“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.”

Realogy is the world’s leading real estate company with brands including such household names as Century 21®, Era®, Coldwell Banker®, Sotheby’s International Realty® and Better Homes And Gardens®, it has approximately 270,000 affiliated real estate brokers and sales associates, who work from 14,400 offices in 93 countries.

The decision by Realogy to market Open3DHouse™ to its brands is a sign of changing times in the real estate market, according to Aamir Butt, United Lane’s CEO: “Realogy is a company that is at the forefront of technological innovation and I would like to think that by its decision to market our technology that it sees us as part of that process,” said Butt, adding that the real estate industry in the US was now much more receptive to technology as it comes to terms with life in the first decade of the 21st century
“The impact of the current economic conditions and the rapidly developing world of the internet have been presenting realtors with a number of challenges.

“As a result realtor’s are turning to the internet in a bid not only to cut costs but also to respond to the fact that 90% of their clients are choosing to start their search for property on the web, said Butt.”
A change that has other messages for the modern real estate broker, the survey from the National Association of Realtors that found that nine out of ten searches start on the web also found out that 98% of those using the web to start their quest for a house subsequently viewed properties they had seen on the web.
Statistics that also mean that other properties were rejected, some because there was not enough information available about a property to sell it.

According to Butt, it is now essential for the modern realtor to engage those clients instantly and provide them with as much information as possible, if they can do that then they can cross one of the biggest hurdles and form a relationship with those virtual clients there and then at the same time differentiating them from their competitors.

A process that Open3DHouse™ has been designed to seamlessly dovetail into by letting people searching the web not only to get a feel for the property they are interested in by allowing them to walk around a 3D interior of the building but also by allowing them to decorate and furnish any part of the building using tools and databases built into the system.

“One of the things that we have discovered about the technology trends going on in real estate is that people want to have choice but also they want the reassurance of working with names that they can trust, that is why we consider our association with Realogy so valuable because we believe that the value of our brand is its ability to contribute to the value of other already outstanding brands,” said Butt, adding: “This now gives us the opportunity of working with the top names in real estate and bringing the value of our internet viewing technology via that association to a much wider audience.”

As one visitor took off from an Earth still immersed in the Bosnian conflict, he commented to Carter Emmart, the researcher taking him through the Horsehead Nebula, that the one thing that was amazing about the system was seeing so many unnamed planets, and wondering when names and information would be supplied about them.

Emmart replied that the process of digitally pinning information against an object would first take place on Earth. This would be the beginning of an enormous and constantly changing encyclopedia that would eventually start to spill out into the stars, gradually tabbing data against the dots and giving them meaning. But he warned, ‘Just finding out what a planet or a star is will be a massive task.’

Fast forward to 2009. The information overlay technology that was first introduced to us in the futuristic TV series Six Million Dollar Man, and then refined in sci-fi blockbusters like The Terminator – which based their research on techniques developed by NASA and the like – is now forcing its way into the real-estate market. It’s still in its early stages – you may not see a data readout on your eyeball just yet – but by simply clicking on a building on a map, a data screen can now drop down and reveal huge amounts of information on a particular location – almost instantaneously.

One system developed in El Segundo by Geosemble – a California-based company that up till now has concentrated on supplying its artificial intelligence and geospatial data-fusion systems to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the National Science Foundation, the US Air Force and other US government agencies including the CIA – can now pull together all the available data on a locality.

Within the last two years, the company has started to see real opportunities open up in the real estate market. ‘We have started to do work for cities that are undergoing redevelopment, who want to attract certain sorts of companies into an area,’ says CEO Andre Doumitt.

‘Up till now, you look on Google Earth and all you can see is rooftops. What we do is let you click on that rooftop and see who is in that building, and who are in the buildings around you, so that you can really get an idea of a neighborhood. We can deliver a lot of information.’

Just how much information is impressive. Go to one of Geosemble’s projects, the El Segundo website (www.elsegundobusiness.com), and you can home in on a particular area. By clicking on a roof you can drill down, uncovering information on the businesses you might be rubbing shoulders with, and all the restaurants, theatres and entertainment centers in the area.

The system depends on the ability of Geosemble’s technology to accurately overlay geospatial information on top of map data to achieve an absolute match between the two. When this is done, the system can then input information obtained from the web and other data sources to pinpoint a building and identify it.

This then allows the company to add other information gathered from the internet to a building’s data model. Precise data about what the companies in a block are doing, number of employees, recent news, etc, can then be displayed on a data readout.

So sophisticated is the system that it can also pull in information from social networking sites to present an even richer data picture. In the case of restaurants, you can even pull up menus if that information has been made available.

Geosemble’s business model is simple. The internet is changing, broadening and deepening; whereas once we expected a picture to be just that, now we want more information about what we are looking at than just a newspaper caption.

