5 ways in which virtual reality is transforming the real estate industry

5 ways in which virtual reality is transforming the real estate industry

Have you ever bought or sold a house? If so, you surely know the real estate world.

Usually, the real estate agent gives a list of properties to the client, followed by long explanations, and visits to houses and apartments, some of which need to be renovated completely. In some cases, the agent has nothing but a project on paper to show, which still needs to be built…

This type of workflow not only requires time and resources, but often also a good deal of imagination on the customer’s part.

Fortunately, the technology is turning the tables, particularly thanks to Virtual Reality, which slowly is starting to infiltrate the real estate world. VR, actually, allows the real estate agents, to develop their business, manage more clients and increase the sales, offering a high quality service. Based on a study in fact, 95% of the clients in the United States search for property online, a trend that is quickly catching on also in Italy.

So, let’s discover the advantages that Virtual Reality can bring to the real estate world:

# 1 More immersive and less demanding virtual visits

In most cases, a client finds himself visiting multiple properties before deciding to buy one. The investment in time becomes an economic investment if they are far from the place where it is located. VR technology is the ideal solution that allows real estate agents to show different properties to potential buyers without making them actually move from one place to another. In the event that a customer prefers to discover the property independently, visits in virtual reality can be guided or interactive.

 

 # 2 Virtual staging to attract the client

Imagine showing a house to a client, which is completely empty. Wouldn’t it be easier to sell, if it were furnished with style? The answer is easy. This is the reason why many agents often momentarily decorate the properties which are for sale, investing resources and energy hoping to attract clients, a process also known as home staging. Virtual reality allows you to bypass this process and create highly customizable immersive and interactive tours with very few resources, achieving highly realistic results.

 

# 3 Viewing projects that do not exist yet

Advertising for a project that has not yet seen the light has always been a great challenge both for builders and for real estate agents. Although 3D renderings and three-dimensional models can entice potential buyers, visualizing interiors is much more complicated, so much so that in real estate it is not unusual for entire apartments to be recreated on a real scale in showrooms, an effort destined to become obsolete in a very short time. Thanks to VR, in fact, architectural visualization has become much more immersive and accessible and allows real estate agents to present both the exterior and interior of projects that has not yet been built, with great ease.

 

# 4 Greater emotional involvement of the future client

Virtual tours of apartments and houses allow customers to view each property calmly, unlike the traditional, often hurried visits. Respecting his time, the potential customer can take a completely immersive tour, focusing on details that often go unnoticed. Total immersion creates an emotional connection that involves customers, much stronger than the usual 2D images, which often do not reflect reality or which do not allow the client to take actions as an active user.

 

# 5 Saving time and money

VR allows clients and real estate agents to relate without having to move from one place to another, thus avoiding problems with traffic or the availability of the owners of the properties which are for sale, through the simple use of software and a VR headset. Furthermore, although the development of virtual tours may seem expensive, the cost is infinitely lower than that of traditional marketing, to which agents and builders must apply in the absence of alternatives, such as the real-scale reconstruction of apartment interiors, and costs related to the creation and printing of numerous 3D renderings.

 

 # 6 Simultaneous management of multiple clients

Selling an apartment requires a long time. Between the organization of the visits and the negotiation times, the average real estate agent does not have time to manage a large number of clients. A virtual reality software designed for the real estate world is the key tool to transform the current scenario. Thanks to virtual tours, a real estate agent will be able to show more properties to clients in less time, regardless of where the properties and clients are located, working faster. As a result, they can invest extra time to search and manage new clients.