The goggles were strapped to my face like a scuba mask. Only instead of fish, a studio apartment was wavering in my field of vision.
I moved forward, trying to enter the bathroom. Feeling slightly seasick, I hit the wall. This was embarrassing. I tried again and smacked into the door frame.
“Are you teleporting?” asked Jacqueline van den Ende, founder and CEO of Lamudi Philippines and MyProperty.ph.
I am at a press briefing of property portal Lamudi Philippines, which will host the country’s first ever Virtual Reality Real Estate Expo (VR Expo) on September 3 to 4 at the Bonifacio High Street activity center.
Journalists attending the briefing tried out the virtual reality technology that will be on tap at the expo; in my case, I perused through a 200-square meter luxury condominium in Makati using a P5,000 Samsung gear headset (though less inexpensive models at P2,500, are available in the market).
Starship Enterprise it is not…yet
I move out to the pool, a must for any luxury condo in Metro Manila, and a menu appears offering me the chance to change the time of day simply by looking at the choice. I select sunset, the water in the pool moves with the breeze. Later, I am clutching the edge of the table to give myself a sense of where my body is in space. My eyes are telling me that I have just walked into a generously sized kitchen where different countertop marble color choices are now floating in front of me.
Van de Ende said the VR technology can be used by real estate sellers to pitch developments that do not yet exist. Technology companies can create a virtual rendering based on the architectural plans. The idea is to have potential buyers wear a headset and “walk” around the building. The more realistic the experience, the more likely a client – an OFW half a world away, or a rich businessman shopping for a luxury condo in the BGC district — might be willing to buy before construction crews even broke ground — at least that is the hope.
“VR sells based on emotion and attaching that emotion to a vision,” said van de Ende. This revolutionary upgrade in real estate buying is likely to open up the market to buyers and can make home-buying a faster and more efficient process.”
“Imagine a buyer walking out onto the terrace and thinking: ‘If I bought this home and was having breakfast here, this is exactly what I’d see.’ That’s incredible. For a salesperson, it’s a dream come true,” she said.
So was I teleporting? I kept bumping into virtual walls because the headset was making me dizzy. The Starship Enterprise this was not.
Growing technology
Virtual reality, a technology that most associate with gaming, entertainment and dystopic warnings from sci-fi writers including Ray Bradbury and Neal Stephenson, has moved into the real estate world in a big way.
Goldman Sachs estimates that by 2025, virtual reality software for real estate applications will be a $2.6 billion market.
In the meantime, overseas companies are beginning to create websites for viewing homes in virtual reality. van de Ende hopes local real estate agencies will follow suit, and used the technology to entice clients.
She predicted that more real estate player will jump into the virtual reality bandwagon as the technology becomes more ubiquitous and hardware gets cheaper, allowing it to eventually trickle down to the non-luxury real estate market.
As virtual reality apps and headsets are becoming more quotidian, entering more homes, usually as an entertainment tool, competition in the world of virtual reality real estate will become tighter, said van de Ende.
“All the big real estate companies are looking at exploring this technology,” she claimed, with more and more programmers busy trying to create a more realistic view of the future.
Someday soon, people could spend hours being transported into everything from Makati CBD penthouses to sprawling luxury resorts in the Visayas or Mindanao, van de Ende predicted.
Even with the current limitations in the physical hardware, which limits the sharpness of the image, virtual reality makes a lot of sense when selling a new development, said van Ende. She explained that instead of spending money to build a model apartment and furnish it, real estate companies can have virtual versions created that can go where the agent does.
While virtual mockups are not cheap, they cost a fraction of the cost that a furnished and decorated model luxury apartment would cost, she pointed out.
OFWS, well-heeled buyers targeted
At a time OFWs, or wealthy buyers are scouting around for property investments, having a virtual reality set that can easily travel takes away the burden of bringing a buyer halfway across the world to see a model apartment. The novelty of walking through a virtual reality home adds to the allure.
The entire process of creating an oversized condo, with tastefully bland furniture in neutral tones, out of thin air takes only about a month and a half. A bathroom, or dining area can be generated in just a week. The paintings on the walls, fancy light fixtures and furniture are all based on real items. Views are stitched in from actual photos taken from an architect’s perspective, among others.
The major sponsors for the VR expo are Robinsons Communities, Right Homes, and SMDC. The exhibitors include New San Jose Builders, Hamilo Coast, and Union Bank, while the event’s official provider of VR goggles is VRLABPH.
The expo is open to all buyers, sellers, renters, landlords, brokers, investors, and everyone who wants to experience cutting-edge technology applied to one of the most bustling sectors in the Philippines.