Sign InSuccess Story: OBrien Real Estate
Page views up 13%
New unique visitors up 13%
Summary
Australian realtor OBrien Real Estate uses Matterport cameras and 3D digital twins with CAPTUR3D from Phoria to create immersive 3D property tours for its rental customers. Clients love the experience, especially the accurate measurements of the space which help them to plan layouts and furniture. The improved experience has helped to boost occupancy rates.
Challenge
Founded in 2010 in Melbourne, Australia, OBrien Real Estate is Victoria’s fastest growing realtor. Having made over 30,000 sales since the business was founded, it now employs over 275 sales consultants. In addition, the company employs over 100 property management consultants in its rental operations who manage and serve over 16,000 lease properties.
The Blackburn office is family run and employs 13 staff. The small team embraces new technology and is always eager to explore how digital innovation can help improve the client experience.
“There is a high degree of competition in the realtor market in our area,” explains Anna Molinaro, Rental Department Manager at OBrien Real Estate Blackburn. “When the corporate team at OBrien Real Estate introduced us to the Matterport cameras, we could immediately see the value for rental and sales listing purposes.”
Prior to using the Matterport solution, the Blackburn team would rely on a professional photographer to photograph properties to be listed for sale or rent. Occasionally, staff would use their own mobile phone cameras to take photos or videos. However, listings did not include a virtual tour.
Solution
The Matterport solution now gives the OBrien Real Estate Blackburn team the capability to capture all the assets they need for themselves – in one visit and for one flat rate. This includes HDR photos, a floorplan, a shareable intro video and a virtual 3D tour. In particular, clients love the virtual walkthrough experience made possible by the Matterport virtual 3D tour.
“Matterport is a game changer for us,” states Anna Molinaro. “Clients can now envision themselves in a property before they even step through the door. This makes Matterport a highly valuable solution for us.”
To implement the Matterport solution, the OBrien team worked with PHORIA, an immersive technology studio based in Melbourne, Australia, which specializes in extended reality. CAPTUR3D, the Matterport-based content management system (CMS) developed by PHORIA, creates immersive 3D real estate tours and incorporates specialist functions which agencies need when it comes to photo retouching, floor plans, videos, and analysis of how people use that content, what they look at, and for how long.
Anna Molinaro says, “We think CAPTUR3D is a brilliant tool.”
Results
Everyone in the OBrien Real Estate Blackburn team has enthusiastically adopted the new Matterport cameras and the Matterport platform. The office now creates a virtual walkthrough experience for every property they list for sale or rental.
“With Matterport virtual tours, we can demonstrate our extra worth when it comes to selling and renting properties in the local area,” says Anna Molinaro. “It helps us to deliver additional value to our clients and helps our teams to justify our fees.”
As well as demonstrating value, the approach works: research shows that prospective buyers and renters are 95 percent more likely to call about properties with 3D virtual tours. OBrien Real Estate already boasts impressive performance metrics on sales, time to sale and occupancy. The team expects the Matterport solution to improve these metrics even further, so performance will continue to rank ahead of industry benchmarks.
The Matterport solution can be used easily by staff, reducing the team’s reliance on external professional photographers. This speeds up the listing process for clients and contributes to return on investment for OBrien Real Estate.
“We love the Matterport equipment and platform,” shared Anna Molinaro. “The Matterport solution is really easy to use. This makes it easy to train our team, especially new team members, on how to create Matterport virtual tours for our property listings.”
In addition to the ease of use and rapid onboarding, the OBrien Real Estate Blackburn team particularly values Matterport’s fast turnaround time when uploading the digital images and the flexibility of the solution. Options to amend the floorplan, add pinned notes, link additional documents and retouch photos all add to the practicality and suitability of the solution.
It's time saving too. The Matterport virtual tours and floorplans provide accurate measurements and property layouts. This means that, when creating a listing, OBrien Real Estate staff can replace time-consuming and fallible manual measurements with an accurate and rapid 3D scan process. These room dimensions and labels are immediately available to viewers, as required.
Anna Molinaro explains, “The innovative measuring tool enables prospective buyers to gauge spaces accurately, empowering them to prepare effectively for their initial property inspection.”
This is especially useful for unfurnished rental properties, where prospective tenants may wish to reassure themselves that furniture will fit, as well as for new sales in which design, flooring or furnishing plans can be made in advance with much greater accuracy.
Future Vision
The next phase will be to explore another of Matterport’s latest innovations. Drawing on Matterport’s decade of machine learning and AI experience and the power of new generative AI tools, Project Genesis brings new design and furnishing ideas to life at the click of a button. It includes several easy-to-use tools to reimagine spaces at the touch of a button. For example, agents or viewers can see a space without any furniture, declutter the space of non-furniture items or erase objects one at a time.
Anna Molinaro concludes, “Matterport is a brilliant tool for companies in our field. Since using it, we’ve had fantastic feedback from clients about the way our properties are showcased. Clients listing a property love the advertising possibilities and the way the properties are showcased. Prospective buyers love the new virtual walkthroughs and floorplans. We’ve had overwhelmingly positive feedback all round. We will never look back!”
