Today, picking up the paper and looking at the property section feels like an antiquated luxury to peruse over breakfast. The housing market is booming once more with cities fighting to develop faster to cope with demand. There are distant rumbles the bubble may be about to burst again, but new technology could begin to change the way the property market functions from architects blueprints, construction planning, to commercial and domestic sale. The whole chain is going through a digital shake up.

This year Virtual Reality (VR) is fast becoming the buzz term and its capabilities extend to far more than just gaming. Imagine exploring a new property which hasn’t even been physically built yet, being able to see the scale of it and change the colour of the walls, fittings and features with a few hand gestures. Walking in and out of rooms, getting a sense of space, and deciding how to structure it. This all seems a little farfetched, but it’s not.

Architects currently use CAD software tools such as Sketch Up to show clients around their designs, but still often have to revert to scaled models to demonstrate their vision fully.
It’s effective but costly, even with the availability of 3D printing. It is now possible to convert a CAD design to 3D and view it in a full scale virtual environment, which means if design changes are required it is a more time efficient method to alter on screen or within the environment with the client there.  There is no need to create another expensive prototype.

With the developer edition of Microsoft Hololens released on the 30^th March 2016, Augmented Reality (as seen here ) is expected to be the dominant tool that bridges the communication gap between what an architect designs and what a construction manager can build, allowing them to work more collaboratively from the start of a project.

For the domestic property market, estate agents are beginning to make use of 360 videos to offer potential buyers tours around their properties, these customers can view on their tablet and mobile phones. The benefit for buyers will be revisiting a property when they want to, taking their time to look at the features and if they are looking at relocation from further afield, it means viewings are possible without the travel.

As house owners are trusting the sale of their homes to the digital world more with online property sites, it is highly probable entire sale chains will begin to happen without any in-person viewings taking place. That’s not to say in-person viewings will not adapt to the shift in culture either, agents are already digitising their sales materials, creating mobile apps to offer their clients value added options such as downloadable 3D floor plans and local area knowledge when visiting their properties. The phrase “there’s an APP for that” has never been more pertinent.

To discuss how to digitise your brand, realise it in 3D or create a virtual environment for customers to experience your product or service – contact us.