The recession is having a wide impact on several markets, and with a consumer base more used to shopping online that ever and always looking to save money, real estate companies are looking to sell homes with a minimum of interference and cost investment on both parts. The solution: Virtual Model Homes that can be viewed in the comfort of a consumer’s own home. Focus360 is one company providing this service, but it’s typically not cheap:
These highly-detailed 3D videos create the spatial experience of walking through a model home and visualizing every detail, before the home is even built. Though the price to create these tours is far less than their physical counterpart, high quality tours can easily cost $10,000 or more. “If you’re going to replace the tactile experience of walking through a real model home with a virtual home, it had better be astoundingly realistic or you might have the reverse effect and turn off your prospective homebuyer,” said Steve Ormonde, Co-founder of Focus 360, and the inventor of this technology.
The press release is about their new “Value Line” that cuts the cost significantly, but preserves the quality that customers need. But is the money worth it?
Absolutely!” stated Adam Hieb, Director, Sales and Marketing for Shea Homes. “The days are gone when we could afford to put up multi-million dollar model complexes. Every new Shea home community is different but in general, our use of high quality virtual model tours will greatly reduce the number of model homes needed. Instead of four models for instance, we might be able to get away with one, with the remaining models represented in 3D virtual reality. In some lower profile communities, virtual tours may eliminate models completely – a sales office might suffice. And while we’ve used Focus 360 for many years for our bigger budget, high profile projects, we’re excited that we can now afford them for all our projects.”
