How VR and AR are transforming the property sector

The process of pur­chas­ing a house requires a buy­er to make numer­ous view­ings, study the floor­plans and use their imag­i­na­tion to deter­mine whether the property’s spaces could serve their needs. But vir­tu­al real­i­ty (VR) is help­ing buy­ers to explore poten­tial new homes with­out step­ping out­side their doors, offer­ing them inte­ri­or design sim­u­la­tions and vir­tu­al walk-throughs. 

The tech is not only use­ful for estate agents. VR and aug­ment­ed real­i­ty (AR) are becom­ing pow­er­ful tools that con­struc­tion man­agers and archi­tects can use to analyse designs and solve prob­lems on larg­er-scale projects as well.

Property design: helping clients visualise their dream home

Archi­tec­ture firms are using VR to show­case yet-to-be-built res­i­den­tial prop­er­ties to prospec­tive buy­ers, invit­ing their input before con­struc­tion begins. This makes home design a more col­lab­o­ra­tive effort. 

“We’ve made shar­ing this process a cor­ner­stone of our prac­tice and devel­oped many tools to make it acces­si­ble,” says John DeFor­est, founder and prin­ci­pal of DeFor­est Archi­tects. 

Using head­sets, hand con­trollers and IrisVR soft­ware, the Seat­tle-based firm’s archi­tects are able to walk their clients through their vir­tu­al designs.

One of the most expen­sive and unhap­py things is a client not under­stand­ing what they’re going to get

“Many clients find tra­di­tion­al 2D draw­ings hard to inter­pret, so VR offers an intu­itive way to eval­u­ate spaces, offer­ing insight on room pro­por­tions, light­ing and win­dow views,” says DeFor­est, adding that many of these insights would be tricky to gath­er even from phys­i­cal 3D mod­els. 

For instance, a VR walk-through of a planned house with views of Mount Rainier allowed clients to envis­age how the vol­cano would look from its win­dows, giv­ing them greater con­fi­dence in the architect’s con­cept.

Fea­tures such as lat­i­tude, time and date can be entered into the sys­tem, which can demon­strate how nat­ur­al light would move through a prop­er­ty through­out the day. This has enabled clients to make choic­es such as whether to install a pool in the gar­den or not, depend­ing on how much time it would be exposed to the sun.

It’ll be real­ly valu­able for sales when VR becomes more real­is­tic. That will cre­ate a real emo­tion­al impact, which archi­tec­tur­al ren­der­ings just can’t achieve.

Dif­fer­ent design iter­a­tions can also be made and flicked through in VR, help­ing clients to decide how to use a space. For instance, the buy­ers of a con­vert­ed barn were shown dif­fer­ent func­tions for it, from a dance hall to children’s bed­rooms.

All of this helps to man­age people’s expec­ta­tions, says DeFor­est, who adds: “It low­ers stress lev­els and reduces the chance of a last-minute scram­ble. One of the most expen­sive and unhap­py things is a client not under­stand­ing what they’re going to get.”

And there’s an envi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fit: few­er meet­ings in per­son are required. “Some­times we work with clients at great dis­tances,” he says. “So meet­ing them with­in a VR prop­er­ty means there’s less fly­ing.” 

Construction: using VR to spot problems early

On larg­er-scale com­mer­cial projects, VR can help con­struc­tion com­pa­nies to design with pre­ci­sion and avoid cost­ly alter­ations dur­ing the con­struc­tion phase. Anglian Water’s con­struc­tion arm, @one Alliance, uses Resolve VR soft­ware to build water treat­ment cen­tres, for instance. 

Three-dimen­sion­al mod­els are designed and export­ed into the pro­gram. Users don head­sets or access the sys­tem on their desk­tops, look around the space and click into indi­vid­ual objects to explore these in more detail. The sys­tem also has a ‘fly’ mode, enabling peo­ple to move around at height or see through lay­ers of the mod­el. 

This ultra-immer­sive fea­ture means that design experts and novices alike can review mod­els and spot prob­lems such as valves that would be hard for main­te­nance engi­neers to access or inef­fi­cien­cies in the pipework.

Many clients find tra­di­tion­al 2D draw­ings hard to inter­pret, so VR offers an intu­itive way to eval­u­ate spaces

“The use of VR allows teams to con­fi­dent­ly assess the site for issues before it gets built and increas­es engage­ment with our exist­ing 3D mod­els, improv­ing the qual­i­ty of the real-world prod­uct,” says Richard Mor­ris, engi­neer­ing imple­men­ta­tion man­ag­er at @one Alliance. 

