Worcester resident missing in waters off Puerto Rico
BUSINESS

Home, virtual home

Lisa Eckelbecker
lisa.eckelbecker@telegram.com
Realtor Kurt Thompson demostrates how he and his team use a 3D camera to create virtual tours of a house for sale. [Photo/Matt Wright]

PHILLIPSTON – Moving around the living room of a home on Royalston Road, Jeanne A. Murawski plumps cushions, smooths a throw blanket and opens window blinds.

In the middle of the room, she positions a black box-like piece of equipment on a tripod, and powers up an iPad. Through an app, she sends an order to the box, and slowly it begins to rotate.

The box is actually a nine-lens camera created by Matterport Inc. that shoots a 360-degree photo, one of many that will be shot over the next one to one-and-a-half hours, and then stitched together on a computer server to produce an online 3D tour of the home for potential buyers.

“They look at the 3D tour to decide, ‘OK, do I like it enough to do the drive to come out and see it,’ ” said Mrs. Murawski, an employee of Keller Williams Realty North Central Massachusetts, a Leominster real estate firm.

Not many Realtors are using the technology. It can cost several thousand dollars to buy the camera equipment, and shooting the images takes time. Hiring a service to shoot a 3D tour can cost a Realtor about $300 or more.

Yet those Realtors who have jumped into the technology say they think more of their colleagues will adopt the tool in the years ahead, as Realtors tap emerging trends to expand their access to consumers, and change the way the shoppers and sellers function.

“With a 3D camera, we’re really able to show the entire property, and that gives the consumer and the buyer the best online experience,” said Kurt Thompson, a Realtor and broker associate at Keller Williams in Leominster, who purchased 3D camera equipment about two years ago for about $7,000 to $8,000, and now creates 3D tours for all properties he represents. “From a seller point of view, again, there is a true picture of the property. We find that it causes less false showings, where a buyer could have easily determined that either the configuration or flow is not consistent with what they’re looking for.”

Marketing a home may seem like a straightforward prospect. Take nice photographs, gather information about a house, create an upbeat advertisement for print and email outlets, hold an open house and field the offers.

Some Realtors, however, say that in Massachusetts, especially in regions starved of inventory to sell, the process is speeding up. Consumers feel they must make offers quickly, and a 3D tour can help with that, said Marie A. Presti, broker-owner of The Presti Group in Newton and president-elect of the Greater Boston Association of Realtors.

“I tell people when they come to the open house, check out my virtual tour,” Ms. Presti said. They can go home, get online and “it’s as if they had a second showing.”

Realtors said they also think 3D tours give buyers a better sense of a house than still photos, a video, or a two-dimensional drawing of a floor plan. Some technology gives viewers a bird’s-eye view of a home.

Matterport, a young technology company based in Sunnyvale, California, uses its software and services to stitch together 360-degree photos taken by its cameras. The resulting images can be viewed as a tour, allowing a shopper to click or tap through a home. Matterport’s “dollhouse view” blows away a home’s outer walls and roof to create a 3D floor plan image.

Call the tour up on a smartphone, load the phone into a virtual reality headset, and a viewer can move through the virtual environment by looking around and turning.

Realtor Joan Witter, of Sotheby’s International Realty in Osterville on Cape Cod, took a Matterport 3D tour and virtual reality headset to an expo, and, “People were going crazy over it,” she said.

“I think this will take it a step forward, especially for millennials,” Mrs. Witter said of the virtual tour technology. “Everything for them is virtual.”

Tablet and smartphone apps such as Digs by Zillow Group of Seattle already allow consumers to upload photos of their homes, and then paint them virtual colors.

Yet some observers think virtual reality real estate tours are still several years away from widespread adoption. Many consumers simply don’t own virtual reality headgear, or see a need to purchase it.

Forrester Research Inc. estimates that demand for high-end virtual reality headsets in the United States will hit 1.8 million by the end of this year, and demand for smartphone-based units will reach 3.5 million. Together, Forrester recently reported, that represents less than 2 percent of all adults online in the country.

David Conroy, research and development lab engineer at the National Association of Realtors Center for Realtor Technology in Chicago, said augmented reality may end up with greater potential for those selling real estate.

This might not be so different from Pokemon Go, an augmented reality game in which users point their smartphone cameras at real-world landmarks to bring up an image that includes an imaginary creature. Home buyers, however, could point their smartphone cameras at a home and call up information about it or alter the view.

“Imagine if you could use an app on your iPhone to envision what an imaginary landscape would look like, or a different paint color,” Mr. Conroy said.

Contact Lisa Eckelbecker at lisa.eckelbecker@telegram.com. Follow her on Twitter @LisaEckelbecker.