3D Virtual Tours Role in Real Estate

 

3D Virtual Tours Role in Real Estate

In every industry, adopting new innovative technology is a sure way to achieve long term success. Such innovation promises a new and improved ways to do things, where cost-effectiveness and convenience are guaranteed. Nowadays, virtual reality technology has served as the front runner of many industries. VR headsets are hot in the market. And if you haven’t incorporated 3D virtual tours into your business model, you are being left behind.

The use of virtual tours in the real estate industry has become more prominent as the years go by, especially, this year 2020. The internet as an example is a technology we all can agree has made our lives easier and has opened a lot of doors for us. With the tip of our fingers, communication, research, and business are accomplished more meticulously, creatively, and efficiently. With the advantage of the internet, a 3D real estate virtual tour is accessible globally—wherever and whenever—making the market for real estate even bigger but more competitive.

 

Understanding The Nature Of Virtual Tours

In the real estate and tourism industry, virtual reality is popularly used as a marketing tool while other industries like engineering and medicine uses it for research and simulation purposes. Of course, any industry could utilize virtual tours for a range of purposes. The goal of real estate virtual tours is mainly to guide their customers’ buying decisions and virtual tours offer an effective way for marketers to provide them with information to know what they can expect with the property through an immersive experience. In real estate, virtual tours are used specifically to resolve the specific needs of the customer through the different types of virtual tours.

360 Virtual Tour —this s a fully interactive and completely immersive 360 experience where the customer can “walk through” the property using an easy navigation system. With this tour, the customer can scrutinize each room and space of the property.

3D Floor Plan—not as immersive as 360 Virtual Tour, but an effective and highly informative way to present the comprehensive view of the property and informing the buyer of the scale of each room, space, and features. It presents the whole architectural plan for the whole property.

Virtual Reality—this requires a VR Headset and provides a personalized visualization of the property. The customer can interact with the property as if they are in the location.

 

How Essential Is Virtual Tour in Real Estate

The competitiveness of the real estate market will just keep becoming more intense. In order to get ahead in such a competitive industry, realtors need to integrate new technology, improve interactive content, and enhance customer service, and effectively implement those in their marketing strategy. Virtual tours have proven its appeal to customers as real estate listing with virtual tours included garnered almost 50% more clicks than those that only use still photos. That increase in user engagement will be guaranteed to make a positive influence on their decision making.

 

  1. Gathering Information

With a virtual tour integrated into the marketing campaign, potential buyers can access vast information in a much more accurate and reliable way. Photographs only provide an extremely curated visual of the property but don’t satisfy the information buyers want that can only be accessed by using other senses. The immersive and interactive feature of virtual reality permits a prospective buyer to have a similar experience they would have in an actual in-person tour without needing to be in the location physically—another appealing scheme to customers: convenience, cost-effectiveness, and accessibility. Thus, a virtual tour improves the way customers gather information and perspective of the property in a more comprehensive way.

 

  1. Purchasing Decision

Aside from gathering concrete information about the property, buyers are also guided by their emotions to arrive at a decision. Most of the time, we are governed by our emotions which is why making the prospective buyer feel comfortable and satisfied is pertinent inclusion in the marketing strategy. 360 tours and virtual reality can effectively influence that decision-making process by presenting stimuli that will activate the buyer’s senses.

 

  1. Referral

All marketers know the importance of word-of-the-mouth. Others’ experience of how worthy their purchase and how gratifying their experience was, is an important source of information for potential customers. It is deemed more credible and reliable as it is from a personal and independent perspective. More so, commonly these reviews are seen to be more trustworthy as they come from familiar faces (i.e. our family and friends). Professional reviews definitely have that authority but nothing beats the trustworthiness of a person you know personally.

 

frequently asked questions

Matterport is an American based SaaS company that provides a platform for creating 3D Virtual Tours. Professional tour creators use the platform to deliver high-quality products to clients.

Matterport is an all-in-one solution that has unparalleled quality and is easy for your customers to use. With secure model management & cloud servers, it’s always available when you or your customers need it.

3D Virtual Tours are included on your website through the use of an iFrame. An iFrame is a bit of code that allows the tour experience to be embedded in your website, eliminating the need for users to click a link and be redirected to another website page. Matterport provides these codes with limited functionality, SmartView Media provides custom iFrame codes to our clients that allow a great level of control and customisation for how the tours are displayed on your website. These options can easily be turned on and off by customers in our SmartHub platform.

Our tours using an Embed code to connect seamlessly with your website, regardless of how your website is built it will be able to display one of our 3D Tours.

Scanning will take at least 1-2 hours depending on the model or the space being scanned. Some spaces with difficult geometry & scan points require for more time to process. Normally our team can have a completed 3D Tour back to you in 48 hours.

A typical 360 Tour is a combination of 360 panoramic images, these images are then added to 3rd party software and use a button in each image to link to the next image in the sequence. This allows the user to move from one image to the next.

A Matterport 3D Virtual Tour is a combination of 360 panoramic images and infrared scan data. The images and IR data are combined using photogrammetry & AI to make a digital 3D model. This 3D model is accurate to within 1% and allows the user to view a Floor Plan, Dollhouse & take measurements all while moving freely around the location.

This really depends on several factors, from the size and complexity of the location that is being captured down to the level of desired detail. The more 3D Scan points a Matterport Tour has, the better the final result will be for the end user experience, as the scan points are the locations that a user can view the space from. A typical home can range from 90mins to 180mins depending on it’s size, room & furniture layout. An office location of 1000 sqm can take around 120mins to 180mins for the same reasons mentioned previously.

A Matterport 3D Virtual Tour is created by capturing a combination of infrared data & 360 panoramic images. This combination is called a 3D Scan. A Matterport 3D Virtual Tour is the combination of these 3D Scans, which are captured at regular intervals throughout a location, this information is then combined to create an interactive 3D Mesh which allows the user to move from point to point to view the model.

No, it currently isn’t possible to download a Matterport 3D Tour. The tours can be embedded on your website, but as the tours are stored in the cloud they will always require an internet connection in order to access them. It is not possible to download them and put them on a hard drive or USB memory stick.

In order to capture the most detailed 3D Virtual Tour experience possible for your location, it is best that as few people as possible are around. This prevents any unwanted captures of people moving through rooms.

Matterport Pro 2 cameras use infrared to assist with 3D mapping the surrounding environment, as a result the platform is best suited to capturing indoor areas. However, we can utilise 360 images combined with the Cortex feature to capture external areas in the right circumstances.

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Matterport 3D Tours – Get Your Quote Today

Ready to showcase your space with an immersive 3D virtual tour? Get in touch with our team today! Whether you’re in real estate, construction, retail, or hospitality, we’ll create a high-quality 3D experience tailored to your needs.

Fill out the form below, and we’ll get back to you with a custom quote.

Get Your Qoute Today

Ready to showcase your space with an immersive 3D virtual tour? Get in touch with our team today! Whether you’re in real estate, construction, retail, or hospitality, we’ll create a high-quality 3D experience tailored to your needs. 
Fill out the form below, and we’ll get back to you with a custom quote.