In this fast-paced free webinar sponsored by United Lane, Bernice Ross, author of Waging War on Real Estate’s Discounters, will show you how obtain more listings at the right price and the right commission with today’s most powerful Web 2.0 tools. Learn the latest strategies to market your listings using video and United Lane’s Open3DHouse™ technology plus how to overcome the most common seller commission objections.

Join us for a Webinar on any of these Scheduled times…

Date: Thursday, January 7, 2010
Time: 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM EST
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/897792746

Date: Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010
Time: 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM EST
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/830936370

Date: Thursday, February 18th, 2010
Time: 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM EST
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/451762243

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar

System Requirements
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 2000, XP Home, XP Pro, 2003 Server, Vista

Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.4 (Tiger®) or newer

The challenging economic conditions in the US housing market are leading to a revolution in the use of technology as real estate businesses cut costs and seek to exploit new ways to reach customers

The revolution has seen intense competition develop on the internet as Realtors try to get the most from marketing budgets and harness the growing trend for clients to search for property online. However, as real estate agents suddenly realise the marketing opportunities that the internet offers them, it is forcing them to compete not only with each other, but also with the traditional media organizations that they used to support with their advertising.

‘Media companies will be competing more and more with broker sites,’ says Joy Hanawa, Real Estate GM and Chief Technology Officer for Adicio, which produces online classified advertising software. ‘In the US there are hundreds of MLS’ and only a few major sites on which to see 80 per cent of all listings.  Brokers with access to a listing service, such as an MLS, may have more data than local media companies.’

Getting personal
This glut of data that means that brokers are now fighting to differentiate their websites in what has become an increasingly ferocious battle to drive online visitors to their sites – and then hold them there.

‘What we are seeing now is a lot of personalization going on with website design,’ says Gary Cowan, Vice President of Products for the web development company Datasphere. ‘More and more people are conducting their research through the internet than through any other medium. People are spending hours and days looking for the right property, so you need to give them an experience when they are purchasing property through you that makes them think that they are with you.’

Without that sense of personal presence, potential clients will not stay on a site. The result has been the implementation of web technologies like those used by Datasphere, that try to deepen the amount of information that visitors receive from a website.

In Datasphere’s case, it allows real estate agents to group similar properties in similar places in what Cowan refers to as ‘communities’, so that the viewing experience can be customized for the person viewing it.

Information exchange
The flirtation with personalization does not stop there: personalization has turned into a full blown love affair for a real estate business that has not had to work too hard for customers for the past decade. In fact, some real estate web sites are now in the process of gathering as much information on their customers as some online dating sites, picking up data on age, children, finance, furnishing preferences and taste.

One company, California-based Geosemble, has come up with a model that adds in even more information. ‘The key here is that there are lots of different web sites that list home size, price, number of rooms, lot size, last purchase price and lots of detail on the home itself,’ says the company’s CEO Andre Doummitt. ‘However, what homebuyers need is a simple way to understand the context that the house sits in, i.e. the neighborhood, surrounding businesses, shops, restaurants, news articles about the area, events, and things like flood plains, nearby planned construction of buildings, rail lines, pollution sites.

‘In the old days, you had to gumshoe that sort of information, but it’s data that is really crucial to you, not just because of the investment that a house represents but also because of what difference that information can make to your quality of life.’

Going global
According experts, such as Inman News’ technology columnist, Professor Bernice Ross, it’s information that will increasingly be demanded, as a global market for real estate develops following the move to the web.

Investors are already taking advantage of the current economic climate and buying properties in the US sight unseen from as far afield as South America and the Middle East. Professor Ross predicts this remote viewing process will encourage people to decide that they want to move to a particular area – and then find ways of doing so, rather than seeing employment prospects as the sole driver.

Competition vs collaboration
Such an appetite for information, and its availability, will, according to Hanawa, see the beginnings of the competition between media and real estate websites, as each seek to adopt their models to attract customers and viewers.

