Most people will want to see the house they’re planning to buy before committing to a sale, but with many new residential developments you can’t see what you’re buying beforehand. Sometimes there’s not even a show house to take a look around. Ireland’s biggest estate agents, Sherry Fitzgerald, teamed up with Samsung to create a VR solution to this problem and give house-hunters the ability to see houses in virtual reality before the first brick has been laid.
Using Gear VR to help people find their perfect home
Sherry Fitzgerald became one of the first estate agents in the world to use VR to showcase off-plan houses to their customers. Customers simply put on their Gear VR headset and they can experience the property without leaving the estate agent’s office, giving customers a great idea of what the finished house will look like.
“We launched our first scheme with Rokeby Park in Lucan using the Samsung Gear VR. We worked up what an actual house could look like and people experienced the VR, essentially walking through the house. To give someone a sense of what their bedroom, what their kitchen, and what the aspect was like was really useful for us,” explains Joanne Geary, the company’s Director and Group Head of Marketing and Business Development.
Ronan O’Driscoll, Director at Sherry Fitzgerald New Homes, agrees that using VR is really great for purchasers, who often feel that buying off-plan is buying blind: “They can get a real feel for the size of the house, the shape, the layout of the rooms; they can walk from room to room, and this has been a huge benefit for us.”
The ambition for Sherry Fitzgerald now is to have a VR headset in each of their 90 offices across Ireland and within their international offices too, so more of their customers can find their perfect homes.
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