The Observer’s Brady Dale took a virtual reality tour of The Grand at Sky View Parc, a luxury condo building in Flushing, to see if the future of condo sales involves VR. Before the building is finished, prospects can take a tour through the condo by looking at virtual reality renderings inside of the Oculus Rift headset. It’s almost like going inside of a developer’s head to see what he imagines end-stage gentrification will look like. The developer, private equity firm Onex, is not the first company to create a VR app for real estate, but it is perhaps the earliest success story, as they say 75 percent of units in the building have already been sold.
Dale has some fun imagining how the real estate industry can expand the use of this new tool:
“What if companies put avatars for people in spaces that potential clients could could talk to or otherwise interact with? What if companies let clients change the decor inside VR tours? What if they did something edgy, like letting clients play a video game through a building for sale, such as a low-grade Doom scenario? Could any of those sorts of use cases increase engagement and, therefore, sales?”
A Doom scenario inside of a luxury condo sounds like something I’d be super into.
(Image: Onex)
