Last updated: 7th February, 2023
3D renderings are an excellent tool to market houses for sale, especially when they are being sold off the plan, or you’re trying to appeal to buyers outside of your usual location. They work well in many different advertising mediums, but they really shine on social media and websites!
How Do 3D Renderings Impact Real Estate Marketing?
3d render services are a versatile marketing tool that have been widely adopted in the real estate industry, and for good reason! 3D renderings can be used to market real estate in many different types of media, including traditional print media like newspapers and magazines, on billboards and construction fencing, as well as on websites and social media platforms, where they really shine and are ideally suited to be shared as a digital medium.
Since marketing is all about creating the right emotional connection and impact on your target audience, 3D renderings can help to add flare and emotional appeal to your marketing in ways that regular photographs or property drawings can’t. While traditional outlets like print media might have been enough to convince more old-school investors, the demographic with spending power is changing rapidly, and new forms of marketing are needed to align with them.
Instagram is a platform highly suited to using impactful, photorealistic 3D renderings to market your business or developments. Just make sure you clearly state when you’re using photos and when you’re using 3D renderings.
A younger millennial audience is more likely to be impacted by digital marketing on newer channels like social media and social networking platforms rather than marketing through traditional avenues, and to place more emphasis on social queues and images shared by friends. For this reason, high quality images that can be shared online or incorporated into videos can be a very valuable marketing tool! There’s a reason why some of the most expensive properties in the world have had solid digital marketing campaigns built around them.
This is particularly true if you make use of some of the most innovative technologies in the sector like virtual reality tours. It’s also true when campaigns are built around trying to create virality - 3D renderings are incredibly flexible and can be adapted to any environment, and can have practically any element added into them for that extra wow factor and viral kick.
This adaptability can also save you a lot of money, as 3D renderings can easily be used to cater to all segments of people who might be interested in your property. For example, if you’re trying to market to an older demographic, we could add more senior people into your renderings and more creature comforts, so the more mature people looking at the renderings get a sense they would fit in and be “at home” in the environment being depicted. If, however, you also want to market to millenials, we can use the same renderings but include a younger generation of people, for example young professionals or young families and the kinds of lighting and decor that would be a better fit for the younger audience. We can also easily create different views for different marketing channels.
Specific targeting like this is typically much more effective than using one piece of marketing for lots of different audiences or marketing channels, as using general marketing materials won’t resonate with anyone well, whereas tailoring marketing efforts to specific audience segments can really speak to them directly and drive up your interest and sales.
Benefits of Marketing With the Help of 3D Renderings
Gives a Boost to Pre-Selling Properties Off the Plan
3D renderings, and particularly virtual reality tours are a great way to allow potential investors / buyers to visualize a property development before it actually comes into existence. By showing off the property before construction even begins, you can give buyers a taste of what they will be spending their money on and what it will be like to live there. With virtual reality this is enhanced further, as you can give people the experience of being in the property, something that could only be experienced previously with costly display homes or apartments.
When people can visualize the end products they will be much more likely to invest. Think how important good photos are when listing real estate for example, they can make or break someone’s interest in even attending the property. This has become even more important in a socially distanced era where more and more people are buying properties without ever seeing them in person, and only able to look at images on real estate websites or social media.
Think how many more properties you could sell or rent if people from all over the country (and even the world) could avoid the fear of buyer’s remorse by getting a true sense of what it’s going to be like to live in the property before they buy, and falling deeply in love with your beautiful marketing images.
If you’re interested in our virtual reality tour experiences watch the video below to see how it works, or ask us for a demo link to try out a virtual reality tour yourself. All you need is a VR headset or VR compatible smartphone.
Build Trust By Helping People Get an Honest Understanding of your property
Everyone knows that real estate photographs are often misleading due to their use of perspective and other marketing tricks to make properties look better than they are in real life.
With 3D renderings, what you see is what you get. 3D rendering floor plans can be used to show accurate dimensions and property layout, and renderings don’t suffer in the same way from the perspective issues that people can find so deceptive in photographs. An accurate sense of the final product will encourage investment in your property, will save time as you won’t have people being disappointed when they arrive at the property thinking it was something else, and will build your reputation as the honest, trustworthy company or agent that doesn’t try to hide the truth from investors or buyers.
