3 minute read

Open homes done differently

When the Prime Minister of Australia announced that ‘open for inspections’ and on-site and in-room auctions were banned as of midnight Wednesday 25th March 2020 and New Zealand also went into national lockdown, the real estate industry and its consumers responded. Agents adapted their practices to ensure they met the required standards of a daily evolving real estate landscape.

Virtual reality had been around since 2010 but it wasn’t really until 2016 that virtual reality gained momentum in the real estate industry.

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The pandemic quite possibly sped up a transition to virtual open houses that was already underway.

While a virtual open house was a time-tested technique to help buyers from afar, it became at the forefront of a major shift in the way they viewed homes.

Virtual reality allows buyers to digitally walk through a listed property. It is a bit like Street View on Google Maps for the inside of a house.

There are two broad formats. Interactive or live virtual open houses, where the real-time aspect allows for buyer-agent interaction as they ‘walk’ through the home; and static videos which give the opportunity for editing and highlighting specific features but limits the agent’s ability to deal with buyer questions and concerns in the moment. The former is the closer alternative to a traditional open house.

PAGE 60 has a Q&A on live streamed open inspections with Luke Watson, CEO of Home Live.

The tours have allowed buyers to appraise properties more quickly. It is a ‘pre-screening’ step. The buyers who move forward on the property are more focused. In many cases, sellers are happy to have fewer prospective buyers traipsing through their home.

Home Live, for example, is a pioneering live streaming solution built for real estate agents globally.

Pre-COVID-19, Matterport,a key player in the virtual reality real estate arena, commissioned a survey and found that prospective buyers ‘overwhelmingly preferred’ to work with agents who offered virtual tours.

Matterport works with a wide range of 3D cameras, 360 cameras and iPhones to create 3D representation. Use of VR headsets gives the virtual reality experience. The REA Group’s 3D Tours allow prospective buyers and tenants to experience guided virtual tours on realestate.com.au and realcommercial.com.au listings.

Virtual tours became readily accessible in 2019 with the release of the Samsung Galaxy Note10+. Today, there are many devices with advanced 3D and 360 photography capabilities including the latest Samsung and Google smartphones, iPhones and iPads.

One of the biggest advantages of using virtual reality in the real estate industry is the amount of time it saves everyone. You can literally walk through multiple homes in a matter of minutes.

A 360-degree virtual tour allows any property to be captured in full in virtual reality, allowing potential buyers the ability to carry out the same examination process, room by room, only without any physical presence. Virtual inspections can have many advantages to a traditional approach.

Potential buyers can inspect the property at any time of the day or night to fit in with their own schedule.

They can also be in any location to inspect the property using any device they prefer – desktop, tablet or mobile phone. Virtual inspections allow interstate and international buyers to inspect the property without distance being an inhibiting factor, opening the property to a wider pool of interested parties.

When planning a traditional open home, agents must accommodate the seller’s needs and work around their schedules. The virtual world is more malleable.

REA statistics show an average of 3,000 more engagements if the listing has a virtual tour.

Traditional open houses and inspections will be part of the postpandemic scene, but the virtual kind has claimed a stake that is unlikely to go away as the world, in general, is more used to doing things online.

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