How will virtual reality transform the real estate market?

Virtual reality (VR) is an emerging trend that brings great public attention. Business insider offers a very bullish forecast for the new technology. The VR market is expected to explode to over 25 million units by 2020, having 100% grow per year.

Virtual reality is penetrating the gaming and entertainment industry. Being aware of the rising trend, many industry players are wondering, “Will VR revolutionise the real estate market as well?” The answer is “Absolutely!” VR will play a transformative role in the real estate landscape.

What is virtual reality?

Virtual reality is a computer technology that replicates an environment and simulates a user’s physical presence to allow user interaction. It artificially creates the sensory experience, which can include sight, touch, hearing or even smell.

Currently, VR is most widely used in the gaming and entertainment industry. By providing a 360 experience, the technology creates a stunning space visualisation for movie watchers or game players.

How will virtual reality affect the real estate market?

  • Transform the way of buy and sell
    VR will be a complete game changer in the buying and selling areas of real estate. Usually, during pre-sell marketing, floor plans and project blueprint of the unbuilt homes will be given by property agents to the prospective house buyers. Potential house buyers try their best to dig out every information from these pieces of paper and maximise their imaginations to visualise their future houses. On the other hand, marketers should depend on the pale statistics or images not the printed paper to convince customers and sell off their property.

    With the advent of virtual reality, prospective buyers can navigate through a fully-rendered virtual simulation of what the finished product will be. Having virtually experienced potential spaces, buyers can purchase with greater confidence, while marketers can also sell the property much more easily.

  • Cut down unnecessary travelling
    Getting tired of visiting twenty houses before finding an ideal one? VR is here to make house shopping efficient and easy. By using VR, buyers can browse and filter through the properties before selecting a few to visit. There is no need for both buyer and agent to schedule appointments and spend days for visiting all these flats. The number of people who turn up for viewings and leave without making an offer is expected to be cut down as well.
  • Further eliminate the boundaries
    VR assists realtors to tap on prospective buyers, irrespective of geographical location. By viewing a virtual tour made available online by local realtors, overseas customers who own a VR headset can have a 360-degree space experience for their shortlisted properties at home.
  • Facilitate design process
    Architecture complaints will be able to use virtual reality for architectural visualisation and walk-through of spaces to make sure the layouts are made just right and the design is user-friendly.

There is concern that the use of VR will slowly remove the role of property agent in the transaction process. In fact, the property agent will still play an essential role by providing professional suggestions. Instead of being threatening, the new technology will assist agents in market analysis. By simply ranking the click rate, property agents will know what are the highly popular properties. The property agent may also lead a VR tour remotely and see where the client is looking, which allows them to understand the concerns of the customers, just as in a real tour.

It may take a few more years before VR to be widely applied in the real estate market. The cost of scanning a home for VR is more than $1,000 currently. However, given the many benefits that it will bring to the real estate market, VR will be the next new trend. Realtors should keep a close watch on this rising technology to prevent being outdated.


(Image credits (from top): All images are from Shutterstock.)

Previous:

Next:

Comments

Be the first to comment.
Post your comment
Please fill in all mandatory fields