Host online open houses with virtual 3D tours

By Kim Shindle
August 3, 2010
3 min.

Homebuyers can now “walk” through another house, look at the size of rooms, see the connecting hallway and check whether their furniture fits, all while viewing the virtual 3D home on their computer.

With the virtual 3D tour, REALTORS® can now host virtual open houses. Clients can visit the website, “walk” through the property and ask questions of the online REALTOR®. “This type of virtual tour will provide a huge cost and time savings for both REALTORS® and clients,” said Brian Shuster, founder and chief executive officer of Utherverse Interiors.

Shuster, whose company is based in Vancouver, said younger REALTORS® and consumers are quick to adopt the new technology because the online tour looks like a video game. “We think this will appeal to older consumers too because they’ll be able to move furniture around, change the paint colors and determine what works before investing time and money into the property,” he said.

The technology has been around for some time but it was expensive until the company had a breakthrough in its software. “A year ago, this process would have cost thousands of dollars but now we’re able to create a 3D virtual tour of a home for a couple of hundred dollars, depending on the size of the home,” he said.

Personal experiences led to Shuster expand his video concept to the residential real estate industry. As his company was looking into expanding its offices, they discovered that by putting the floor plans into this program, it was easy to move offices and furniture around to see what would best meet their needs. “Within a couple of hours, we had the answers we were looking for,” he said.

To create a virtual tour, Utherverse Interiors uses a floor plan of the property and photos of every room. In less than 48 hours, a virtual tour is created.

“Buyers can get an in-depth preview of dozens of homes in a single day, allowing them to focus only on those houses that they know they like,” he added. “All of the energy and commuting for potential buyers and agents is greatly reduced. This breakthrough has hugely simplified the entire home-buying process from start to finish. As an agent, you can run 50 house tours a day if you want. As a buyer, you’ll know exactly how your home will look before you even start to pack.”