Zillow’s New 3D Tours Add Another Dimension to Your House Hunt
The biggest surprise of 2020 was no doubt the homebuying boom, with prospective buyers and sellers taking advantage of the pandemic-forced shift from commuting to major cities to remote work as a viable (and in many cases permanent) new option, allowing for a work-from-anywhere approach that has never before existed in modern times.
Whether you surf Zillow to potentially discover your dream home, or you simply enjoy the many wacky real estate listings that consistently pop up and go viral online, the listing app just launched a free new tool that will bring your virtual browsing to life, and it couldn’t be easier to use.
The new Zillow 3D Home App, available for both iOS and Android devices, allows real estate agents, photographers, or sellers can use an iPhone or a 360-degree camera to capture panorama photos, and the app does the rest, creating a 3D home tour. The virtual tour creates an AI-enhanced floor plan, estimating square footage and room dimensions based on the photos. The end result can be instantly previewed, edited, and shared privately or attached to a Zillow listing, optimizing the search function and guaranteeing maximum viewership from potentially interested buyers.
Zillow notes that listings with 3D home tours were 22 percent more likely to sell within 30 days than listings without, selling, on average, 10 percent faster than listings without these trusty tours, making it an ideal scenario for both sides in the quest to match buyers with their perfect homes.
The 3D Home App is currently available in 25 markets across the U.S., with Zillow planning to expand throughout 2021 to reach more communities, as noted by Architectural Digest.
Zillow hopes these new tools make the entire process from start to finish easier on all parties involved. Josh Weisberg, vice president of Zillow’s media experience team told HousingWire, “This new integrated experience will help shoppers better understand the relationship between still photos and the layout of the house, provide a better sense of the space and home features, and improve the overall shopping experience.”
So go ahead and set up those alerts, even if you’re feeling a little too seen as of late.