How is VR Helpful for Custom Home Building

How is VR Helpful for Custom Home Building

by | Jul 18, 2023 | architectural rendering, Radical Galaxy Studio, Virtual Reality, VR, VR Virtual Tours

Harnessing Virtual Reality (VR) in Custom Home Building: A New Age Revolution

The home-building industry, steeped in tradition and craft, has always been a fertile ground for innovation. From the dawn of the first architect’s compass to computer-aided designs, every new technology has played a transformative role. In the current era, Virtual Reality (VR) stands at the forefront as a groundbreaking technology that offers unparalleled advantages to custom home builders, promising a fusion of innovation with tradition.

Breathing Life into Blueprints with Enhanced Real Estate VR Visualizations

Gone are the days of mere 2D drawings and static 3D renderings. VR technology is reshaping client presentations. Imagine donning a VR headset and stepping into the foyer of your dream home or walking into a custom-designed kitchen before it’s even built. This sensory-rich, immersive preview is a quantum leap from traditional visualization methods. Not only does it allow homeowners to tangibly experience their dreams, but it also provides a holistic understanding of design elements, finishes, and spatial layouts. VR transcends imagination; it’s a gateway to experiential reality.

Accelerating Dreams with Faster Decision-Making

Traditional design reviews often involved lengthy discussions, primarily because of the gap between what’s on paper and what’s in the client’s mind. With VR, that gap narrows considerably. Real-time visualization means clients can see, adjust, and finalize design elements on the fly. Whether it’s the hue of the living room walls or the texture of the bathroom tiles, every tweak is instantly viewable. This interactivity leads to reduced decision-making time, ensuring the design process is fluid and efficient.

A Symphony of Ideas: Improved Client Communication

The home-building journey is a collaborative dance between architects, builders, and homeowners. VR offers a synchronized platform for this dance. No longer do teams have to rely solely on blueprints and mock-ups. With a VR headset, everyone—be it the architect in New York or a client in Tokyo—can convene in the same virtual space. This uniform visualization eliminates ambiguity, reduces the scope of misinterpretation, and fosters a spirit of holistic collaboration.

Building Right the First Time: Reduced Errors and Change Orders

Errors in the construction process aren’t just setbacks; they’re costly missteps that can escalate project budgets and timelines. Fortunately, VR acts as an invaluable auditing tool. By simulating the complete home in a virtual space, teams can run detailed walkthroughs to identify potential design issues, structural flaws, or aesthetic mismatches. This early detection is pivotal in preventing time-consuming and expensive reworks, ensuring the project remains on track.

The Future Showcase: Using VR to Attract New Clients

In a market saturated with builders, standing out is crucial. VR offers custom home builders a dynamic tool to make a memorable impression. A VR tour, with its intricate detailing and interactive design, can be exponentially more compelling than a slideshow or a brochure. By crafting immersive experiences for potential clients, builders can showcase their innovation, dedication to quality, and commitment to delivering unique homes.

Enhancing Client Relationships with VR

An often under-discussed aspect of VR is the trust it fosters. When clients can virtually step into their future homes, witness the beauty of design, and have a say in customization, it instills confidence. They’re no longer investing in an idea but a tangible experience, which strengthens the bond between the client and the builder.

Conclusion

As technology expands, Virtual Reality stands out as a beacon for the custom home-building industry. It’s more than a tool—it’s a paradigm shift, propelling every phase of home-building into the future. At Radical Galaxy Studio, our journey with VR has been transformative. Working closely with both home builders and homeowners, we’ve seen firsthand the monumental difference VR brings. It’s not just about constructing homes; it’s about crafting dreams and memories. For custom home builders and clients alike, VR isn’t a mere glimpse into the future—it’s the present shaping the homes of tomorrow.

Virtual Tours for Commercial Real Estate

Virtual Tours for Commercial Real Estate

by | Jul 27, 2021 | VR Virtual Tours

Showing a property remotely to a potential buyer or tenant is not new, but the delivery method is changing. Over the years there have been large advancements in technology for built spaces (Matterport falls under this category). However, technology has often lagged for unbuilt spaces, such as pre-construction sites, outdated buildings or raw spaces, with owners still relying on expensive model units or building out spec TI. Now both software and hardware (VR headsets, cellphone processing speeds) have improved, but uptake among real estate users varies greatly.

Since the start of Covid and the dramatic decrease in onsite tours, we have seen dramatic differences among owners and brokers’ utilization of technology. Some groups are waiting to lease-up until after their delayed construction processes pick up again, while we’ve seen other groups rapidly improve their whole online presence, from property websites featuring virtual walk-throughs, different tenant improvement build-out templates, and fly-through videos highlighting neighborhood and building key areas that might not be visible during Covid.

Many different groups have reached out: tech firms looking to sub-lease, brokers and owners looking to pre-lease/pre-sell, developers and funds looking to raise capital remotely, all with slightly different goals but most settling on similar tech solutions. One thing is clear from all the increased inquiries: commercial real estate is long overdue for a digital update and virtual tours have become part of the new normal.

Clients are now expecting to “see” proposed renovation plans more clearly than they could from blueprints. Some of the common visualization terms and concepts are:

360 Tours – Users can click hot spots on a map and look at 360-degree views from that spot. Similar to Google Maps but useful for large floorplans or entire neighborhoods. We had REOCs use this for planning commission meetings. Also had brokers request the product for pre-leasing, especially retail/office within mixed-use developments.

360 Example

Flythrough Animations – Similar to 360 Tours, but the client drives the views and the story-telling. We saw it used for everything from pre-selling new condo and office projects to showcasing to LPs the proposed value-add plans. Given the halt of on-sites, some funds are also using these to give prospective investors “virtual tours” of assets in the portfolio.

Architectural Animation Example

Virtual Reality – This was popular at sales and leasing centers pre-pandemic, as well as at fund AGMs pre-COVID. Since COVID, headset usage has mostly been replaced by desktop versions where users would walk through a space with their keyboard and mouse.

Virtual Reality Examples

Value-add Real Estate Technology:

-Potential tenants often have issues visualizing what a space can look like. Virtual content can be customized to a tenant type in mind whether it’s creative office or life science lab space. Even multiple virtual build-outs cost a fraction of one physical build-out.

-Content can be viewed on-site or remotely; content can also be used in targeted marketing.

-Instead of having tenants visit 20 properties in person; they can review them all from their brokers’ office or their own office, and then view the top 2-3 in person.

-One of the interesting aspects of virtual tours that is often overlooked by owners is the SEO and branding benefits. Per an Omnivirt Study, compared to 2D content, 360/virtual content receives 300% more click-throughs, as well as resonating better with tech-forward professionals.

-While branding/websites should not be considered proptech, it’s an important part of programming an asset that’s often overlooked for commercial properties. Modern websites set the tech-forward message that many developers are trying to convey.