Virtual visit of a home: advantages et limitations

Do you want to buy a property in Geneva while living in Zürich? Or simpler, you don’t have time to travel to visit accommodations that you are not sure will suit you? The virtual tour simplifies things. From a computer or smartphone and a few clicks away on the websites of the real estate professionals who offer it, you are immersed in a house or an apartment, almost as if you really were there. If the property appeals to you, you can then decide to go there.

This type of visit has been around for a few years now, but this technology was often reserved for museums or other places of public interest. For 4 or 5 years, the virtual tour has extended to real estate and more and more professionals offer on their website a 360 ° tour of a property for sale or for rent.

When we talk about virtual tour, you must distinguish:

• Normal or panoramic photos: this is still the most widely used way to « show » an accommodation. The photos don’t really allow a visit, but if the quality is good, they give you a good idea of ​​the property. However, they can also sometimes be misleading.
• The video tour: as its name suggests, it is a video which takes you through a property. It is a good way to discover the inside and outside of an accomodation.
• The 360° tour: it is a succession of panoramic 2D photos which have been linked together thanks to a software. It gives an excellent overview of the premises and allows you to view all the rooms in detail. Visitors can walk around the accommodation at their own pace, returning as much as necessary to each space. This is the principle of Google Street View that everyone knows.
• The 3D visit: it is again the visit of the future which is often confused with the 360​​° one. These are computer-generated images on which we could add photos. The 3D tour is mostly used today when buying new off-plan housing, or by architects doing renovations, to show you the end result. The visit is as if you were navigating through a video game.

Advantages of the virtual visit for the buyer

– The first advantage is that you no longer need to travel to visit one or several properties which have aroused your interest, especially if you live far from the place where you want to buy or rent. The virtual tour is a huge time saver since it allows you to sort through what is likely to interest you. You will only visit the property « for real » if you are interested.

– Buying a home often involves an entire family. Your loved ones, your children and all those who are interested will be able to make this first visit with you as many times as they wish.

– You feel like you’ve really visited the place. You can take all the time you need to pay attention to the details. You can take a tour of the accommodation as often as you wish. Unlike the photos which only allow you to see a few selected pictures of the premices, this type of visit gives an excellent idea of ​​the surface of the rooms, of their arrangement. You can also visit the upper floor as well as the basement. It is probably not on a virtual tour that you will decide to buy, because other criteria are obviously to be taken into account, but it allows you to make a first selection.

Advantages for the seller

The immediate advantages for sellers are: on the one hand, to stand out from other properties that do not yet benefit from this technology and thus have access to more potential buyers who already have a clear idea of ​​the property. On the other hand, if the property for sale is occupied (by the owner or his/her tenant/s), the occupant is less frequently disturbed by visits, some of which lead to nothing. Only really interested people come to visit the accommodation. The curious who are not yet ready to buy – and there are plenty! – are most often satisfied with a virtual visit. In other terms, the virtual visit increases the attractiveness of the property for sale and makes it possible to sort the real potential buyers from the simple « curious » ones.

Limitations of the development of virtual tours

These limits mainly concern real estate professionals. Before taking any pictures, the owner must indeed agree, especially if he/she lives there. With a virtual visit, it is more difficult to “hide” imperfections: the accommodation must therefore be prepared and showcased before the shots are taken. Designing a virtual tour takes time and requires special technology: two things which have a significant cost for real estate agencies. Even if they are developing at high speed, the 360 ​​° virtual tour and all the more so the 3D one, have not yet entered the daily life of all real estate agents.

In order to facilitate and generalize the use of these technologies by its partner real estate professionals, Lookmove is developing a partnership with one of the main players in the virtual tour.