Real estate's 360 degrees of reality

Proptech blogger and housing market commentator Rayhan Rafiq Omar considers whether the growth of 360-degree live video could herald the mass adoption of virtual reality in real estate

Last week YouTube launched its Live 360 platform, a service that allows you to look around a live video scene by simply swiping around on your smartphone.

A host of newfangled 3D cameras, ranging in price from hundreds to thousands of pounds, makes this possible (see below). Appealing to virtual reality camera makers and consumers, YouTube hopes to become the de facto destination for interactive live videos.

While live music has been touted as the natural fit to showcase how virtual reality can open up experiences to the army of smartphone-carrying consumers, there are plenty of other potential applications.

Neal Mohan, chief product officer at YouTube, says: “What excites me most about 360-degree storytelling is that it lets us open up the world’s experience to everyone.

“Students can now experience events in the classroom as they unfold. Travellers can experience faraway sites and explorers can deep-sea dive, all without the physical constraints of the real world. What were once limited experiences are now available to anyone, anywhere, anytime.”

But does this innovation finally open up the wallets of agents and consumers wanting a more immersive real estate experience?

Viewings have long been cited as the reason that online agents will fail against the army of traditional agents conveniently there to turn the key/screw – depending on your point of view.

While most of us now walk around with a supercomputer in our pockets, our attention spans have shortened considerably. If we aren’t willing to wait for a web page to load, we certainly aren’t going to entertain (often clunky) digital walkthroughs.

Many residential agencies have experimented with video virtual walkthroughs, with little impact on their ability to service customers or attract new ones. Swiping through photos has an elegant simplicity that even toddlers are comfortable with.

This is what makes YouTube’s new service both simple and accessible: it is a single camera view that you can pan very naturally with your finger, as you would swipe through photos.

However, there are many rooms in a house/office/hotel/shopping mall, so it is unlikely that a permanent live stream, with a relatively expensive camera per room, is a realistic mass-market proposition.

But what if the camera in your phone could help people view property from the comfort of their own homes and offices? Many thought that Periscope, the live broadcast service by Twitter, would enable any agent to hold bulk viewings.

If you have ever waited for someone to turn up on time for a viewing, you will understand the inherent problem with “live” when it comes to remote viewings.

And the problem with recordings is you can’t be there to answer people’s questions or, even better, sell that property.

But YouTube points to the solution by building a platform to host consumer live virtual reality.

What if there was a platform that understood the requirements of real estate consumers and, by extension, real estate professionals? What would this platform look and feel like?

Well, that’s easy: WhatsApp.

Yes, I see you screwing up your face. But think about it: where do you share videos with your friends and family?

I imagine one smart cookie needs to build a bot that helps real estate professionals market, schedule, record and play back viewings of properties. All from the convenient confines of your favourite messenger app.

If you have ever sent e-mails as marketing, you will know that people don’t click on links. But they do very quickly respond to SMS and WhatsApp messages.

While the march of technology to a more virtual world continues, it will be the simple links that bring these immersive experiences to the rest of us.