Urban District Realty, a Washington, D.C.-based brokerage, announced last week the launch of its custom real estate listing system, PROJETO. This system uses virtual reality technology which allows clients to be put in a virtual representation of a property that hasn’t been built yet.
“PROJETO specifically is for homes that have not been built yet, these are homes that are still in development and that is something that when we did all of our research and looked around, no one else is doing it the way we’re doing it in the country,” Principal Broker and CEO of Urban District Realty Ryan Fiero told HousingWire.
Fiero said that this project wasn’t quite a result of the pandemic, but it certainly helped push the company a little more to complete and launch PROJETO. This project has been in development for just over a year, and now gives potential homebuyers the chance to tour a home that hasn’t been built yet with its virtual reality technology.
Over the last few months, iBuyers and brokerages alike have launched solutions to keeping business going during the pandemic, including virtual home tours, 3D home tours and hosting virtual open houses.
“What is really different about ours and is a really special amazing piece is that the agent is inside of virtuality with the clients, looking at whatever they’re looking at,” Fiero said. “So, both headsets of VR go on, then our buyers are brought into a presentation room with the agent to actually go through the properties, before they actually select a property, and then can walk around it just like they would a normal property.”
Joel Garcia, Urban District Realty’s in-house virtual reality director said his in-house tech team works hand-in-hand with developers to get real-life measurements of the properties that are as accurate as possible.
“This is one of those things that has spiraled wildly out of control,” Garcia told HousingWire. “…being able to make a model of a place that doesn’t exist. Wouldn’t it be cool if it was in VR?”
The goal, Garcia said, is to make PROJETO easy and accessible.
“One of our goals in keeping the real estate agent there is that the client never has to control anything, so when you put on a headset, you show up in the presentation room and the real estate agent will bring up a model for you to look at,” Garcia said. “If you don’t like it, the real estate agent can handle the controls to switch out the floorplan and literally all the client has to do is put on a headset and be in this world.”
“Then if the client sees a floorplan they like the real estate agent can take them into the floorplan, and next thing you know you’re standing inside a realistic finished scale model of the property, where if you feel like that bathroom might be a little tall, you can walk to the other side of the room and be inside the bathroom and look at it for yourself,” Garcia said.
The solution is currently only available in-house, but Fiero said that they are open to expanding the availability of PROJETO in the future.