In the future, an image will be considered merely the entry point to somewhere in the real world.

This process is now gathering pace. With Google mapping streets in 3D, companies building interiors in 3D, and shopping centers and high streets developing websites about their services, a complex overlay of pictures and data is developing that mobile phone companies are now exploiting so as to be able to tell you where you are in that world, and what is around you.

‘If that information is open source or in the public domain, then we can display it. We can take geographic context and with our data-search techniques link that and other information to pinpoint content onto a particular location. In the old days, you would have to gumshoe it. Now, all you have to do is click on an image and you see a whole bunch of other information,’ says Doumitt. ‘A while ago, you would buy a computer that said ‘Intel inside’: well, now we’re the data inside when you tap on an image.’

This means that Geosemble can cut down on the time needed to research an area by presenting planning applications and development plans for an area alongside social and business information.

‘I see this as removing a lot of the fear that is involved in moving into an area,’ says Doumitt. ‘If you are looking to move into an area, it’s a bit awkward to go around and talk to people and ask them about what the area is like and what that gloomy-looking building is across the street. With this technology, you can determine if you want to make an investment decision very quickly.

‘For people investing in a home, that’s a big deal: they tend to only make those decisions three or four times in their lives. If it’s something like a business, then it can be crucial in being able to attract high-calibre staff.’

Costing around $10,000 to set-up for a small city, and with an annual maintenance fee of $2,000, Doumitt underlines the point made by Emmart 10 years ago about the model for the universe.

‘What can be accomplished all depends on the depth of the information and the frequency with which it is updated. We have got to the stage now with the internet when we are beginning to expect more and more from our images – we are aiming to be the data behind those images.’

• Geosemble Technologies provides automatic techniques for integrating and displaying geospatial information, including maps, aerial imagery, news, events, databases, businesses and more. For more information please visit: www.geosemble.com

The revolution has seen intense competition develop on the internet as Realtors try to get the most from marketing budgets and harness the growing trend for clients to search for property online. However, as real estate agents suddenly realise the marketing opportunities that the internet offers them, it is forcing them to compete not only with each other, but also with the traditional media organizations that they used to support with their advertising.

‘Media companies will be competing more and more with broker sites,’ says Joy Hanawa, Real Estate GM and Chief Technology Officer for Adicio, which produces online classified advertising software. ‘In the US there are hundreds of MLS’ and only a few major sites on which to see 80 per cent of all listings.  Brokers with access to a listing service, such as an MLS, may have more data than local media companies.’

Getting personal
This glut of data that means that brokers are now fighting to differentiate their websites in what has become an increasingly ferocious battle to drive online visitors to their sites – and then hold them there.

‘What we are seeing now is a lot of personalization going on with website design,’ says Gary Cowan, Vice President of Products for the web development company Datasphere. ‘More and more people are conducting their research through the internet than through any other medium. People are spending hours and days looking for the right property, so you need to give them an experience when they are purchasing property through you that makes them think that they are with you.’

Without that sense of personal presence, potential clients will not stay on a site. The result has been the implementation of web technologies like those used by Datasphere, that try to deepen the amount of information that visitors receive from a website.

In Datasphere’s case, it allows real estate agents to group similar properties in similar places in what Cowan refers to as ‘communities’, so that the viewing experience can be customized for the person viewing it.

Information exchange
The flirtation with personalization does not stop there: personalization has turned into a full blown love affair for a real estate business that has not had to work too hard for customers for the past decade. In fact, some real estate web sites are now in the process of gathering as much information on their customers as some online dating sites, picking up data on age, children, finance, furnishing preferences and taste.

One company, California-based Geosemble, has come up with a model that adds in even more information. ‘The key here is that there are lots of different web sites that list home size, price, number of rooms, lot size, last purchase price and lots of detail on the home itself,’ says the company’s CEO Andre Doummitt. ‘However, what homebuyers need is a simple way to understand the context that the house sits in, i.e. the neighborhood, surrounding businesses, shops, restaurants, news articles about the area, events, and things like flood plains, nearby planned construction of buildings, rail lines, pollution sites.

‘In the old days, you had to gumshoe that sort of information, but it’s data that is really crucial to you, not just because of the investment that a house represents but also because of what difference that information can make to your quality of life.’

Going global
According experts, such as Inman News’ technology columnist, Professor Bernice Ross, it’s information that will increasingly be demanded, as a global market for real estate develops following the move to the web.

Investors are already taking advantage of the current economic climate and buying properties in the US sight unseen from as far afield as South America and the Middle East. Professor Ross predicts this remote viewing process will encourage people to decide that they want to move to a particular area – and then find ways of doing so, rather than seeing employment prospects as the sole driver.

