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Virtual Reality the New Reality for Real Estate VR/AR COULD BECOME A $2.6B MARKET IN REAL ESTATE BY 2025

As headset technology continues to improve, a number of companies are already exploring the possibilities of VR/AR for virtual property tours and projections of scale models, and they see even greater marketing opportunities down the road.

The promises of virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) have been described plenty of times before: Fully immersive video games, sideline-quality views of sporting events from the comfort of a living room, surgeons reviewing a patient’s medical records and scans mid-procedure without leaving the operating table and many other flights of fancy. The problem has always been the limits of the technology. Processing speeds in headsets have traditionally been too slow to keep up with the movements of human eyes and limbs, and the headsets’ visual displays have lacked the high definition necessary to resemble the real world (for VR) or integrate seamlessly with real-world vision (for AR), leaving users frustrated. That could soon change. According to a research report released last year by Goldman Sachs, VR/AR hardware and software are finally beginning to catch up with consumer expectations and are poised to disrupt a number of markets, including real estate. The report sees VR/AR becoming a $2.6 billion market in real estate by 2025 as headsets such as the Oculus Rift and the Microsoft Hololens improve over the next few years. It’s essential to begin preparing for the expansion. In addition to virtual walkthroughs of both finished and unfinished buildings and virtual models projected onto desks and tables in the real world – innovations which are already in ongoing development – companies see opportunities for more game-changing developments a little farther down the road, once mass adoption takes hold.

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