3-D modeled open-houses from the comfort of your office

A new piece of technology will help arm brokers with the ability to virtually walk clients through their dream home – adding another layer to the broker/client relationship.

A new piece of technology will help arm brokers with the ability to virtually walk clients through their dream home – adding another layer to the broker/client relationship.

GEOSim – an international technology firm – recently introduced a digital interactive 3-D model of downtown Vancouver that the company hopes will revolutionize the way brokers, realtors, developers and homebuyers approach real estate.

“Real estate already makes use of geospatial information, yet it is easy to imagine how a comprehensive, fine-grained database of thousands of buildings will enable new kinds of analysis and insight,” Matthew McCauley, GeoSim’s chairman told the Vancouver Sun. “Discoveries about property characteristics will be possible, not just by humans studying the 3-D models, but also through the use of artificial intelligence.”

The model is produced by laser scanning and photography, which are used to create three dimensional views of cities with details so precise, they are within centimetres of reality.

“It’s highly precise, it’s interactive and it’s what we called parametric, which means the model can be searched for attributes, such as windows, fire hydrants,” McCauley said. “For example, how many north-facing windows are there on the Harbour Centre building? Or, show me all the fire hydrants on Georgia Street.

“It’s not just an image of the city, it’s an interactive model.”

Sounds sort of like technology that currently exists … such as Google Earth, right?

Wrong.

The model can virtually walk homebuyers through streets but also into potential homes. It creates an open house experience without having to leave their mortgage broker’s office.

And brokers who double as real estate agents – or those with a stable of regular Realtor referral partners – will benefit from the ability to present a number of properties to their clients during the consultation phase.