VR Tours Can Help You attract buyers from other Suburbs, Cities, States or Countries
This is exactly the type of property many people are dreaming of right now under lockdown
Over the last six or so months people’s employment, financial and housing situations have changed more rapidly than any other time in recent history.
For years, cities and urban centers have been the place where everyone wanted to live - close to jobs in high-rise office buildings, and the hustle and bustle of big city life including cultural institutions, eateries, shops and nightlife.
But then COVID came along, and we all found ourselves in lockdown, trying to flatten the curve so that our hospitals and medical staff were able to cope with an unprecedented illness. And we realized there would be unprecedented changes in our lives too.
Clubs, bars, comedy venues and restaurants that made city life so enjoyable for many had to close temporarily or sadly, in some cases, for good due to financial constraints.
Many people have found themselves working from home, with some employers like Apple and Microsoft extending their work from home periods until early 2021, and others like Twitter letting their employees work from home for good. People working from home are starting to wonder if they need to live near a city at all.
Families who once loved city living have found their current living conditions under lockdown to be too cramped for a full family, and have started dreaming about more space.
Others want to get out of the city due to reduced cases of the illness in regional areas, and in some cases due to concerns that recent social unrest may become an ongoing phenomena.
Couple this with record low mortgage rates and we have a perfect circumstances for people trying to sell their properties outside of urban centers for top dollar.
the perfect circumstances for people wanting to sell their suburban, exurban or rural / regional properties for top dollar
A virtual reality tour of a rural property
All over the world, in the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia, people are setting their sights on buying suburban, exurban, regional or rural properties. The competition is intense and interestingly, many of these properties are being bought (sometimes in completely different states or countries) without even being seen in person as people prepare to move as lockdowns are restricted!
The demand for houses outside city areas is so high that removal companies can’t even keep up.
Here are just a few quotes from real estate industry insiders:
“The increase in buyer activity has been massive, and 95 per cent of the buyers my team is working with are families where the pandemic has finally been the straw that broke the camel’s back, and they are moving out of the city.” Source
“We have seen that people are more interested in that house at the foot of the mountains by the lake,” Glenn Kelman said on CNBC’s “Closing Bell.” “Rural demand is much stronger right now than urban demand, and that’s a flip from where it’s been for the longest time, where everybody wanted to live in the city. We’ll see how it comes back, but there seems to be a profound, psychological change among consumers who are looking for houses.” Source
“There’s hundreds of thousands of people looking for suburban homes, and I would say it’s not as driven by the Covid situation as it is safety and law and order, and that is now pervasive across the big cities of the United States, sadly,” Sternlicht said on “Squawk Box,” referring to recent protests that have sometimes turned violent. Source
“There’s no question that there are people who are fleeing the cities. There’s no question that the second home has been a place of refuge. There’s no question people are rethinking whether they want to be in high rise rentals with common spaces as amenities vs. having a home of their own with a backyard,” said Stuart Miller, chairman and former CEO of Miami-based Lennar. Source
Since COVID-19 struck, the number of people buying in less densely populated areas has risen. From May 18 through June 15, home purchase mortgage rate locks in non-urban areas increased 36 percent year over year, according to data from American Enterprise Institute’s latest Housing Market Nowcast.
People don’t want to live in a crowded area. Buyers want to be prepared if there’s another health crisis. They’re looking for more affordable housing. They can work from home, so their options have expanded. They want a place where several generations can live. Source
If you have a property outside of the city you’ve been looking to sell, now might be the perfect time to do it, and virtual reality tours are a great way to get ahead of the competition and to get more money for your property.
How virtual reality tours can help you sell your property “sight unseen” without a physical inspection
Since people have been stuck in their houses and unable to inspect properties, real estate agents have been coming up with some unique approaches to selling properties. For instance, one Long Island property received six offers over $499,000 from people who had only seen the house through a Facebook live video.
But we think there’s a much better option for selling properties without a physical inspection: virtual reality tours.
Even before the pandemic hit, real estate virtual reality tours - which give people the chance to view a property from anywhere in the world as if they were there, simply using their smartphone or virtual reality goggles - were taking the real estate industry by storm.
But since people have been stuck in their houses and unable to personally inspect properties, virtual reality tours have become even more important as a selling tool. For example, on Redfin before the pandemic, 0.5% of tours were virtual. Now roughly 33% of property tours are virtual!
VR tours are great, because they’re the next best thing to inspecting a property physically, and THE best thing when you can’t be there in person.
Unlike with Facebook Live videos, with a VR tour the user can control where they go in the property, how long they spend looking around, and can look at the entire house in detail. They can also get a spatial sense of how big the property and the rooms are, where the house is located in regards to other properties in the area and more.
So even though a person might be putting an offer on a house without physically seeing it, they can still use a VR tour to feel like they’ve been there. And in the long run, that will lead to more offers and higher prices for sellers.
If you’d like to see more examples of virtual tours, or talk about how we can make a virtual tour to help promote your property, get in touch today!
Looking for more than virtual reality tours? We also offer regular rendering services, home render services, even physical architecture mockup models that are 3d printed. You can find out how much all of our residential rendering services cost here.
Alex Smith
Manager & Co-Owner Render 3D Quick
Alex Smith is a manager and co-owner at Render3DQuick, with over 6 years’ experience project managing their large team of 3D rendering professionals. Alex is obsessed with architecture and is a CAD design specialist in his own right and an expert in the field of architectural visualization, 3D rendering, and virtual reality tours.
As the first point of contact when you get in touch with Render3DQuick, Alex loves sharing his knowledge and answering any questions you may have about architectural visualization or the latest technologies and techniques they utilize.
Connect with Alex on LinkedIn here.