Feature
Above and left: Metropix, PicturePlus and 3D. Right: Home3D virtual room.
“The market leader within a town will be the first to use 3D, as they tend to always be looking for a
competitive edge.” Brian Farrell Metropix
clients to see 360-degree pictures of the rooms; interactive walk-throughs and professionally filmed property videos. Virtual tours are more widespread but video tours, despite their popularity in the US, are still a rarity in the UK as a random search on any of the property portals will immediately demonstrate. Prices have come down considerably and most 3D floorplans are included as part of standard design packages. Metropix provides 3D plans at £3.95 as part of a pay as you go package; the Mobile Agent offers a £30 per month all in package which allows agents to use 3D or 2D imagery as they wish. Davis estimates around 30 per cent of their clients opt for the free upgrade to 3D plans but says it is important to focus on the value delivered, not the format. Whilst Farrell points out that a house with a floorplan is 30 percent more likely to sell. At the very top of the market it is possible to
create walk-through tours that accurately replicate the experience of a real-world visit where you can even open fridge doors and turn the tap on. The Hollywood type technology for such animation is very
26 l July 2012 l TheNegotiator
expensive and beyond the means or requirements of all but a select few developers and agents. Whilst not quite Avatar, the interactive
floorplans available from Home3D from
mydeco.com are at the cutting edge of design technology but available at a price affordable to the whole market. Home3D allows the potential buyer to dress a room from a blank canvas interactive floor plate. As well as having a choice of 120,000 items of real available furniture from the likes Ikea and John Lewis, the user can decorate a room or remove an internal wall for instance.
Mydeco.com Director, Malcolm McCallion
fantastic and helps the agent sell
“A high quality 3D plan looks
themselves.” James Davis Mobile Agent
says, “Visualisation is the real problem for a potential buyer, they cannot imagine what it could actually look like or what is possible – this is the future of property floorplan design as potential buyers use the product and get emotionally attached to the property.” Home3D grew from
mydeco.com’s service
to interior designers which enabled them to virtually design and dress a room with real products, which they could then purchase on-line. The company offers design packages starting from £99 for the eight virtually designed plans with the full bells-and- whistles virtual interactive floorplan coming in at £50 per unit. As cost is not the real issue, what is
preventing wider uptake of the latest technology floorplans and associated products? Lee Helliar, Managing Director at Real Property Tours, thinks that many estate agents are dragging their feet about virtual tours and videos as they are worried that the technology will become a barrier between the agent and the client – or that it will show the property ‘warts and all’ without the agent to point out, for example, the potential for refurbishment. But, she points out, “put a
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