Buying or leasing a property is a daunting task and finding the right fit requires a lot of time and research. Real estate agents know that visiting a house or an office, seeing it up close and getting a feel of the place goes a long way towards helping clients make up their mind. But conventional property visits pose some challenges to those involved. The owner must be available or grant access to the property, some clients might require several visits before they can make their decision and sometimes the buyer/renter isn’t in the same city or state as the property that he or she is interested in.
Virtual tours offer a solution to these issues, saving you time and money. Take a look at CommercialCafe’s pick of VR/AR service providers located in California.
InstaVR
InstaVR is a San Francisco-based virtual reality tech firm, providing software solutions for over 30,000 companies and professionals worldwide. Would you like to incorporate VR experiences and tours into client presentations? You can use InstaVR’s web browser-based tool to quickly and easily assemble 360-degree images or videos, without any additional coding requirements. You can create virtual tours for popular VR platforms such as Oculus Go, Oculus Rift, Gear VR, HTC VIVE or Google Cardboard, as well as control or sync multiple devices remotely. Want to know how your audience is reacting to your virtual tour? InstaVR enables you to analyze user behavior intuitively and effectively. Should you run into issues at any point, the company offers 24-hour live chat support on weekdays.
Image source: Shutterstock
Matterport
Founded in 2011 in Sunnyvale, Matterport has become a popular tool with real estate agents who try to make their listings stand out. The company provides VR services, interactive 3D and VR experiences and print-ready 4K photography. Their 3D Showcase is an online tool for property visualization, featuring a unique Dollhouse view, giving prospective clients the chance to explore a property or venue from any angle. Customers can either schedule an appointment with a camera operator on location or purchase their own Matterport Pro 3D camera, which allows them to create several virtual tours and other interactive projects that capture the feel of a commercial or residential space. Other company locations currently include San Francisco, Kansas City, Chicago and London.
roOomy
This tech company from San Jose describes itself as a leader in CGI and 3D modeling, virtual staging and VR/AR app development. Selling a property isn’t only about selling space. It’s also about helping buyers see that space as the right fit for their family or business. They should be able to see a clear picture of how living or working in a given space would look like, and staging makes this possible by allowing you to add furniture, carpeting and various accessories to the listed property. However, physical staging is rather expensive, so roOomy’s virtual staging services are an affordable alternative, giving owners the option to customize their designs according to each prospective buyers’ tastes and preferences. These virtual staging projects can be uploaded to the company’s website, where they can be subsequently purchased as a home or office design and furnishing plan. Another great feature is the in-built convertor, which helps users transform entire 2D catalogs into 3D assets, a vital and cost-effective solution for larger companies looking to adopt VR/AR.
ThingLink
ThingLink boasts ‘the highest quality interactive 360-degrees image editor on the market at the most affordable price.’ Users can add sound, images, videos, web links, maps, polls and even slideshow hotspots to their projects, to create visually-engaging presentations. According to their website, the Palo Alto-based company is already servicing roughly 250,000 global businesses in their VR content creation. Their tools are used by 5 million businesses, educators and students from 190 countries for everything from visual storytelling, to presentations, and virtual tours.
ThingLink comes equipped with a powerful editor for both regular and 360-degrees images that can help you create visual assets such as maps, infographics, product breakdowns and timelines. You can then easily embed these into any website, LMS, Microsoft Teams or OneNote environment, as well as measure customer engagement through your analytics dashboard. ThingLink gives you access to details such as user clicks, hovers and time spent engaging with your images and presentations.
Transported
Transported has a “VR first” company policy, focusing their product development on VR-optimized experiences and then replicating those as closely as possible on other devices, like smartphones or tablets. Properties can be scanned and recreated in high resolution and vibrant HDR color. The software offers a lot of flexibility, as users can import renders from 3D CAD or retouched equirectangulars for their virtual tours. Transported is Google Cardboard, Oculus Rift and Samsung Gear VR-compatible. Finished presentations can be shared easily through mobile-compatible links to websites or social media. All public virtual tours are displayed through a portfolio page, making it highly browsable for future clients.
