Virtual Tours: Boon for real estate

Virtual Tours(VT) is a very popular technology and widely used in many domains. With the help of this technology business can provide an immersive experience to its customers. Businesses use it to showcase their products and services with the help of live tours, Augmented/mixed reality, Virtual tours, 360 tours. This technology has been adopted in real estate and taken the world by the storm for the last few years. Housing.com also started Virtual Tours creation using in-house technology a few years back and created ~30k Virtual Tours in 2022 which have been visited by more than 1 million visitors.

How Virtual Tour is helpful in real estate.

Securing a place to call home is the oldest and one of the most important tasks of human life and as the economy grows, getting a home which has all the required amenities is difficult to find. This process is done via personal visits which has many drawbacks as follows.

1. Time consuming : People have to visit personally to see the property which is a time consuming process as normally the buyer sees 5–6 properties to settle for one. One has to take a day off to see the property.
2. Can cover only nearby properties : Buyer can cover a limited nearby area depending on the travel facilities available and the time to reach there.
3. Brokerage charge : As the owner can not be available all the time, brokers step in and take the brokerage for the same.
4. Fixed time to visit the property : Properties can not be visited at night or time has to be fixed before visiting the property.

Virtual Tours are helpful in many ways as follows

1. Time saving : As the buyer has to visit many properties before finalising one, it consumes lots of time and It sometimes feels very frustrating as the buyer has to travel to the property and does not meet the expectation. But with Virtual Tours buyers can cover multiple properties in his free time, as those are available 24/7. With Virtual Tours buyers can focus on other important work in the time saved due to that. During lockdown Virtual tours proved to be a boon for seller and buyer as need of a self owned property rose sharply at that time.
2. Unique experience : Buyer can view properties in 360 from the remote location, even they can find themselves into the properties using this technology. Not just 360 views, but Virtual reality, mixed reality are also available which take user experience to a whole new level.
3. Increase sale : As it becomes easy to visit properties via virtual tours, people from remote locations can also access and finalise the properties hence properties will be booked in no time. It removes all barriers which restricts the visitor to visit the properties hence the number of visitors increases sharply.
4. Create good impression : As buying a home is a once in a lifetime thing for a person, trust is the ultimate tool here. Via virtual tours, buyers can explore the properties and pick one to visit. This high-end, tech-savvy service, like a virtual tour of the property, creates a lasting first impression.
5. Cost effective : Most of the realtors think that they are costly hence they don’t implement it, but in reality it needs only panorama images to create a virtual tour.
6. Boon for small home owner : It’s hard to gain trust of tenants/buyers and small home owners lack in that but using virtual tours they can gain the trust as buyers can experience the property with locality without the visit.
7. Saviour in Corona time : Every market felt a dip as real estate, but need of self owned property also increase and personal visits was not possible. This problem solved using virtual tours, where seller were able to showcase the property to the buyer sitting at distant location and buyer would be able to make quick decision, hence it worked as a boon for real estate.

How does housing.com enhance the user experience using VT?

There are different ways to enhance the user experience using virtual tours, which are as follows.

Virtual reality : it is a simulated experience that employs pose tracking and 3D near-eye displays to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Users can feel themselves in the property, explore the different parts of the property which will not just save the time but will give them satisfaction like they visited the property in person.
Demo Link : Virtual Reality(Open in VR compatible device)

Digitour / Panorama view : It provides 360 walkthroughs of the property and can be experienced on desktop as well as mobile device. It also has features like autotour through which users can experience virtual tours without interacting with the device. It provides tours of real property as well as for future property using 3d models. User can use to to explore the interior and exterior of the property and get the real status.
Demo link : Digitour

Dollhouse : A top-down, external view of the entire artificial space allowing the buyer to make quick decisions about its purchase as it increase the trust in the property. User can also use walkthroughs to explore interiors.
Demo link : DollHouse

Augmented reality/Web AR : Real estate developers can use augmented reality to turn their ideal designs into fully working properties in augmented reality. Potential buyers or tenants can interact with these 3D digital prototypes of the designs placed onto any land and visualise it better. It can be used using webAR also.

Droneview : It provides high quality bird view of the property, using which users can see localities with property at once.
Demo link : Droneview

These feature will allow user to spend more time with the property which increase his trust and help him to make quick decision.