Competition vs collaboration
Such an appetite for information, and its availability, will, according to Hanawa, see the beginnings of the competition between media and real estate websites, as each seek to adopt their models to attract customers and viewers.

‘What we are seeing happening is two industries seeking to redefine each other by adapting and developing the technology that has thrown their old business models up into the air,’ says Aamir Butt, CEO of 3D real estate specialists United Lane and an adviser on new technology models for Atlanta Real Estate. ‘Due to the freefall generated by the present market conditions which has put them under enormous pressure, both sectors are trying to build business models that not only replicate what they once did, but also take on new functions that they do not have any real expertise in.’

Butt predicts that the winners will be those who realise that, rather than competing, they should be working together, a view echoed by Hanawa. ‘Some media companies will join forces with brokerages to get listings in exchange for advertising,’ she says.  ‘Media companies have the local content, news, demographics and the local audience.  As media companies continue to improve their online presence with more community journalism – blogs and opinion polls – consumers will come to rely on these sites to gauge the value of property, and research the area where they want to live.’

However, Hanawa adds that any trend towards virtual buying in the residential market will be small. ‘Even in the future, virtual transactions will be rare, at least for home sales.  People may send info to their phone and Twitter about a place they are looking at, but they are unlikely to purchase without physically visiting the property and checking out the community and potential neighbors.  Buyers will be much more knowledgeable about properties and their locations before making a purchase decision.’

And, with Geosemble’s technology and websites such as rottenneighbor.com, checking out the neighbors is now more than a distinct possibility.

‘Virtual tours are great, but what if you don’t like the color of the living room?’

The constantly evolving technologies that help
us market and sell real estate all started with Gutenberg’s printing press in or around 1450. Fast forward to 2009. Fax machines, cell phones, digital cameras and the internet have created marketing tools unimagined 30 years ago – so what will the future of real estate marketing and sales look like?

No one really knows, but sci-fi author and techno-visionary William Gibson once said, ‘The future is already here – it is just unevenly distributed.’ Some innovative companies are already showing a glimpse of how agents will market their listings in the not-too-distant future: 3D technology is at the center of this movement.

Potential buyers already have the ability access property data, photos, flat floor plans, photo tours and virtual tours online, before they venture out to physically tour the homes. In the very near future, agents will be able to walk buyers through their listings virtually. If they don’t like the wall colors or floor style, they will change them with the click of a mouse. Want to see what the rooms look like with furniture? Simply arrange and rearrange with your index finger. Just about any item in the home will be viewable in a different style or color.

As a Realtor for over 21 years, I have worked with a lot of buyers who look at a lot of houses that they never buy. Some just like to look. And I can’t tell you how many times I have heard, ‘My furniture will never fit in this space.’ Having my buyers ‘fit’ their furniture in the rooms before they go out and look at the homes would make a tremendous time saving. They would only then look at homes about which they already have a sense of the interior size and layout. Most of my clients end up spending a lot of time envisioning how the walls will look in a certain color, or asking, ‘What if I changed the floors to hardwood from carpet?’

Many Realtors already use floor plans as part of their marketing package, which add depth to the information a potential buyer uses in making a decision whether or not to go see a home. Virtual tours are great, but what if you don’t like the color of the living room? How can you tell if a King-sized bed will fit in the master bedroom? A two-dimensional static floor plan lets you see the room layout, but it won’t allow you to place furniture in the rooms or play with different wall colors.

A new program, being developed by the Denmark-based United Lane Corporation, will soon allow home shoppers and commercial tenants to make and see these changes online. United Lane’s software takes that 2D floor plan and converts it to an interactive virtual 3D model that then becomes an open house – 24 hours per day. No more Sunday open houses; no more asking the sellers to leave for the afternoon; no more baking gingerbread cookies to make the house smell ‘homey’. Any buyer can look at and ‘walk through’ the listing anytime, from anywhere in the world. That’s powerful marketing.

It’s rare when a product/concept so unique and intuitive first comes to the market and almost everyone can immediately see how this could change the face of several industries. The early version of the program is impressive to say the least, but high-definition, video-quality 3D walkthroughs are already in the development stages. And purchasing consumer products through this venue might be as easy as clicking the Dell laptop on the desk in the den and inputting your credit card info.

It won’t be too long before every single piece of commercial and residential property in the world will have an interactive 3D rendering of the layout available to the owner, or made accessible to the public if the home is for sale. Planting a virtual ‘For Sale’ sign in front of these homes and buildings will let the world know that this property is on the market. Potential buyers will be able to ‘cyberwalk’ down United Lane, popping into the properties they are interested in seeing. Agents will benefit by taking buyers only to homes that they have a high level of interest in. The possibilities can only be imagined…