Creating the sense of ownership: VR tours in Real Estate industry

We all have heard people talking about the difference between ”a house” and ”a home” and tried to understand the terms by connecting them to our own experiences. But how do you know from the start, when you’re looking for a place to settle in, that is the right one? What makes a house the home that you were longing for?

The answer lays in the emotional connection you get to build with the place, while you see it. While you enter the door, you can easily tell by using your intuition if that place, be it empty or fully furnished, could turn into the home of your dreams. But nowadays, in the pandemic, without scheduling visits with agents and having afternoon-tours at the houses or at the apartments, the sense of ownership is harder to build by the real estate companies.

How can VR tours create an emotional connection?

Even if replacing the real tours with virtual ones includes decreasing the implication of the agent, many buyers still enjoy seeing their chosen houses or apartments on their own, so this is nothing but a great advantage. Virtual tours allow the client to have an independent tour from anyplace and at any time they want, on their own or together with their family or friends. Furthermore, the fact that they want to analyze more a specific room, area, or even piece of furniture will not pressure them and they can do it without thinking about causing inconveniences.

Virtual tours not only give complete independent access and speeds the visiting process, but it also proves attention to detail while engaging with the customer. The tour can be personalized according to their requirement and it can offer multimedia materials like photos, videos, PDF materials, floorplans, heating maps, or measuring tools for any area of the property. By having everything together to inform himself, calculate and analyze, the client will be nothing but happy. Furthermore, this sense of autonomy and independence will immediately build up an emotional connection and a strong sense of ownership with the chosen house or apartment.

What else comes with the tours?

Being connected with the real struggles the whole world is facing now means understanding and adapting to changes. The marketing plan of every real estate company should adapt and include virtual tours since it is the most obvious signal of care they can prove for their clients. By adding them, you are not offering a good replacement for the real ones, but you prove empathy, flexibility, and having a solution-oriented way of working.

The VR tours, therefore, are not just the trend of the moment. They are the best solution one can find not only to replace something but to add to their portfolio in the long one. The interactive design of the tour can be customized in a way to capture the attention of the buyer and to make him invest more time on a specific property. Furthermore, this would translate into engaging them to make the next step - the acquisition.

Lastly, besides the speed, the engagement, the improvement of the marketing plan, and the persuasion of proceeding to purchase, the VR tours are also extremely versatile, in a way that they are not limited to realism, and that they can provide innovative solutions when it comes to different areas of the house, the furniture, the views or even the people included inside. The client can have a wider picture of everything, only by using his imagination and placing specific customizing requirements that the agents can consider while personalizing the tour for them.