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Radical Galaxy Studio is still pushing the virtual property tour market with super clean interiors, on-demand finish changes and life-like walkthroughs.
However, homebuyers aren’t totally ready for it, yet.
The company recently launched a sort of go-between tour product for agents who sell new-build condos, residences and apartments from showroom floors. It’s a VR content management system (CMS) called Ground Control.
The software builds out prospective units for agents to tour with clients from a tablet, wireless connection and hi-res office monitor, for example, instead of from behind the typical, face-eating VR headset.
“We found that some buyers were getting lost in the tours,” said Radical Galaxy Studio Managing Partner Matthew Shaffer.
The interiors are sharp, computer-generated renderings devised from actual blueprints and interior design plans.
In Ground Control, night can be changed to day, televisions can be turned on and off, hallway lights dimmed, counter-tops changed from granite to concrete and carpets pulled up for hardwood. But the bones of the actual unit remain as they will be built, giving prospective buyers, quite literally, a look into the future.
Agents and their clients can takes notes in the software as well, recommending different finishes or fixtures, for example. There are also live updates of a unit’s market status.
For selling agents, Ground Control’s features and benefits give them a much more stable platform on which to market property than paper brochures and flat, colorful collateral ever could.
Virtual tours with this much clarity provide a better sense of possibility of purchasing, allowing buyers to actually see themselves in a unit, whereas traditional means of promotion might feel too far away for buyers and lack the ability to engage them.
“We want VR to be cog in the sales wheel, it shouldn’t be the only thing a buyer uses to make an offer,” Shaffer said. “Still, we think agents should think differently about how they market and sell.”
Ground Control also allows for exterior walk-arounds and control of drone footage, map overlays and street views.
Shaffer told Inman that his company has recently filed for patents on technology that will empower artificial-intelligence-backed interior design.
Radical Galaxy Studio has offices in Seattle and New York and has worked with Oxford Properties, Marriott, Cushman Wakefield and Hyatt Hotels, among other commercial and residential developers.
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