How Tech is Changing the Way You Buy and Sell a Home

Virtual reality is no longer associated with just gaming. The real-estate industry is adopting this evolving technology to help you buy and sell your home in ways never before possible.

Say you’re moving to another state, or you’re interested in buying new construction and your home hasn’t been built. You can take a virtual tour of your future home without leaving the comfort of the one you live in now.

Or maybe it’s time to sell, and you want a leg up in a competitive market. Now you can entice potential buyers with a 3-D rendering of your home before they step inside for a showing.

How does it work?

“Real estate is probably the only asset class that is experiential and trades in emotion,” says Steven Giles, a broker with Douglas Elliman Real Estate in New York. “I think virtual reality technology has greatly enhanced that experience.” Giles says that in competitive markets, it’s especially helpful for sellers to have access to the latest technology.

San Francisco-based Matterport is one of several media technology companies offering brokers, real-estate agents and service providers 3-D cameras to capture a home’s interior. Matterport stitches the images together to provide a walk-through that uploads onto a cloud service. You can view the property as a 3-D model using your smartphone, tablet, computer or virtual reality headset.

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