The increasing interest being shown in 3D technology has been underlined by the decision by real estate giants Realogy to agree to market United Lane’s Open3DHouse™ interior modelling software to its brands.
Realogy is the world’s leading real estate company with brands including such household names as Century 21®, Era®, Coldwell Banker®, Sotheby’s International Realty® and Better Homes And Gardens®, it has approximately 270,000 affiliated real estate brokers and sales associates, who work from 14,400 offices in 93 countries.
The decision by Realogy to market Open3DHouse™ to its brands is a sign of changing times in the real estate market, according to Aamir Butt, United Lane’s CEO: “Realogy is a company that is at the forefront of technological innovation and I would like to think that by its decision to market our technology that it sees us as part of that process,” said Butt, adding that the real estate industry in the US was now much more receptive to technology as it comes to terms with life in the first decade of the 21st century
“The impact of the current economic conditions and the rapidly developing world of the internet have been presenting realtors with a number of challenges.
“As a result realtor’s are turning to the internet in a bid not only to cut costs but also to respond to the fact that 90% of their clients are choosing to start their search for property on the web, said Butt.”
A change that has other messages for the modern real estate broker, the survey from the National Association of Realtors that found that nine out of ten searches start on the web also found out that 98% of those using the web to start their quest for a house subsequently viewed properties they had seen on the web.
Statistics that also mean that other properties were rejected, some because there was not enough information available about a property to sell it.
According to Butt, it is now essential for the modern realtor to engage those clients instantly and provide them with as much information as possible, if they can do that then they can cross one of the biggest hurdles and form a relationship with those virtual clients there and then at the same time differentiating them from their competitors.
A process that Open3DHouse™ has been designed to seamlessly dovetail into by letting people searching the web not only to get a feel for the property they are interested in by allowing them to walk around a 3D interior of the building but also by allowing them to decorate and furnish any part of the building using tools and databases built into the system.
“One of the things that we have discovered about the technology trends going on in real estate is that people want to have choice but also they want the reassurance of working with names that they can trust, that is why we consider our association with Realogy so valuable because we believe that the value of our brand is its ability to contribute to the value of other already outstanding brands,” said Butt, adding: “This now gives us the opportunity of working with the top names in real estate and bringing the value of our internet viewing technology via that association to a much wider audience.”
