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Australian real estate image enhancement company BoxBrownie announced the launch of a proprietary 360-degree, virtual tour product.
The company’s model is largely an on-demand photo editing and content enhancement service and until now, has helped real estate agents enhance 360-degree photography with digital staging and the difficult elimination of “washed-out” windows due to exterior sun. This is its first direct, hosted offering to the industry.
BoxBrownie is named after Eastman Kodak’s original consumer-grade camera.
The new service is able to be produced on most contemporary smartphones, but it will look its best on the market’s higher-end versions, such as Apple’s iPhones X and 11. Ricoh’s Theta V and Z1 are also easy, excellent options, according to the press release.
“For the first time, there will be a portal for 360-degree virtual tours that includes the opportunity for users to better their marketing standards by editing imagery in the same interface, in the same way a professional photographer would for digital-still photography,” Peter Schravemade, BoxBrownie’s strategic relationship manager, said in a press release.
The system will allow BoxBrownie account holders to upload their 360-degree artwork, as well as an optional floor plan, label each room accordingly, and see a returned finished product within 24 hours. Links will be provided for sharing on multiple web outlets, including multiple listing services and portals.
Using a floor plan will offer an advantage, according to the company.
Dynamic floor plans are common in 360-degree tour environments because they serve as a navigable home base. In BoxBrownie’s offering, interactive red spheres hover in each room alerting the user to their location and from what standing perspective the room’s image was captured.
Unlike most platforms, a BoxBrownie.com tour only needs one or two 360-degree image captures per room. This is especially helpful when an agent is unable to visit the property because the seller can help. Here’s a sample made on an iPhone 11 Pro Max. Google’s free Street View app was also used.
Schravemade said in the release that the market is preferring pay-as-you-go models over subscription payments.
“Our clients have been resoundingly clear on the fact they do not want to be weighed down with subscriptions in a normal market. We find this situation to be even more relevant to the unfortunate current climate we find ourselves in,” he said.
The pricing structure is based on the number of images in the tour. The most popular price points are $16 for a tour with 15 images, and $24 for up to 25
images.
The company stresses that its limited image count and rapid turnaround make it one of the most efficient immersive tour options on the market. The company’s award-winning image editing and intrinsic creativity also suggest it could result in some of the market’s highest quality tours.
More information is available at BoxBrownie.com, and a sample tour is available here.
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Have a technology product you would like to discuss? Email Craig Rowe
Craig C. Rowe started in commercial real estate at the dawn of the dot-com boom, helping an array of commercial real estate companies fortify their online presence and analyze internal software decisions. He now helps agents with technology decisions and marketing through reviewing software and tech for Inman. He lives near Lake Tahoe in the northern Sierra Nevada of California.