Sell Property Quicker with 3D House Tours & the Virtual ShowHomes
How do housebuilders get buyers into homes that aren’t built yet? It almost sounds like a riddle, or the start of a tricky exam question. But house builders who are waiting for show homes to be built before they sell, are missing out on a new generation of prospective buyers.
Through the power of 3D house tours UK and Virtual Showhomes, EyeSiteView are enabling house builders to sell property off-plan quicker. A 3D house tour visualises every detail & dimension of your plot, providing access for the modern buyer to view from the comfort of their sofa.
At EyeSiteView we’ve delivered over 10,000 Virtual Showhomes, enabling the UK’s leading house-builders to take listings to market before a brick has been laid.
From physical to virtual showhomes
Housebuilders have been relying on brick and mortar showhomes for decades, buyers come into a physical setting and get a sense of their new home. It’s a vital tool in the marketing arsenal and will always have a place in the modern marketing mix.
The challenge is that not every plot can be built as a showhome and waiting for a showhome to be built can mean house builders missing out on potential buyers. This has been compounded by the modern buyer needing everything at their fingertips, including their new home. The modern buyer has normalised content being dynamic, digital and accessible from everywhere. Marketing efforts need to meet this buyer demand, offering digital recreations of new build homes where the latest upgrades, pricing and availability is accessible at the touch of a button.
Key benefits of 3D Virtual Tours
Buyers are entering the market, looking for a new home online via Purple Bricks, Zoopla and more. The Help to Buy scheme has also created an even greater appetite for new-build homes, especially amongst younger buyers who want their own home in these challenging economic times.
For housebuilders to meet this high demand, it’s crucial they get property sold off-plan quicker, which can be achieved through 3d virtual tours of Virtual Showhomes. Forget gimmicks like Google Cardboard or Samsung Gear VR, this is photo-real CGI. You might have heard of matterport 3d, we offer something very similar.
Here are the key benefits of 3D house tours UK:
- Complete exposure of the entire home or business listing
- Freedom to discover every detail in 360 degrees
- Street view with active site plans
- Customise important features such as bathroom & kitchen finishes
- Analytics on every tour
- Qualify leads before they visit the sales centre
- Saves prospective buyers time
- Convenience for the full sales team
Here are the key benefits unpacked:
Complete exposure of the entire home
Even with a physical showhome, the buyer might be restricted to only viewing certain areas of the house due to crowds, or only having a short period of time to look around. Physical showhomes are usually only built for a limited selection of the house-types, which means the buyer is limited to what they can explore. With a 3D virtual tour of a Virtual Showhome, the buyer can explore the entire home, spending as much time as needed in each room. Every house-type is built out as a digital twin, so the 3d virtual tour is available for every listing on the development. Analytics can be passed back to the sales teams, indicating which rooms and listings received the most dwell times; giving housebuilders essential insight into which listings need a heavier marketing push.
Freedom to explore every room in 360 degrees
3D virtual tours are built in photo-real CGI, bringing to life every detail, every element of dappled light and put the buyer in full control. Viewers can explore every room in 360 degrees, which makes the 3d house tour an interactive and engaging experience for the buyer.
Videos and visualisations are the most viewed content now on all websites, the days of a few photos and a write up are no longer enough for the consumer, and in our opinion not enough for housebuilders to sell to the modern buyer.
Street view with active site plans
Another advantage of the Virtual Showhome and the 3d house tour is that it can integrate seamlessly with the active site plan, which gives buyers a birds-eye view of the whole development. With the street view feature (think Google Maps), buyers can get down on street level and get a sense of where each home is on the map.
The active site plan is a map and plot-by-plot guide to every property on the development. It pulls through dynamic pricing data and plugs into any existing CMS.
Customise bathroom & kitchen finishes
Our existing clients find this to be one of the most useful tools with the Virtual Showhome. Within the 3d house tour, buyers can customise bathroom and kitchen finishes through the product selector feature.
This makes the Virtual Showhome more customisable and personalised than a regular showhome, ensuring the buyer builds a more emotional attachment to their listing of choice.
Analytics on every virtual tour
With physical showhomes, developers are limited to a maximum number of viewings a day but with the Virtual Showhome and 3d virtual tours, there’s no cap on the number of visits. Our clients have seen excellent performance from 3d virtual tours, with some developers seeing 700+ visits a month and an average of 9 min of dwell time per listing.
These sorts of analytics can be passed back to the sales team to inform future marketing pushes or even which virtual tour was the most popular.
Qualify leads
3D virtual tours are a great way to qualify a lead, if they turn up in person after viewing a virtual tour, they’re already a few steps further down the sales funnel – which is good news for those of you selling property! It’s just like selling a car, if they come back after a great test drive, everything is looking rosy.
With the virtual showhome, buyers can revisit the property and every detail of every room, at any stage of the purchase process.
Saves prospective buyers time
Potentially the most important aspect of a 3D house tour, is that it saves potential buyers a huge amount of time and travel expense. There will always be a requirement for a physical showhome but in combination with a Virtual Showhome, buyers can bring down the times they make a site visit and arrive happier when they do so. With buyers able to go deeper on their own viewing and research at home, via the 3d house tour, their visit to the sales centre means they are often a warmer lead that’s further along the buying journey. Your friendly sales team takes it from here!
Convenience for the full sales team
As a member of a house-builders sales team, you might be thinking “these virtual tours and showhomes look great, but I’m time poor!”. Well, think again as our virtual tours service is easy to use, straightforward to implement and will save your team time in the long-run. Here’s how:
- Simple to instruct – Optimised workflow designed in conjunction with the typical housebuilding process
- No additional work – To create a Virtual Tour, we use the technical information already created by your architects/technical dept.
- Easy to review with EyeSiteReview and analytics
- Simple to retrofit into exiting website structure – we’ll work alongside existing agencies or implement it ourselves into your CMS
- Ongoing support with any questions or queries
Build a Virtual Marketing Toolkit to Sell Property Quicker
Offering 3D virtual tours and Virtual Showhomes is a great way to drive exposure of your development and speak to the modern buyer. To avoid missing out on this generation of house-buyers, your marketing efforts will need an end-to-end digital makeover. A virtual toolkit that comprises of 3d virtual tours, active site plans, product selectors and more will help your developments accommodate the modern buyer.
Invest in the full customer experience
How should new build developers avoid missing prospects and buyers? Equip themselves by investing in a customer journey for the modern buyer and get familiar with a suite of digital first tools.
- You can read more about the 7 Reasons to Use Virtual Tours
- Or learn about the power of active site plans
- Dive deeper on ViewStation and bridging the gap between physical and virtual tours
How do housebuilders get buyers into homes that aren’t built yet?
3D virtual tours and the Virtual Showhome are designed for the modern buyer, to provide them a detailed and seamless viewing experience that can be accessed from anywhere. These virtual tools have given developers the power to market property in a premium way, without a brick being laid. Get your team up to speed and never miss a prospective buyer again.
