and mark which of the tools you pay for sit above 30% and which sit below 5%. The ones at the bottom need your buyers to change a habit; ask whether that is a bet you want to make.
2. Run the three-question test on the next format you are pitched: where the file goes, who has to change what they do, and what the MLS does with it.
3. Ask your MLS whether its virtual tour field is branded, unbranded or both, and what its AI disclosure rule requires on the media itself.
4. Try Pic2VidTour on one listing's photos. Read the quote before you approve anything, and check each clip against its source photo yourself.