Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality is on everywhere these days—videogames, engineering, healthcare, entertainment—are just a few of the industries fuelings its evolution. More recently, VR entered the real estate market too. Allured by its many advantages, developers turn to virtual reality and enable buyers to tour units, “walking” around mock layouts and peering out windows to envision the view they might wake up to every morning (this is where drones step in to capture accurate floor-by-floor perspectives). Instead of the full-sized models of one of the units, they can now use smaller sales centers equipped with a VR headset. No more selling off blueprints. “Our whole business exists to work on spaces that don’t exist.” Jamie Fleming, CEO of Studio216 Such a development that used the VR technology to drive sales is Luma, a 24-story condominium development in Seattle. The sales team opted for an Oculus Rift headset and started offering tours of the property a little after the project had just broken ground. Studio216 of San Francisco is the digital production agency that created the simulated space for the Luma development and one of the firms currently involved in developing industry-specific application for the technology. The virtual reality market is expected to explode over the next decade. According to a Goldman Sachs research, VR will be an $80 billion industry by 2025—the size of the current desktop PC market. The forthcoming consumer release of Oculus Rift headsets to the public might rapidly improve consumer adoption. However, real estate technology is far behind where it should be. A good exemplification is that there are still real estate firms still using Internet Explorer (sorry, Microsoft) as their main browser. Using VR headsets to tour your future home, office or vacation rental is pretty straight forward: the agent connects...