Virtual reality house viewing

House hunting is time consuming. Potential buyers often visit many unsuitable properties as it is often difficult to gauge the true experience of a house without visiting it. But what if you could get a more realistic, immersive experience via virtual reality without ever leaving your sofa?

Working in partnership with the Manifest London team, our strategy was to flip the idea of traditional house hunting on its head – bridging the gap between seeing a property on the Rightmove site and visiting it in person.

We explored how technology is shaping house hunting and how innovation could be used to remove some of the hassle and make the process more efficient for buyers, vendors and estate agents.

Our ThreeSixO service used the latest virtual reality production techniques to create virtual tours of two houses that could be viewed on any smartphone using Google Cardboard, thus delivering an immersive experience of being inside the homes without having to arrange a viewing.

We partnered with one of Rightmove’s listed estate agents, Martyn Gerrard, to select two different properties which were due to be put on the market. These included a new development flat and a £2.5million seven-bedroom mansion. Filming every room in the two homes on a camera rig with six connected Go-Pro cameras we then stitched them together with editing software to create a fully immersive 360-degree video.

To work alongside the footage we created a bespoke soundscape to compliment the flow of the video, as well as introduce sound effects such as bird song when entering the gardens of the properties to make the viewer feel more immersed in the experience.

The virtual tour was hosted on LittleStar, an app designed specifically for hosting VR footage as well as placing it on the Rightmove Youtube page where Android users could also view it. The Manifest team distributed Rightmove-branded Google Cardboard headsets to media, bloggers, and trade partners and were made available in Martyn Gerrard offices for consumers to try.

Results:

• Martyn Gerrard secured new listings from vendors who were keen to have them manage their house sale after hearing about the campaign
• UK media coverage including print and online including: Mirror Online, Metro, Daily Telegraph, Sunday Times, Evening Standard, Independent. Estate Agent Today, Property Industry Eye, VR Focus and Simple LandLords Insurance.