‘What we are seeing happening is two industries seeking to redefine each other by adapting and developing the technology that has thrown their old business models up into the air,’ says Aamir Butt, CEO of 3D real estate specialists United Lane and an adviser on new technology models for Atlanta Real Estate. ‘Due to the freefall generated by the present market conditions which has put them under enormous pressure, both sectors are trying to build business models that not only replicate what they once did, but also take on new functions that they do not have any real expertise in.’

Butt predicts that the winners will be those who realise that, rather than competing, they should be working together, a view echoed by Hanawa. ‘Some media companies will join forces with brokerages to get listings in exchange for advertising,’ she says.  ‘Media companies have the local content, news, demographics and the local audience.  As media companies continue to improve their online presence with more community journalism – blogs and opinion polls – consumers will come to rely on these sites to gauge the value of property, and research the area where they want to live.’

However, Hanawa adds that any trend towards virtual buying in the residential market will be small. ‘Even in the future, virtual transactions will be rare, at least for home sales.  People may send info to their phone and Twitter about a place they are looking at, but they are unlikely to purchase without physically visiting the property and checking out the community and potential neighbors.  Buyers will be much more knowledgeable about properties and their locations before making a purchase decision.’

And, with Geosemble’s technology and websites such as rottenneighbor.com, checking out the neighbors is now more than a distinct possibility.

Blog: Mark Foreman

‘Virtual tours are great, but what if you don’t like the color of the living room?’

The constantly evolving technologies that help
us market and sell real estate all started with Gutenberg’s printing press in or around 1450. Fast forward to 2009. Fax machines, cell phones, digital cameras and the internet have created marketing tools unimagined 30 years ago – so what will the future of real estate marketing and sales look like?

No one really knows, but sci-fi author and techno-visionary William Gibson once said, ‘The future is already here – it is just unevenly distributed.’ Some innovative companies are already showing a glimpse of how agents will market their listings in the not-too-distant future: 3D technology is at the center of this movement.

Potential buyers already have the ability access property data, photos, flat floor plans, photo tours and virtual tours online, before they venture out to physically tour the homes. In the very near future, agents will be able to walk buyers through their listings virtually. If they don’t like the wall colors or floor style, they will change them with the click of a mouse. Want to see what the rooms look like with furniture? Simply arrange and rearrange with your index finger. Just about any item in the home will be viewable in a different style or color.

As a Realtor for over 21 years, I have worked with a lot of buyers who look at a lot of houses that they never buy. Some just like to look. And I can’t tell you how many times I have heard, ‘My furniture will never fit in this space.’ Having my buyers ‘fit’ their furniture in the rooms before they go out and look at the homes would make a tremendous time saving. They would only then look at homes about which they already have a sense of the interior size and layout. Most of my clients end up spending a lot of time envisioning how the walls will look in a certain color, or asking, ‘What if I changed the floors to hardwood from carpet?’

Many Realtors already use floor plans as part of their marketing package, which add depth to the information a potential buyer uses in making a decision whether or not to go see a home. Virtual tours are great, but what if you don’t like the color of the living room? How can you tell if a King-sized bed will fit in the master bedroom? A two-dimensional static floor plan lets you see the room layout, but it won’t allow you to place furniture in the rooms or play with different wall colors.

A new program, being developed by the Denmark-based United Lane Corporation, will soon allow home shoppers and commercial tenants to make and see these changes online. United Lane’s software takes that 2D floor plan and converts it to an interactive virtual 3D model that then becomes an open house – 24 hours per day. No more Sunday open houses; no more asking the sellers to leave for the afternoon; no more baking gingerbread cookies to make the house smell ‘homey’. Any buyer can look at and ‘walk through’ the listing anytime, from anywhere in the world. That’s powerful marketing.

It’s rare when a product/concept so unique and intuitive first comes to the market and almost everyone can immediately see how this could change the face of several industries. The early version of the program is impressive to say the least, but high-definition, video-quality 3D walkthroughs are already in the development stages. And purchasing consumer products through this venue might be as easy as clicking the Dell laptop on the desk in the den and inputting your credit card info.

