Virtual Reality
Andrea Kirkby asks, is video the way forward?
I
t’s getting even more difficult to differentiate an estate agency from the competition. Web presence is now a sine qua non, floorplans, five years ago a real differentiator, are now practically compulsory. Tech-smart agents are
looking for the next new product and enhanced photography, walk-throughs and video tours are moving the game forward. Stephen Gravett, sales and marketing
manager for The Mobile Agent, says, “Now that everyone has accepted a floorplan has to be part of the package, they’re looking at how they can have the best one.” Adding photos to floorplans is one way of increasing the value to the user, as well as looking better. Videos too are catching on. But Lee Hilliar, MD of Real Property
Tours, says progress has been slow. “We’ve been doing this for seven years, and when we started I thought every agent would have video tours on their site within three years, it was such a no-brainer.” Admittedly, recession plays its part in that, two major agents had contacted Real
‘It’s important to focus on the value delivered, not the format.’
BEN QUINEY aUdIoagENt
Property Tours for up to a thousand tours a month, but pulled their plans when the extent of the downturn became clear. In fact, Jonathan Watkins of Rescom
Media says his clients are simply not spending on video at the moment. “Anything beyond the basic imagery in the real estate market is a fancy add-on,” he says, “and the only time we ever sell it is in new-build.” Ninety-five per cent of Rescom’s sales come from floorplans and other basic products; video, he says, is “a portfolio product”; clients want to see that Rescom has the capability, but they aren’t necessarily going to use it. Even so, in the last six to twelve months he has seen signs of improvement. “Estate agents want quality products, they want to differentiate, and they’re beginning to wake up. A small percentage of them, anyway.”
What’s oN offEr? There is a huge diversity of products, slideshows – still photos with added audio; 3600
floorplans giving 3600 pictures of the
rooms; professionally filmed property videos. Some are doing better than others; according to Stephen Gravett, virtual tours are proving quite popular, but video tours don’t seem to have caught on in the UK. The costs vary significantly. An
interactive floorplan can cost as little as £20, a slideshow might cost £65 or so. Fully filmed video tours are at the top of the range, costing from around £200 at the low end, up to £1,000 for a full day’s filming at the luxury end of the market. At the very top of the market it’s possible
Audioagent: the value’s in the voiceover.
to create walk-through tours that accurately replicate the experience of a real visit. Jonathan Watkins says, “You can even open fridge doors and turn the tap on.” The difficulty is the cost; “You need a gaming engine, basically, which is going to cost you
about £300,000! Think of the movie Avatar, and you’re doing that, but on a little two bed house in Peckham!” So animation seems unlikely to attract estate agents in the near future, though developers are using animated walk-throughs, admittedly of a lower specification than Avatar. Ben Quinley, MD of Audioagent says it’s
important to focus on the value delivered, not the format. For him, the value is in the
Real Property Tours bring reality to the web.
voiceover. Lee Hilliar agrees. “A slideshow is just the pictures the agent’s got on his site, dropped onto a timeline. Voiceover’s a completely different kettle of fish, voiceover’s really great at adding value.”
What’s INvolvEd? The basics are very cheap; photography, a piece of software to stitch the photos together into a panoramic view (Jonathan Watkins points out that this is available as freeware), and a web based applications. The Mobile Agent offers a Previsite camera kit for £199 and a web based application allowing agents to process and upload photos for £35 a month. The technology burden on agents is also very light. Stephen Gravett points out that all the data is hosted by Previsite, “so there’s no storage required on the agent’s servers,” The software is web based so that agents don’t need to install anything.
PROPERTYdrum NOVEMBER 2010 27
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