Island estate agency business Manxmove has introduced an ‘exciting and radical’ new futuristic addition to their normal service.
A virtual viewing facility has just been released by the company and after 18 months of planning,
Manxmove is now offering this new service to all existing and future Manxmove clients free of charge.
Graham Wilson, director of Manxmove Limited said: ‘This exciting new virtual viewing experience is totally unlike any other facility that has ever been used by estate agents before, either in the island or beyond.
‘Some agents have experimented in the past with 360 degree tripod images of certain rooms in properties, but our virtual viewings are radically different.
‘Using a brand new head mounted micro computer from America called Google Glass, we take you on a complete virtual video and audio room by room tour of a property, accompanied by one of our agents.
‘This futuristic £1,300 micro computer is tiny and, at first glance, looks just like a regular pair of glasses, yet it is as powerful as some desktop PCs, with 2GB of RAM, voice activated heads up display, as well as built in satellite navigation and full internet access.
‘However, more importantly for us, is the facility to record top quality full 1080 HD widescreen video and quality audio.
‘In a buyer’s market such as ours, the number of properties that are available to potentially view is huge, so our new Virtual Viewing experience is designed to allow clients to narrow down their initial search to a more manageable number of properties to arrange actual internal viewing appointments on.’
Mr Wilson said it is not intended to be a replacement for actual property viewings, and it never will be.
‘Most of us lead busy lives with full time jobs, children and pets to organise before we can even think about getting together out of work hours to view numerous properties.
‘With the help of Manxmove and Google Glass you can now virtually view numerous properties with your whole family from the comfort of your own home, all virtually accompanied by one of our agents.
‘Virtual viewings should also reduce the number of wasted viewings, where inevitably, vendors go to a lot of care, time and trouble preparing their homes for viewers that are sometimes clearly not interested before they have got much further than the first few rooms.
‘In addition, Google Glass has full wireless capability with real time communication facility, which means that a prospective purchaser from the other side of the world could request a live virtual viewing with one of our agents on a specific day and specific time and be guided around a property live, whilst communicating directly with the agent.’
Manxmove says the new service is totally optional and may not suit everybody, which is fine, as conventional marketing will obviously continue, with virtual viewings being offered as an additional marketing tool and definitely not as an alternative.
‘We have also gone to great lengths to deal with any security issues and every virtual viewing presentation is password protected and, although the password is easily obtained, we will require similar information as we would for a conventional viewing before releasing any passwords. ‘
You can have a look at this new marketing idea by clicking on the Virtual Viewing example on the homepage of website www.manxmove.im