Beyond Renders: Creating Immersive Digital Display Suites

Realspace is transforming how we market unbuilt property, extending the average buyer meeting from 30 to 90 minutes for an off-the-plan residential development in Perth.

With owner-occupiers being the predominant homebuyer in todays off-the-plan residential market, selling requires a much higher contact sales process as buyers need to be fully educated and experience every room in their potential new home.

While property investors focus on return on investment (ROI), owner-occupiers have different drivers and move with caution to seek more qualitative information in gaining confidence before purchase.

Meeting these requirements is often a challenge when selling off-the-plan as static hero renders tell only part of the story and buyers are left to join the dots making uncomfortable guesses regarding the design to the rest of the unbuilt development.

“While some buyers can be sold the dream with a few choice words for many it requires impressive marketing collateral, multiple inspections, plus educational-based information, to inform their decision-making before they buy,” CBRE noted in its 2019 Residential Property Market Report.

Apartment specialist DevelopWise found the solution in Realspace, a fully interactive 3D digital display suite.

By the time they officially launched their Sanctuary Mount Pleasant apartments in September 2019, 30 per cent of the development had already been sold down.

Greater understanding leads to greater buyer confidence

“The interactive model makes it really simple for buyers to understand the building,” DevelopWise managing director John Woon said.

“We don’t need a traditional display suite any more as Realspace does a great job representing the proposed development.

“Buyers tell us it enabled them to visualise their future home in its entirety, giving them much more confidence with what they are buying.”

Developed by Auckland 3D visualisation company Buildmedia, Realspace lets home buyers explore every room within a range of different apartment types, plus experience all common areas like the lobby, gym, and the shared rooftop space.

Surrounding views are captured with drone photography at every floor level and incorporated into the background of each apartment interior, providing realistic views from every floor no matter what room you are viewing it from.

Buyers can instantly change out the view for each apartment at its corresponding floor level delivering a game-changing level of honesty and certainty to the home buying process.

Agents and buyers can virtually ‘walk’ through each room of the development with an intuitive touch screen and can compare views, swap finishes, and email themselves customised images from anywhere within any apartment interior.

There is also an option that displays an interactive floor plan while exploring, so customers can get a sense of where they are exactly in the apartment.

As easy to navigate as Google Street View, this lifelike, immersive, real-time 3D experience is the next best thing to being in the physical space.

Unlimited content, with videos and 360-degree images

“We’ve gone well beyond static renders now,” Buildmedia managing director Gareth Ross said.

“We are modelling entire apartment interiors in real-time. Renders, 360-degree images and video are now by-products of the interactive process.”

Having access to more content is a goldmine for social media managers when driving audience engagement and leads.

“There’s a lot more content to push on social media,” Woon said.

“It keeps it interesting and fresh and there’s been more engagement for sure, through a greater variety of content.”

Realism builds understanding and trust

For the global perspective, Realspace echoes the research of CBRE, who found that owner-occupiers, downsizers and first home buyers alike prefer to see as much of a finished product as possible.

“A buyer should be able to visualise themselves living in the property,” CBRE noted.

“They’re buying more than a structure, they are buying a lifestyle.”

Ross hears from agents using Realspace that they are now selling developments faster.

“Home buyers have full control of the purchase experience, exploring all aspects of the development,’ Ross said.

“That in turn provides more relevant information to base a buying decision on.”

Realspace brings spaces to life like an interactive movie, placing both the buyer and agent together in control of the camera.

“Our buyer meetings have been more in-depth and informative, and more importantly it’s allowed people to understand the development in one sitting.”

Half-hour appointments tend to stretch to one and a half hours on average—which is a great thing as they are a lot more engaged and informed.”

Marketing continuity

For many multi-unit developments, the physical display suite is on-site and gets removed or demolished once construction starts.

However, when marketing the Sanctuary Mount Pleasant apartments, DevelopWise set up the Realspace digital display suite in their offices—just two screens across two rooms—and will continue to market this way until the apartments are fully sold down.

“The digital display suite lets us continue selling once construction has started,” Woon said.

“We don’t have to remove our display suite and we’ll continue to sell until the last apartment.”

If you’d like to learn more, contact Buildmedia in Australia on +61 1800 98 28 08, or in New Zealand on +64 9 3666 468. Alternatively, email gareth@buildmedia.com.

The Urban Developer is proud to partner with Buildmedia to deliver this article to you. In doing so, we can continue to publish our free daily news, information, insights and opinion to you, our valued readers.