If you’re a real estate professional, this scenario likely sounds familiar. You have clients looking for a home in your community, but they’re not physically there themselves. Maybe they live nearby but are away on long-term business, or maybe they live elsewhere and are looking to move to your locale. Either way, they’re hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away from the properties they’re eyeing and it’s not feasible for them to fly to you just to walk around a few open houses for an hour.

What do you do? You can send them pictures of homes via email. You can message them links to listings you think they might be interested in. Or, you can allow them to walk around the property via a virtual reality tour that makes it feel like they’re actually there. This is just one of the uses of virtual reality in real estate, and it’s already changing the industry for the better. Let’s explore.

What is Virtual Reality?

Put simply, virtual reality, or VR, is the process of allowing someone to feel like they’re physically in a space, even though they aren’t. If you’ve ever sat in a racing game simulator at the theme park, you’ve experienced VR firsthand. This same technology is now opening up doors for real estate agents to showcase homes and properties in an entirely new, more interactive way.

Typically, interested buyers will wear a specialized VR headset that allows them to “see” the properties from an up-close and personal perspective as if they’re walking through the home room by room. They can turn corners, turn all the way around, zoom in on a feature to get a closer look, and more.

How Does it Help Real Estate Professionals?

As mentioned above, a virtual reality tour is significantly more interactive than anything you can show via a 2-D photograph. For instance, while a picture of a bathroom might show the sink from one angle, and the bathtub from another, if a person is experiencing a VR tour, he or she can see the entire room in one fell, 360-degree swoop. This can help them better visualize dimensions, layouts, spacing and more.

While VR tours are especially beneficial for those who can’t be at a physical open house, they’re also ideal for anyone looking to buy a home, as they can drastically reduce the amount of time, effort and resource it takes to schedule multiple showings. If someone can get a “feel” for a home without having to load up into a car, drive there, and walk around, the decision-making process is shortened, definite “no”s can be determined and eliminated sooner, and decisions can be made more quickly.

Upping the Personalization Factor

As VR technology continues to sophisticate, there are now apps that allow you to customize a room with your own furniture or personal touches so you can truly see what it’s like to live there. One of the main initiatives of any real estate agent is to help prospective homebuyers look past a home’s current decor and design and remember that they can change things around once the space is theirs. Anyone who’s ever said “It’s just shag carpet; it can be removed” or “You can easily paint over that wallpaper” knows that these are common refrains. In fact, if you’ve shown a lot of older or outdated properties in your career, you may be wondering where you can buy virtual reality stocks today!

Now, interested prospects can use VR to change the furniture around in a room for sale, add new pieces in, or take out some items, to get a clearer sense of the potential that each space holds. This can improve an agent’s selling power by helping to eliminate one of the most common pitfalls that this industry experiences: a buyer not being able to “see himself” in the home due to its current setup. This feature also allows buyers to transform empty homes or newly constructed ones that can feel stark and empty into decorated, cozy spots that are essentially move-in ready.

Moving Forward: The Future of VR and Real Estate

As programmers continue to expand what VR is capable of, real estate agents should be watchful, as most of its features are applicable to this industry and can make myriad processes easier and less expensive than ever before.

Automated technology is already changing the way many industries operate, and the real estate sector is no different. If we can offer our clients a more interactive, personal and in-depth touring experience, why wouldn’t we? It’s touches like these that set professionals apart from the pack and help turned interested prospects into long-term customers and happy homeowners.