Create a Stronger Emotional Impact on Buyers
Mood lighting, decor and furniture in renderings help to create an emotional impact on viewers that will make them more likely to buy or invest
3D renderings can have many elements of color, mood and lighting added to them that are visually captivating and can retain the attention of a client for longer, sticking in their memory and almost compelling them to buy long after they have seen your marketing materials.
We can also easily stage your property with furniture and artwork that makes it look high end (the kind of thing people really love to share and which can go viral on social media). To physically stage a property in this way would cost many thousands, or might even be impossible depending on what you’d like to include (golden statues anyone!?), but with 3D rendering these elements can essentially be added very affordably.
3D renderings also allow a process of visual storytelling that photos cannot provide by giving us the opportunity to include people interacting with the available spaces. By creating an emotional journey and connection with the buyer using 3D visualizations you can create a sense of excitement and anticipation that can lead to higher sales.
Display the Surroundings
Show your property and the neighborhood it lives in from a bird’s eye view
For some buyers, the location and environment their property is in is just as important at the property itself. While most real estate photos focus on the interior aspect of the house (we can help you with 3d rendering interior design here), 3D renderings can be used to show the broader environment. Some people think at a broader scale, and so having many different views of your property on your website can appeal to a very wide range of potential customers. This is only limited by your imagination, as we can create entire cityscapes to surround your property for sale if need be!
Give a Sense of What Living in the Property Would Be Like
A relatively uncommon type of 3D rendering called a building cross section visualization / 3D doll house rendering could also be perfect for marketing your properties. These renderings create a cross section view of a property, as if you were looking at an over-sized or life-sized doll’s house, allowing people viewing the visualization to get a sense of where all the furniture would live in the house, how the rooms and spaces would all connect to each other and more. This type of rendering is excellent to spice up marketing materials, as they’re not something people are used to seeing and will just tune out easily.
The Future Is Virtual Staging and Virtual Reality
Let’s face it, empty houses are not appealing as they don’t give people looking at the property a sense of what it would be like to live in. A house that is furnished by comparison, can grab attention and interest from potential buyers. However, it costs both time and money to stage a house for physical tours.
To save time and money, everything is moving to virtual platforms including open houses. Taking a tour of your future property can be done right from your clients’ smartphones or laptops.
Virtual staging can be very useful for both the buyer and seller. For the seller, there is no waste of money or resources in setting up and furnishing the model house. For the buyer, traveling time and cost can be saved, but they will still get a sense of what the house will be like to live in.
Use 3D mockups to show how that games room or man cave will look once it has a comfy couch, pool table and television in there!
Using photos or 3D renderings, an empty room can be spruced up by adding furnishings and decor virtually. Prospective buyers can also try out how their personal style will look in these spaces by adding their favorite furniture, paint colors and more.
Virtual staging shows the possibilities of transforming a house into a home without actually having to transform it physically. However, it is important to disclose to buyers that a property has been digitally staged. These tools obviously shouldn’t be used to misrepresent or deceive potential buyers.
A Summary of the Benefits of using Virtual Staging and virtual tours in your marketing
Global Accessibility: In your advertising you can show potential clients through a virtually staged house from any corner of the world. All they need is a virtual reality headset or a VR compatible device like a smartphone, and an internet connection.
Saves Resources: The time, energy and money spent on physically setting up a house for tours can be avoided with virtual tours, and put towards extra marketing efforts instead if you so choose.
Easier to Visualize Multiple Options: Virtual platforms give you the freedom to try out different design elements. Potential buyers can work out which option suit their aesthetics best in real time. Clients can upgrade different features virtually, leading to 30% - 50% more sales of upgrades. This flexibility when “inspecting” houses is a big selling point you can use in your marketing.
Looks Amazing on Your Social Media or Website: 3D renderings can be spruced up in a number of different ways to make amazing images that can get lots of likes and shares on your social media profiles and websites.
Wrapping Up
If you’d like to take your real estate marketing game to the next level by creating engaging and appealing visual representations of your property, give us a call on 1-877-350-3490 or fill out our quote request form. We’d love to hear about your goals and how we can help you meet them, or to talk to you more about how our clients have used our work in their marketing.
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.