It won’t be too long before every single piece of commercial and residential property in the world will have an interactive 3D rendering of the layout available to the owner, or made accessible to the public if the home is for sale. Planting a virtual ‘For Sale’ sign in front of these homes and buildings will let the world know that this property is on the market. Potential buyers will be able to ‘cyberwalk’ down United Lane, popping into the properties they are interested in seeing. Agents will benefit by taking buyers only to homes that they have a high level of interest in. The possibilities can only be imagined…

3D technology is being hailed by experts as one of the possible answers to the credit crunch, as web designers look for that extra wow factor to give their sites the edge in the economic downturn

Having already been the victim of one false dawn eight years ago, 3D technology is beginning to emerge from the shadows as one of the most exciting developments on the internet.

‘The trend is very clear,’ says Karthik Ramani, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Indiana’s Purdue University and an authority on 3D technology.

‘The real world is 3D and, as humans, we want things to behave in the way that they do in the real world, so going to 3D is very natural. It is the next evolution of the web.’

Techno race
The claims have not gone unnoticed by internet companies like Google and Microsoft, which have developed Google Earth and Microsoft Virtual Earth in what appears to be a race to capture the world in 3D on the web. These developments are now exciting traditional industries such as property sales and furniture design, and are spawning a whole new virtual world industry, far removed from current technologies like Second Life.

‘The rate of development of these technologies is already having an impact on the US real estate market,’ says Doug Garcia, the director of research for Colliers Parrish, a large real estate group based in the San Francisco area.

‘We’ve explored using 3D modeling on the market and are working towards a future where actual 3D tours will allow you to go to different floors of a building and look around the location using Google Earth.

‘Increasingly we think that people will want to use 3D to assess the value of a property remotely, and the challenge there will be in the refresh of the 3D worlds that will evolve, though I could see that happening with social networking for an area where people will work to contribute information.’

Superior interiors
And while companies like Google focus on the outside, other companies are now working hard to create interiors that show off properties and products. Here at United Lane, we want to form a closer association between 3D virtual environments and the real world.

‘Our aim is to make 3D technology available to anyone using the web,’ says Chief Technology Officer, Kresten Thomsen. ‘So, what we do is let people upload plans of their own houses from a 2D floor plan and populate it with real furniture and objects, change floors and wall colors and then render the whole thing in a photorealistic fashion, because people find that more compelling and attractive.

‘In our visualizations, we can even add the view from a window; that is how I see the internet going – it will be a believable mirror of the real world.’

Virtual world
While United Lane can make photorealistic images of buildings that do not yet exist in a remarkably short space of time, Vzillion, wants to go further. In line with the old vision of the internet bubble at the turn of the century, when developers promised a photorealistic world inhabited by lifelike avatars of real people, Vzillion envisages 3D with everything.

‘We think in 3D and we feel things in 3D. If you look at a virtual world you see an environment you are engaged with,’ says Antonio Collier, the company’s CEO.

Its offering for the future is a 3D virtual world where you are given the keys to a virtual flat that can be populated with the objects that you use in your everyday life. Objects which, according to Collier, will work in much the same way that they would if they were in your real room.
‘You will be able to go to Amazon and point and click and play a music movie on the TV in your virtual apartment,’ he says. Potentially, it’s a move to mesh the real world with Second Life – that might have implications for both.

3D thinking
Professor Ramani, whose resume also includes work at the prestigious Stanford Research Institute in California, says that the key factor in the use of virtual environments for people is the amount of data that a 3D world can convey.

‘I have worked with cognitive psychologists and we have looked at the way that people like to navigate 3D content. We gave them the ability to take snapshots from within the visualization and found that people always choose positions that allow them to convey the maximum amount of visual content.

‘Of course, there has to be some value for the 3D visualization to be useful, and we found that people considered the 3D interface much more intuitive than a 2D one.’

Part of the reason for this, according to a recent study carried out by scientists, is because our brains find 3D environments more reassuring. Their research suggests that the part of the brain governing vision is able to map out a copy of a 3D image by projecting it onto responsive neurons that can create a 3D model of an object.

