There’s lots of ways to be carbon-neutral these days – and with the advent of 3D tours, some think that even real estate may be ready for a technology that cuts down on travel times.

A variety of startups have emerged in the space in recent months, including Uther Interiors, Vieweet and Matterport, while more traditional real estate photographers and video tour providers like RTV are also beginning to offer the service. A number of luxury brokerages in New York City have begun offering 3D tours on all their listings. Web-centric brokerage Redfin has trained agents in some of its markets to begin providing the service. And local agents like Stacy Blake of Stacy Blake Realty in Milford have also begun offering the service.

“It’s been fantastic,” said Blake. “We’ve really been pulling in lots of buyers – we’ve got a lot of new people going to our website, saying it’s the wave of the future.”

While different companies may use different proprietary software to create the tours, essentially, the technology involves a special camera that takes pictures in many directions at once, creating a 3D model of the home as it goes. Trained agents or photographers reposition the camera around each of the home’s rooms from several different vantage points to ensure complete coverage. The separate shots are then stitched together into a continuous whole using special software.

All Flaws – And Claws – Apparent

Scott Driscoll, a Redfin listing agent who began using the cameras last fall, said it takes him about an hour or so to take photos for a small condo, while a sprawling colonial might take several hours to fully capture – similar to the time required for a still photo shoot for professional listing photos.

The end result is perhaps most similar to that of a traveler puttering around a map using Google’s Streetview – potential buyers visitors can jump from room to room, looking around in any direction from their current spot and zooming in to inspect a bathroom fixture, just as they would to read a street sign.

It’s not 100 percent seamless, however. As anyone who has ever tried to take a panoramic shot with their camera knows, moving objects that jump into the frame while a shoot is in progress can leave some strange blurs and other oddities behind. It’s easy enough to usher agents and owners out of the room, but the sudden appearance of a cat has impacted a few of his shoots, admitted Driscoll. And any reflective surfaces in the home will tend to show the camera itself as it takes the shot, a particular problem in bathrooms and kitchens. Unlike a still photo shoot, where any such flaws can often be fixed, the complex knitting together of many images required for 3D tours makes it difficult to airbrush away errors.

“A home really has to be camera-ready. [The 3D camera] will even pick up dust balls on the ground. So it’s a real motivation for the homeowner to make everything picture-perfect, because it will be captured, whatever it is,” said Driscoll.

Going With The Flow

In addition to the gee-whiz flashiness of using such an advanced tech tool, buyers really appreciate the convenience, agents say.

“They can get a real feel for how the home is laid out from their desk – or from their armchair, or from across the country, or from another country, before they come to visit the home,” said Driscoll. “It gives them a bit of a filter before they decide to step in the home.”

Blake agreed, saying the tool has already proven itself to be particularly helpful in working with buyers who are relocating and may have limited time to view properties. She’s already had buyers say the tours introduced them to properties they otherwise wouldn’t have considered – and vice versa.

“If a floor plan doesn’t work for somebody, the sellers aren’t running around getting the dogs and the kids out of the house only to find, oh, well, the bedrooms are too small. It cuts down on unnecessary showings,” said Blake, particularly important with relocating clients.

In addition to the convenience factor, the 3D tech can help potential buyers to understand the “flow” of a home – how one room connects to another. And being able to view a room from many different angles conveys a sense of space better than any still shot, agents said, and it’s far easier for most people to grasp how different features relate to each other by using the tours then with a traditional architect’s floor plan.

Not every agent is so enamored with that aspect of the technology – some prefer to give buyers as many reasons as possible to visit a home in person, feeling that getting a buyer to see, touch and smell the site enables a home to put its best foot forward to a prospective purchaser.

And some feel that interacting with the tours – some software can be slow to load or buggy, especially on older computers – can actually detract from the listing overall.

Email: csullivan@thewarrengroup.com