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Vol. 8 No. 7
March 28, 2016
www.csrej.com
V R
H EA DS E T S :
Real estate game changer?
Virtual reality headsets may help buyers see your listings up close without setting foot in the property. BY MELISSA DITTMANN TRACEY
Builders are beginning work on more single-family homes across the country, which could offer some much-needed inventory relief for many housing markets. Housing starts nationwide are up nearly 31 percent year-over-year. In February, housing starts jumped 5.2 percent alone on a month-over-month basis to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.178 million units, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday. Broken out, single-family production rose 7.2 percent month-over-month to 822,000. That is the highest level since November 2007. Meanwhile, multifamily starts mostly held flat last month. “It means that home builders are responding to the demand out there,” says Jonathan Smoke, realtor.com®’s chief economist, about the new report. “We don’t have enough supply of homes to keep up with the increase” among a growing number of buyers entering the market. All four regions of the U.S. posted gains in housing starts last month, except the Northeast. The West posted the largest month-over-month gain as new-home starts climbed 26.6 See New Homes | 2
Showing a home in person could become passé. The day is coming when buyers will slip on a virtual reality headset and be transported to a home where they can wander from room to room and size up whether it feels right without actually visiting. The technology brings your listing directly to your buyers, whether they live in Shanghai or down the street. EARLY PROMISE The early promise of VR centered on videogames, but the technology is now finding commercial applications, including some presented in January at CES 2016, the world’s biggest consumer electronics show. VR is gradually entering real estate as brokerages start to get a feel for what the technology is all about. Some companies anticipate that consumers will gravitate to VR in the next few years, making the headsets musthave devices and creating an opportunity for brokerages, especially those focused on highend-properties. Driving the expected boom is a critical mass of available systems as VR headsets become more available to consumers. Google’s low-cost Cardboard viewers come as either a fold-out cardboard format or a plastic headset that works with an iOS or Android phone, while more sophisticated consumer models debuting this year include the Oculus Rift ($599), slated for March, and HTC’s Vive Pre, which ships in April for $799. Matthew Hood of Sotheby’s International Realty in Los Angeles has been experiment-
WCR March Luncheon
Souther Colorado Commerical Brokers 'Deal Makers'
Peak Producers 2016 Kick-Off Reception
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GREAT REACTIONS “It blew us away,” says Jonathan Kaufman Iger, CEO at Sage Realty Corp. in New York, referring to the first time he saw VR’s potential for commercial real estate through a pitch from Floored, a company that creates 3-D graphics for the real estate industry. Sage has since started to use the technology for its own offerings. In the spring of 2015, it hired Floored to develop 3-D mock-ups of some of its commercial spaces; the brokerage could then show the spaces to prospective tenants on an early prototype version of the Oculus Rift headset. Sage is using virtual staging for some office spaces it leases on Madison Ave., including 800,000 square feet of space at an office tower, so prospective tenants can envision how the offices could be outfitted. “It can be difficult to step onto a raw floor or existing space and visualize the layout,” Iger says. See Virtual Reality | 5
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More new homes are coming soon
ing for more than a year by allowing clients to tour multimillion-dollar residences using the Samsung Gear VR headset (available for $99 for certain Galaxy smartphones). For example, his clients can view a $6.95 million ocean-side Malibu property in 3-D by putting on the headset, which then fills the buyers’ complete field of vision with the 10,000-square-foot home. The technology allows users to look up, down, and from side to side as they take in the spacious kitchen, wine cellar, and outdoor infinity pool, along with details such as the wrought-iron chandelier and French limestone floors.
Sharon Ballinger
Sr. Loan Officer
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Loan Officer
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Loan Officer
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(719) 331-2750 chad.denny@academy.cc
(719) 380-1778 debbie.havens@academy.cc
(719) 491-2500 sharon.ballinger@academy.cc
(719) 264-1968 edward.duncan@academy.cc
(719) 232-7553 will.michaloski@academy.cc
(719) 264-1952 marianne.elepturner@academy.cc
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