United Lane and the Professional Group take home buying into the internet age.

United Lane is pleased to announce the successful conclusion of an agreement to supply the Professionals real estate chain with its ground breaking 3D technology. The deal, which will see the 168 offices of the Professionals group using United Lane’s ‘Open3DHouse’ technology to market properties initially in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria in Australia, has been hailed by Professionals Group CEO Glyn Morgan as a logical move by the company.

“Because of the internet, people are now more technologically literate and they want to be provided with more information than ever before and ‘Open3DHouse’ lets us do that. People want to be more what I call ‘self-serving’ and to be able to help themselves to come to a decision,” said Morgan.

Using ‘Open3DHouse’ was part of a groupwide technology strategy for the chain which has a regional presence in Western Australia and the Northern Territory, South Australia, the Eastern States and New Zealand.

The strategy has seen the Professionals Group move quickly to adopt the new technologies that it has seen buyers demanding because of their use of the web. “The property market hasn’t crashed in Australia and because of that it has become very competitive as real estate companies from abroad have started to move in to take advantage of that, so we want to use technology to give us the early adopter advantage.

“This lets us let them do that because it allows us to provide buyers with a much more interactive experience, so for us the decision to use the technology was very purposeful,” said Morgan, who predicts that the internet is going to bring about an enormous change in the way the property market operates. A change that will see buyers wanting to get more and more information online about the area that they are moving into, any future changes that there may be and what they can achieve with a particular property.

All developments that mean that the decision to view a property will almost certainly be taken on line and with minimal contact with a real estate agent.
“Trust is going to be all important for selling real estate and we are going to have to develop the tools for that trust online and that means providing people with a lot of information to make their choices,” said Morgan, adding: “we think that 3D is an important component of a process that will involve social media and a whole raft of other information.”

The advantage of United Lane’s 3D technology in the Professional Groups vision of the future, is the flexibility of the software which allows a photo realistic 3D model of a property to be quickly and inexpensively constructed from a 2D floor plan. A model that can then be re-decorated, furnished and remodelled from a home PC so that a prospective buyer can see exactly what the house they are viewing will look like after they have made changes to it, even down to moving walls around.

“It means that a buyer can show their family and friends what the house they are thinking of buying will look like and that is big help in their decision making,” said Morgan.

Welcoming the Professional Group’s support of the its technology, United Lane CEO, Aamir Butt, said: “The vision that the Professional Group has for the exciting opportunities that the internet now offers is exactly why we built this software. We want to help take real estate into the 21st century and that is exactly what the Professional Group is doing.”