Many businesses are starting to realize that Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality are about to shake up existing marketing practices. In the real estate industry, brokers and property managers who want to stay ahead are supplementing high-resolution shots of their listed properties with virtual walkthroughs or 360-degrees panoramas. These new interactive features provide a lot more information for prospective buyers, and studies suggest they also increase the amount of time spent viewing a property or a product, thus furthering the chances of successfully closing a deal. Goldman Sachs estimates that the VR/AR market could reach $1.6 billion by 2025, as already 35% of buyers express an appetite for these enhanced shopping experiences.
Whether you are looking for mobile or tablet-adapted virtual tours or wish to optimize your experiences for VR headsets, CommercialCafe has picked out some of the finest VR/AR service providers in New York you can rely on to take your product or buying experience to the next level.
eevo
When you go looking for a home or a commercial space, it’s never only about the sheer practicality of your choices. You’re searching for the place that will make you, your family, your employees or your customers feel welcome. Eevo strives to make it easier for buyers or renters to find such a spot, and for real estate agents to reach out to them in the most engaging way possible.
The Brooklyn-based company enables users to create high-quality 360-degrees video footage and VR content with spatialized audio and interactive hotspots. Eevo lets you analyze user engagement with your projects through an intuitive heatmap that traces user’s viewing patterns. By adding just a few lines of code, you have the option of adding VR capabilities to mobile apps via eevo’s software development kit. The company’s software solutions are optimized for Android, iOS, as well as a series of VR headsets, including Gear VR, Daydeam and Oculus Go.
GeoCV
Conventional virtual tours consist of several high-resolution panoramas you can jump through during your visit. GeoCV does things a little differently. Instead of merely interacting with renderings of the property you’re interested in, you can walk through a completely 3D reproduction of that space. This allows you to more accurately gauge things like total rentable area or how different things are positioned in relation to one another. GeoCV’s full suite of real estate visual marketing includes advanced 3D and 360-degrees virtual tours, 3D aerials of the property shot by drones, virtual staging, professional photos and textured floor plans.
The company was founded in 2014, in a Greenwich Village office space and throughout the years its veteran 3D visual artists have earned many awards for their products. Most recently, GeoCV won top honors at the 2018 Realcomm Digie Awards.
VR Global
Located at 335 Madison Avenue, VR Global is a software company specializing in ‘near-reality technology’, aimed at discerning developers and customers. Active since 2015, the team has developed state-of-the-art 3D and 360-degree virtual tours, Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality technology. Their mobile apps help investors get to grips with the essential details of an upcoming project, while making it easier for real estate agents to customize house or office viewing experiences for different prospective buyers. It also provides information about the impact of certain developments on the environment, local community or neighborhood, offering a cost-saving alternative to expensive physical mockups.
YouVisit
In 2010, Abi Mandelbaum, Taher Baderkhan and Endri Tolka got together to create YouVisit, a Midtown Manhattan-based VR company currently working with Fortune 100 clients like PricewaterhouseCoopers, Cisco and Hewlett-Packard. They wanted to create a company that would help people make informed decisions without having to spend precious time and money travelling to multiple locations to find their perfect home, office or event venue.
Their proprietary Aria platform blends 360-degree panorama and VR technology to empower users to showcase their products. YouVisit offers clients help with all three stages of their virtual tour production, from writers and directors who can assist in pre-production, to an experienced VR filming crew and post-production editing of interactive elements. The platform’s analytics tools provide information about ROI and ways to optimize your virtual tour to get more engagement and conversions.
