“The companies that will survive the current tough conditions in the real estate market will be those that make the best use of technology”, said Aamir Butt, new chief executive of the 3D visualisation pioneer United Lane.

United Lane considers the US real estate market one of its core interests and has developed a state of the art online 3D visualisation tool to support it.

“We have polled real estate companies across the US and all of them have pointed out the importance of technology in the current market.

“Making an investment in technology now could be the difference between coming through and not coming through,” said Butt.

Polling real estate agents across the US, United Lane found that all of them were viewing technology as essential to get clients through the door.

With each agent stressing the internet was driving an appetite for information from customers that was now accelerating because of the sheer numbers of unsold properties on the market.

“We found that though people are searching on price and location that technology plays a key role in that,” said Butt.

“You have to be able to have a website that can show a whole range of information and allows properties to be grouped like that. When someone clicks on something they are interested in buying, they now expect a whole suite of technology applications to help them in their choice.”

On the East Coast, in New York, that means that the typical high tech armoury of a successful real estate company will include video bios of brokers, virtual imaging to demonstrate new buildings not yet completed, 3D interactive floor plans and online video tours of a prospective property.

On the West Coast, in the Bay area, realtors are looking to combine new developments in mobile phone locational technology and increased 3G bandwidth to be able to send out large amounts of information via the mobile web, while using the same technological weaponry of their colleagues on the East Coast.

3D visualisation and combining information from multiple sources is also being seen as a growth area.

“People want to be able to click on a particular floor of a development, or on a house, and be able to walk through it,” said Butt.

“Though what we are now seeing is a trend for realtors to want to combine information from Google Earth and to try to bring in information about the local area too.

“If local businesses have put that information on the web then the really forward looking real estate websites are looking to add that to information about a property – it’s real estate Web 2.0.

“Portfolio’s of information are now being put together for properties and neighbourhoods and we want to able to develop the 3Dvisualisation tools that people can help people put that information together.

“We don’t just want people to be able to see the property we want them to be able to see where is stands in relation to other houses and parks on United Lane.”

For more information or to arrange an interview with United Lane contact:

Peter Warren, Executive Vice President of Communications on:
email peter.warren@unitedlane.com
Office 00-44-207-100-1389
Mobile 00-44-7870-558635
Skype petewarren