Virtual Reality has long held promise for the Real Estate industry. The path started way back in the late 90’s when multiple photos became a regular addition to the MLS. Multiple photos allowed Realtors to see inside of homes as opposed to just the single static exterior photo they were used to seeing in the old MLS Books. When MLS’s started aggregating listing content two real estate portals the photos became even more important especially to the public, who now expected them.
From still photos, we moved to the “Virtual Tour”. This was the beginning of a kind of interactive virtual reality for real estate listings. The original virtual tours required special photography, Java, and plugins which limited the number of prospective buyers who could use them and more importantly where they could use them. I remember doing virtual tours for our listings and it was a cumbersome process. Once the tours were done and assembled you had to upload them to a special server in order to publish them for public consumption, It was a lot of work. I also remember walking into the office and watching one of our Realtors viewing the tour and basically spinning around like it was a merry-go-round. It was at that moment I realized virtual tours were more of a novelty than a long-term solution because without a lot more work you were relegated to a single space.
The next phase of virtual tours really became more of an evolution from virtual tour into property video. The ability to stream video made it much easier to create distribute and watch videos online, so it only made sense to market properties using video. We jumped in the video production at that point head first and had a lot of success with it. During that time. I remember hearing a story about the old "Coldwell Banker Previews" this was a program where Coldwell Banker would film ultra-luxury properties and send the actual reels of film out to prospective buyers hence the name Preview. It always seemed strange to me that it took 60 to 70 years for this practice to reach the masses. I guess that just illustrates how ahead of their time Coldwell Banker was.
While videos were gaining in popularity, the bar to entry was a little too high for some. So, many Realtors with the help of web services like Listings Magic started putting together “slideshows” made from still photographs. The presentation would include power point like transitions along with music. These presentations were processed and then posted as a video. These really shouldn't be considered virtual tours but we're certainly popular for a while, especially the ones with really cheesy music.
This brings us up to today, the latest technology in the real estate virtual reality space is called 3-D Photography. This field is being pioneered by companies like Matterport and iGuide. 3-D tours give the user a real sense of space within the property, they also allow the user to move from room to room. Humans experience things spatially calculating distances, sizes, and volumes. This is why previous virtual tour solutions didn't really cut it. Bill Gassett, has written a great article on this subject of 3-D photography take a look here.
We've come a long way since multiple photos and who knows what's next but this is Real Estate and we all know there will be a next big thing!
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