Ecommerce has replaced 'try before you buy' with choosing from stylised photos, reviews, and digital descriptions for everything from clothes to gadgets to books. However, buying property remains an area where we’re hesitant to go fully digital.
Ecommerce has consigned the act of ‘try before you buy’ to shopping history. We choose clothes based on stylised photos and airbrushed models, we pick gadgets after reading reviews, and we buy books without first leafing through their pages. One area we’re more reluctant to go all-in on digital, however, is buying property.
Online: a new home for estate agents?
Over the past decade we’ve seen the rise of challenger brands in the property sector, with online platforms replacing high street estate agents. In the early days, the forecast looked promising. According to a 2015 article, online estate agencies could increase to 50% of the total market by 2020 – a stat which has since been widely cited. However, as of Q2 2022, online agents had a market share of 7.4% of exchanges in the UK. A survey of real estate satisfaction conducted the same year found that if you choose to sell with an online estate agent, you are seven times more likely to complain about lack of market knowledge (14% vs 2% for high street estate agents) and more than twice as likely to complain about poor quality photos.
Try before you buy 2.0
Despite its growth into the digital domain, trying before buying remains a critical part of the property purchasing journey. However, because of its growth into the digital domain, this is a market ripe with opportunity for businesses looking to enhance this key consumer behaviour. Emerging technologies like augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are being implemented into software and mobile and web applications, allowing prospective buyers to view properties without leaving their own homes.
Architectural firms meanwhile are using the technology to create to-scale visualisations of designs, allowing clients to ‘walk through’ renovation projects and adjust features and physical assets, such as furniture, flooring and lighting.
Manufacturers and retailers are also taking advantage, creating consumer apps which allow users to digitally project physical assets into their properties, giving them a better idea of dimensions and fit before buying a product.
Optimising operations
AR software development is also optimising the operations of property businesses and the productivity of their workforces. Architects, for instance, can collaborate remotely on building blueprints and planning documents, changing layouts in real time, without the need for site visits.
Combining this with cloud-based tools allows data to be automatically fed into platforms used by teams in other departments, such as sales and customer care. This can provide up-to-date insight and analytics, reducing the time needed for manual tasks and communication.
Augmenting ‘try before you buy’: AR and VR in action
Looking for inspiration? A growing number of businesses have successfully adopted AR and VR software, both on the consumer and enterprise side. Here are a few examples:
Fluid Pictures: a first for British TV
Fans of the BBC show, Your Home Made Perfect, will have seen what can be achieved with VR. VFX firm Fluid Pictures worked with the show’s production company and architects to reconstruct participants’ houses into dream homes. VR headsets allowed homeowners to explore the designs in detail, based on architectural plans, marking ‘a first for British television’ according to David Throssell, one of the firm’s founders. Experience is everything, and the impact of these lifelike renderings highlights the importance of selecting software and applications that are underpinned by high quality graphics.
IKEA unpacks VR/AR
IKEA was one of the early adopters of VR and AR in the home furnishings market, releasing its VR Experience app in May 2017 and Place later the same year. The former allowed users to explore a virtual kitchen and worked with the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift VR headsets. The latter opened AR technology to a far wider user base, allowing consumers to digitally place IKEA furniture and products into their own homes via their smartphone.
Zaha Hadid architects a VR future
Another pioneer in its field, Zaha Hadid Architects has its own VR Group, founded in 2014 to further the adoption of VR and AR software and hardware. Part of its work focuses on collaboration and the importance of creating an ‘immersive collective collaborative environment.’ It sees such environments as ‘essential for effective knowledge exchange, and for creating and hosting holistic, multi-author constructs.’
Smaller firms in the property sector may lack the funding and research resources to pursue as grand a path as Zaha Hadid Architects, but its work highlights an opportunity to improve business operations that’s available to all firms. VR can be used to hold virtual meetings, for example, while real-world environments can be simulated to aid employee training.
Try before you buy will remain a critical aspect of the consumer journey in the property sector. However, thanks to VR and AR software development, this is being reimagined, benefitting buyers and businesses. Appdrawn offers a range of prop-tech software development services, helping to support this dynamic market. Get in touch to find out more.