904 Virtual Tours

Waste of money and if I wanted to do such a thing I would do it myself, but it's even a waste of effort.

Certainly a direct response! Although perhaps worth noting that not everyone can design websites.

The parent company that I work with has had a lot of success with virtual property tours in the south of France ( [url]http://myperfectvilla.com[/url] ) but I am wondering whether the Tuscan market is a tougher nut to crack. One or two local holiday property sites have told me that it is quite hard to get anyone in Italy to part with cash for this kind of thing.

I used to do these when I did architectural 3D models of commercial buildings using Livepix. I think they could have more value for property sales. See [url]http://www.solocaseinvendita.it/[/url] It certainly puts the properties into context and saves wasted journeys.

Maria Lucia

But, isn't that the very reason most Agents wouldn't use the system to sell properties, they would miss the opportunity of dragging new clients through the same "habitable"wrecks week after week for many years, before the showed them something "NEW" and possibly actually habitable (with a partial roof) hoping this will stun them enough to actually buy it.
Mhv, your costs are too high, then again, "Pay peanuts..."

Spot-on George!, and I absolutley endorse Maria Lucia's remark.

To answer your question MHVoice, it takes time and commitment to develop a market for something as innovative as this, maybe more time than you have, if you only plan to stay a year. Having looked at your tours though, I'd say that they are excellent and there's always a place for excellence in any market. You already have the equipment and the skills so give it a try.... and aim to stay in Tuscany for longer!

As far as I know, I was the first Estate Agent in Italy to offer Virtual Tours as a routine part of my service. You can some examples here...
[url]http://www.vebra.com/home/quick/pfresults.asp?fd=916&bd=1&db=16&vtourlist=1[/url]

A valid point made by GeoergeS & Maria Lucia and I for one would not only welcome reform in the sector (as I’ve already stated in previous threads), it would be good to see some innovation.

To pick up on and add to their points…I feel that it would also help reduce the number of times buyers make appointments and never show up without the slightest bit of notice or respect for someone else’s valuable time. I suppose this is inevitable but something like this could help screen the selection process at the very start.

Marc is also spot on about the time and commitment needed. It does not matter how good innovations are, if the entire process is not managed properly, they will fail to reach implementation. This is not fiction but a well-known fact!

The only reservation I have is that a virtual tour is neither substitute for the real thing as it were, nor can it ever replace the proper, professional advice and good service. Anyone can market marvellous and clever imagery, but what really counts is the substance behind it. Besides, the seductive power of Italy lies in its climate, food, and beauty of its countryside, architecture, culture, artistic heritage and its people to name but a few. No amount of virtual reality or expert systems can ever replace this. Moreover, buying a house in Italy is not a mechanistic process. It is not just about investing in bricks and mortar. An integral part of the process of buying overseas must include getting to know the territory personally, which means discovering all the pros and cons.

By the way, I have consulted with some of my architect colleagues and their views are that this sort of thing has greater potential for rental accommodation and hotels.

I look forward to hearing of any progress.

[QUOTE=Marc]Spot-on George!, and I absolutley endorse Maria Lucia's remark.

To answer your question MHVoice, it takes time and commitment to develop a market for something as innovative as this, maybe more time than you have, if you only plan to stay a year. Having looked at your tours though, I'd say that they are excellent and there's always a place for excellence in any market. You already have the equipment and the skills so give it a try.... and aim to stay in Tuscany for longer!

As far as I know, I was the first Estate Agent in Italy to offer Virtual Tours as a routine part of my service. You can some examples here...
[url]http://www.vebra.com/home/quick/pfresults.asp?fd=916&bd=1&db=16&vtourlist=1[/url][/QUOTE]

Thanks for the responses.

George S I realise that fees might seem high but there is quite a bit of work involved and I have to include petrol and travelling etc. Surprisingly time consuming to do this well and I subcontract for elements like the floor plans.

I like the "movie" examples Maria Lucia although they can't be controlled. Controllability by the user is I think important - it helps them to feel that they are choosing where to look in their own time rather than being directed. The audio too adds a personal and reassuring touch. We have had much more success with holiday properties at the higher end of the market. The owners seem to 'get it' quite quickly and consider the investment worthwhile (many have reported big increases in online bookings as a result) but as some of those properties are 3 or 4 thousand euro a week the money is recouped quickly. Conversely we have had virtually no success with sales - possibly for the reasons you mention George S.

Anyway this is turning into a sales pitch. Thanks again.

We may well be in Italy for longer than a year. We are dipping a toe and seeing how we feel.

I've has eperienceof doing architectural walkthroughs/flythroughs and also in preparing training courses for military types. There's often a need to familiarise personnel with a physical environment such as an aeroplane or ship before the staff arrive on site. I've done this in the past using QuickTime (MPEG4) VR software where the scene is captured using a 360 degree camera.

This puts the user firmly in control. The viewer is able to look left, right, up, down and to zoom in and out of the scene. It's possible to create hotspots in the field of view so that a user can walk up to a door, push it and enter the next room.

I did this in the past for a ship, so that it was possible to explore the whole ship, moving to every area and on the deck being able to look out to sea and into the nearby harbour. We also had avatars of the personnel in key positions so it was possible to go to (say) the helmsman, click on his avatar and view a movie of that person describing his job.

I've worked on similar technology to demonstrate a walkthrough a planned airport terminal extension as well. It's reasonably useful, but given the costs, I can't imagine the typical home seller or estate agent wanting to deal with this stuff.

It reminds me of the 1980s. Back then the computer consultancy I ran was ahead of the game by "quite a bit" and one package we had was presentation software that we realised an estate agent could use to hold a database of properties and images of properties. Reports could be created to automatically format the house details and also to run an interactive display where buyers could leaf through houses and get a limited walkthrough of the property. We thought it was brilliant, saved printing costs, got the details to the market extremely quickly and buyers could quickly find the sort of properties that interested them.

Interest from estate agents absolutely zero. They preferred to type up details, print them off on a photocopier or often a spirit duplicator) and stick photographs from Boots minilab on the page with glue. Nowadays systems of the type we proposed are relatively common, but the experience taught me that you can't move a long way ahead of the market, because the customers plain can't see the value in what you are offering.