He notes that obtain­ing inter­net access and suf­fi­cient band­width to use the sys­tem can be dif­fi­cult at some of the company’s more remote sites. “You need to be able to con­nect to 4G or Wi-Fi to down­load 3D mod­els and join meet­ings. Although the sit­u­a­tion is improv­ing, it is frus­trat­ing to find that many rur­al areas of this coun­try still have poor con­nec­tiv­i­ty.” 

Construction: using AR to create digital replicas

Coral But­ler, group head of dig­i­tal project deliv­ery at PM Group, uses XYZ Reality’s AR sys­tem HoloSite while out on site for big projects. This includes a bespoke hard hat and visor for view­ing the AR. 

The tech enables her to project her dig­i­tal mod­el on to a build­ing at any stage of con­struc­tion so that she can spot any dis­crep­an­cies and make changes in her design soft­ware lat­er. This ensures that she has the most accu­rate vir­tu­al ver­sion of that prop­er­ty – a ‘dig­i­tal twin’ – as the project con­tin­ues.

Using HoloSite helps to accel­er­ate the con­struc­tion process, reduc­ing the like­li­hood of exces­sive design changes and extra work for the builders. “It saves on a huge amount of build­ing infor­ma­tion mod­el­ling pro­cess­ing. This elim­i­nates costs and unnec­es­sary resources,” But­ler says. 

One way the process could be improved is through automa­tion. “If you’re out on site and some­thing is not the same as in your 3D mod­el, you have to raise an issue man­u­al­ly,” she says. “Ide­al­ly, that would be auto­mat­ic, and it would feed back over the cloud to your design soft­ware.”

Viewing and selling: virtual tours for buyers and renters

Over the past 18 months there has been a sig­nif­i­cant increase in the num­ber of estate agents using vir­tu­al view­ings to let buy­ers assess their prop­er­ties while pre­vent­ing unnec­es­sary jour­neys dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. 

Lon­don-based agency Aspire, for instance, has been using Mat­ter­port VR soft­ware. Its tours, which are opened via a hyper­link in an email invi­ta­tion, can be con­trolled by the agent or the client. They are accom­pa­nied by the agent’s nar­ra­tion as they ‘walk through’ a prop­er­ty togeth­er. It’s the clos­est thing some­one can get to a real-life view­ing, accord­ing to Matthew Dabell, Aspire’s MD.

“It can save a lot of time for prospec­tive buy­ers or ten­ants,” he says. “I think those who are seek­ing to move from a dis­tance find it more use­ful than some­one mov­ing local­ly, where a phys­i­cal view­ing is rel­a­tive­ly easy to arrange.”

The vir­tu­al tours help buy­ers to nar­row down what fea­tures they real­ly need in a prop­er­ty before com­mit­ting to phys­i­cal view­ings. The facil­i­ty is a time-saver for staff and has been espe­cial­ly help­ful for vul­ner­a­ble clients. One old­er person’s house was sold by Aspire last year after 22 vir­tu­al view­ings fol­lowed by only two actu­al vis­its.

House dress­ing is anoth­er pow­er­ful tool at the agents’ dis­pos­al. Var­i­ous dec­o­ra­tive styles can be super­im­posed on to images of an emp­ty home, giv­ing buy­ers a bet­ter idea of how it could feel with their tastes applied to it. Dabell reports that a “Scan­di redress­ing” helped his firm to sell a house in Ful­ham for £1.3m ear­li­er this year.

This rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple VR sys­tem does not require head­sets and can be a help­ful tool for prop­er­ty buy­ers, but there is “no replace­ment for a full phys­i­cal tour to pro­vide that warm, fuzzy feel­ing when you find your dream home”, Dabell says. “And it is, of course, still vital to see the fin­er details of the prop­er­ty and suss out the local area.”

The future of immersive tech in property

DeFor­est believes that the vir­tu­al view­ing expe­ri­ence will become ever more life­like as the tech­nol­o­gy advances. “It’ll be real­ly valu­able for sales when VR becomes more real­is­tic,” he says. “That will cre­ate a real emo­tion­al impact, which archi­tec­tur­al ren­der­ings just can’t achieve.”

But­ler thinks that automa­tion could stream­line the use of AR. She hopes that the tech­nol­o­gy will become intel­li­gent enough to recog­nise dis­crep­an­cies itself, so that users no longer need to flag these up man­u­al­ly. 

“This tech­nol­o­gy is rev­o­lu­tion­is­ing con­struc­tion, mak­ing it lean­er, pro­tect­ing our sched­ules and enabling us to allo­cate the right resources,” But­ler says. “The pos­si­bil­i­ties are end­less.”

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