MATTERPORT

Making a 3D property tour requires specialised equipment. You can’t make a 3D tour by walking around the property with just any camera. Most companies that create 3D virtual tours use the Matterport 3D camera, which costs around $4,000 -  plus ongoing monthly costs charged to the technician for processing and hosting the videos.

The camera works by sitting on a tripod in a room and spinning 360 degrees several times to take a photo of the area surrounding it. The camera is then moved a few metres away where it spins again. The technician will end up moving the camera several times through the house and each of the rooms; making sure to mark windows and mirrors in any of the rooms which can confuse the camera and distort the images, and ensuring no people or pets walk through the area when the camera is in operation. All of these photos are then 'stitched together' to create the virtual tour.
 
This process of using the camera to make the 3D tour takes up a fair chunk of time. A standard 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom, single storey house usually takes 1 – 1.5 hours of the technician’s time, which also contributes to the price you'll be charged if you pay someone to do it.

In July 2018, Principal David Hamilton (First National Palm Beach & The Pines) imported the latest Matterport 3-D Pro 2 3D camera from the U.S.

The new camera has 4K photo quality with fully immersive 3-D and Virtual Reality Tours all within easy, cost-effective, reach of our clients.

Why is this so important? About 90% of buyers start their search for a property on the Internet. The days of buyers coming to an agent’s window with a notepad are becoming few and far between.

They have started their search on Wednesday or Thursday, they’ve made a short list of properties that are open for inspection that they want to look at on the weekend. There is nothing hit and miss about it, the more they can find out about the property before they go there the better.

We have been using the early version Matterport camera since October 2015 so we have a lot of experience with how to use them and what they can achieve. Often one buyer comes here from out of town and finds a property and the other buyer isn’t in a position to look at the property. On many occasions the second buyer has decided to trust the partner, usually a husband or wife, and they make an offer based on a 3-D tour only.

We overhear buyers come through Opens and talk about features of the property that they’ve already seen on the tour.

Currently we have 232 live tours including sold properties. Out of that we’ve had 332,700 impressions (counted before a user clicks play to load the tour) and 63,000 visits (counted after a user clicks the play button). Not only that but according to www.realestate.com.au people spend far more time looking at a property that has a tour or video compared to a set of photos.

According to REA Group:
Buyers are 60% more likely to email an agent and 95% more likely to call an agent when a properly they’ve seen on realestate.com.au includes a virtual tour.

For more details, check out our blog article: The Future of Real Estate Has Arrived.