The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
VIRTUAL REALITY EXPECTED TO SHAKE REAL ESTATE,
Buyers can tour properties without leaving home.
Nearly a year before Jack Sazama will actually set foot in his new digs at the Spectrum apartments near the University of Minnesota, the freshman strapped on a set of cheap plastic goggles, strolled through his new apartment in virtual reality and then signed a lease.
“The buildings weren’t even up yet, so it was nice to get a sense of what it would look like,” Sazama said.
Virtual reality, or VR, is expected to reshape the real estate industry in much the same way internet listings did. It may not be long before your first view of your next house or apartment will be through a View-Masterlike headset.
The time is right, many say. The technology has gone down in price and is now easier to use, buyers and their agents aren’t as afraid of technology as in past years, and real estate markets are more global than ever.
“It is a foregone conclusion that we’ll be evaluating real estate this way in the future,” said Gene Munster, a Twin Cities tech analyst and investor who sees VR as the most significant development in real estate since the advent of the internet.
Already, “virtual tours” sans goggles are joining aerial drone tours as standard fare for many real estate agents, enabling house shoppers to more easily narrow their options without ever having to set up a physical showing.
Agents are hiring companies that use sophisticated software to stitch together still photos that give house shoppers interactive, 360-degree room views that you can’t get with a traditional photo slide show.
Though these “virtual tours” are technically not three-dimensional, they provide a much more comprehensive look at every interior surface.
More important, it’s a tool with the power to create an emotional response that a single, static view of a room can’t, putting buyers into spaces that could be hundreds of miles away.
“Pictures are just pictures, but when you can spin around inside those rooms, you can really get a good feel for what that house is like,” said Cathy Lawton, who wasn’t even seriously shopping when she was cruising through a national property listing site last summer.
Her grandmother had a place on Lake Le Homme Dieu near Alexandria, Minn., and she had fond memories of spending time there with her family.
Though she now lives near Milwaukee, she and her brother had always talked about someday owning a lake place in the area.
While casually — and spontaneously — perusing online listings in the area near her family’s lake place, she happened across a property that caught her attention.
The online listing for the 13-acre property included a virtual tour that enabled Lawton to explore the logsided house and essentially walk the shoreline.
“You really do get a tremendous appreciation for what the property is really like,” she said.
She was quickly smitten and felt confident enough to schedule a showing and make the 71/2-hour drive. Setting foot on the property confirmed all of her initial impressions based on the 360-degree photo tour, and she was able to quickly make an offer.
“In most respects, it matched what I was expecting,” she said.
The situation was a particular coup for the listing agent, Andy Asbury, because the property had previously been listed with another agent for three years without a serious offer.
In addition to having the ability to tug at the heartstrings of sentimental shoppers and create momentum when there was none, such tours also make it difficult for sellers to conceal unsightly elements they’d rather buyers not see.
“Once you can look into a headset and get a sense of the space, you don’t have to miss out on the one corner they didn’t take a picture of,” said Zach Wendt, a seasoned VR developer in the Twin Cities. “When you have a 360-degree view of a room it’s hard to hide a problem.”
The new VR technology, used with goggles and headsets paired with a cellphone or computer, uses the kind of technology gamers have been using for years, with computer-generated imagery and environments.
Such a perspective makes viewers feel like they’re part of the image, and not just from a distance or from a single perspective or angle.
Accessibility to this technology reached a turning point in March 2014 when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg bought Oculus, a leading VR headset company. The $2.3 billion investment has helped the entire industry mature.