FEATURES
The Evolution, Impact and Potential of Virtual Tours of Retail Space
Nathaniel Mallon Nathaniel Mallon is co-founder at Verada, a recently launched retail listing service and brokerage.
By Nathaniel Mallon
advanced method of achieving this was to provide tenants with a video “walkthrough” of a space. Today, the virtual tour is rapidly becoming the new standard. Born of Convenience, Spurred by Necessity This new standard was largely considered to be more of a convenience than a necessity until recent years. For prospective tenants of spaces local to them, the ability to view a location before seeing it in person greatly cut down on time spent se$ing up appointments, aligning schedules, traveling to and from locations and potentially moving at the slower pace of a group tour. However, following the COVID-19 pandemic’s outbreak in 2020, it
T
quickly became a necessity for brokers to be he goal of showing prospective
had been the go-to method of achieving this for
able to showcase their properties remotely
tenants a space before they undergo
quite some time — with the Internet allowing
and for tenants to experience prospective
an in-person visit has played a role in
those photos to be accessed around the world
spaces in a safe way. This combination of
the real estate industry for decades.
— technology has remained at the forefront of
convenience and necessity is a significant
While simply taking a series of photographs
innovating this process. Until recently, the most
contributor to what brought the virtual tour to
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