‘Human beings are keenly aware of object structure, and that may be due to this clear structural representation in the brain,’ Charles E. Connor, associate professor in the Zanvyl Krieger Mind-Brain Institute at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, told Science Daily in October of this year.

In the study, Connor and colleague Yukako Yamane, a postdoctoral fellow, trained two monkeys to watch a computer screen while 3D objects were played upon it, while the researchers recorded the responses of neurons in the higher-level part of the visual area.

According to Connor, the research may ultimately reveal the reasons why our brains find some objects and views visually pleasing, yet dismiss others. The suggestion is that there may be an element of ‘pleasing comfort’ created in the brain among groups of neurons when they display an object.

Mark Foreman, one the most respected names in US real estate has joined the United Lane management team as Executive Vice President for Client Relations.

A Realtor for 21 years, Mark, who holds a degree in economics and political science from Yale University, brings a wealth of experience to his role with United Lane, which includes helping to improve the company’s flagship 3D real estate products, and working with and developing United Lane’s rapidly growing client base.

Mark has extensive contacts within the real estate industry, he currently serves as the Liaison to the National Association of Realtors’ Law and Policy group and is a former Vice President and Liaison to Committees for NAR.

Mark has also served on the Executive Committee, Strategic Planning, Member Policy and Board Jurisdiction, Credit Union Task Force, Leadership Academy Task Force, and Communications Committees for NAR.

“I regard getting Mark to agree to work with United Lane as a major coup,” said Aamir Butt, United Lane’s CEO.

“He brings to United Lane not only a wealth of experience in the real estate industry but also contacts at the highest level within the real estate world throughout the US”.

“Mark is already proving to be an exceptional ambassador for United Lane and its products.”

By being able to advise United Lane directly on the needs of the real estate industry, Mark has helped United Lane to develop our intuitive user interfaces with the industry in mind and road-tested United Lane’s 3D real estate products on US realtors.

“When I was offered the opportunity to join United Lane I was enormously excited,” said Mark. “Through my work with the NAR I have long realized the fundamental importance of technology to the real estate industry and the potential of 3D visualisation is huge.

“We are facing a time of enormous restructuring in real estate and technology is going to play a key part in how the industry is going to develop over the next 10 years. I am looking forward to being a part of that change, 3D technology will be the future of how buyers look for homes.”

Mark has extensive experience of the real estate market with Cornerstone Capital Mortgage & Real Estate Services, Inc , the company he founded, which has worked with clients such as the Federal Deposit Insurance Commission (FDIC), the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, General Services Administration, Fleet Bank, Chase Bank, Bank of America, GMAC, Clayton National, and the Bridgeport Housing Authority.

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

United Lane has announced the appointment of Aamir Butt as the company’s new CEO.

United Lane, the new corporate image for the pioneering 3D visualisation company, formerly known as Get Inside, has announced that Aamir Butt, previously a high level adviser to the Danish Government’s Gazelle Growth programme for new start ups, is to join United lane as CEO.

“Aamir is an entrepreneur with a proven track record of taking companies onto the next stage in their development, and we welcome him onto the board,”said Get Inside founder Kresten Thomsen, who will now become United Lane’s Chief Technical Officer.

One of Butt’s first moves since joining the board has been the rebranding of Get Inside to put it in line with the new technological developments that are now occurring on the web.

“The whole new development of the internet is about communication and experience.That is why we have created United Lane,” said Butt.

“People want to be able to get information instantly and more and more they will want to get that information on any device and wherever they are. If they get a bad information experience then they are going to go elsewhere. Our aim is to make sure that they have an experience so rich that they will want to get more of it.”

In line with those trends United Lane is now launching a new 3D visualisation experience for realtors.

Visitors to the site will be able to upload their 2D floorplans onto the web and see them instantly converted into 3D walkthroughs.

Potential buyers of their properties will be able to use United Lane technology to then add in their own furniture and change colour and decoration schemes.

“We think that this is a really exciting development,”said Thomsen.

“It is part of our ongoing commitment to develop technologies that help one of our core markets, real estate, to reap the maximum benefits.”

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