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Virtual Realty

Video and Virtual Reality Becoming Standard Practice for Builders

Blair Kuhnen, Contributing Editor
April 1, 2005
GIANTS

Sidebars:
Traditional Neighborhood Development in South Dade County
Palm Trees in North Texas
Brambelton — Can you see it?
Using Video Early at Trademark

Broadband's growing dominance is giving builders more options for demonstrating their products to online audiences.

According to Internet media analyst Nielsen//NetRatings, the number of in-home broadband users increased 36% in 2004 and now accounts for 55.5% of the total U.S. in-home users as of January 2005. Factor in workplace use and consumers with broadband access may be approaching 85%.

Does this mean builders should put up flash introductions to their Web sites and enhance every page with music? No, but they should consider how video and virtual reality can help demonstrate and sell their products.

Why video and virtual reality?

With increases in speed and capabilities, introducing video and virtual reality may become more of a reality for builders.

Video and virtual reality allow customers to view a site, a plan or even a community without having to step foot outside of the current home.

One of the most innovative and effective ways a builder can use virtual reality on its site is with master planned communities. With the master planned community, selling the lifestyle makes video and virtual reality a winner.

For those builders planning future communities, video can be an integral part of selling future releases. Video — also called video streaming — can be used to show a particular the community, its attributes and testimonials.

For some production builders, virtual reality and video has become a mainstay of demonstrating communities and plans. Two builders that have used video and virtual reality to bring their communities to life online include Estridge Homes in Indianapolis for its use of virtual reality to demonstrate homes and D.R. Horton in Dallas/Fort Worth for its use of video to demonstrate communities.

Estridge Homes

Estridge Homes is now building virtual walk-through animations for every plan it builds with the help of Aareas Interactive.

Paul Estridge, president of Estridge Homes, believes that the way homes are sold leaves much to be desired from a consumer perspective. "We build hundreds of different styles and plans, but we only show people one or two of the homes. Who else [but home builders] would try to show product and only show two items?" said Estridge.

How far have we come with virtual reality? "It's an incredibly realistic experience. Until virtual reality, people really could not experience the product," said Estridge who sees this as really changing the process of selling homes. "Instead of driving traffic to our models, we can drive our models to our traffic."

Virtual reality can be a significant investment, but Estridge sees it as being well worth the investment. "If I sell five more homes next year, I have paid for it. It just doesn't make sense not to do it."

Links

Estridge Homes

http://www.estridge.com

Aareas Interactive

http://www.aareas.com

D.R. Horton

Dallas/Fort Worth GIANT D.R. Horton (NYSE: DHI) has made a similar commitment to video to demonstrate its communities. The company has filmed nearly all of its 62 communities in Dallas/Fort Worth. D.R. Horton then makes these videos available online as well as through the HotOn! Homes Web site.

According to Todd Horton, division president, DFW West Division, "This market is tough. We think video and the use of our new systems have been central to giving us an edge in the market."

Is video and virtual reality the new standard for builders? Not yet, but it is coming.

Links

D.R. Horton

http://dfw.drhorton.com

HotOn! Homes

http://www.hotonhomes.com

Television and Video

Television and video are also proving to be effective traffic drivers for builders.

Pulte Homes' Houston division is a good example of a builder that has used television and video to improve its traffic. Not only is the Houston division [in the process of] filming all of its communities, but it is also filming in both English and in Spanish. These programs can be found on the HotOn Houston Website and are being broadcast on HotOn Houston and Mi Casa TV.

Links

English:

http://www.pulte.com/homefinder/community.asp?commorg_acctcode=1421

Spanish:

http://espanol.pulte.com/homefinder/community.asp?commorg_acctcode=0601

 

Traditional Neighborhood Development in South Dade County

D.R. Horton's South Florida Division began developing Mandarin Lakes — a traditional neighborhood development project encompassing more than 200 acres and 1,500 homes — knowing demand would be strong. The hurdle? Buyers needed to see D.R. Horton's vision — a vision that included retail and commercial venues, a village center and plenty of open green spaces. Because Mandarin Lakes hadn't been fully developed, amenities, structures and models were a long way off. The company's plan was to sell out of a kiosk in a nearby mall location and leverage virtual reality to bridge the location and visual gap.

By using virtual reality, D.R. Horton wanted to demonstrate not only the community and amenities, but also its neo-traditional architectural styles that would be the mainstay in the development. By placing the community on its high traffic Web site and creating a pre-construction interest list, the company gathered several thousand interested shoppers. D.R. Horton also sent simple e-mail campaigns to encourage shoppers to attend the first pre-construction event. Erecting a tent and manning the location with laptop computers and large monitors, sales representatives could show the community and walk the grounds. On its first Saturday, 21 lots from the first release were taken. "I strongly believe that virtual reality played an important role in our initial success," said Mike Humphries, director of sales.

D.R. Horton South Florida Division's Web site: http://sfl.drhorton.com

Palm Trees in North Texas

Palm trees are not very common in North Texas, but as one approaches Savannah — a Huffines master-planned residential community North of Dallas — hundreds line the entry boulevard. Savannah is located in the far North Dallas market. Many would call it remote, but hundreds of visitors flock to Savannah each weekend. The key to the community's success has been communicating to interested buyers both the value and lifestyle homeowners can enjoy there.

TV and the Internet have both played a huge role in communicating the developer's vision. For the Savannah community, the marketing team used a combination of video clips, stills, streaming video and virtual tours to bring the community to life.

Savannah's Web site: http://www.savannahtexas.com

Brambelton — Can you see it?

Brambleton — a 6,250-unit master-planned town center concept community in Loudoun County, Va. — used video to showcase its offerings via its Web site.

When Brambelton was being launched, the builders for the community faced a number of issues. First, none of amenities were completed. The Brambelton community was overshadowed by the nearby Landsdowne community, which had its amenities in place. Secondly, the Brambelton community was working with a relatively small marketing budget that would not support a high-end virtual reality portrait of the community. What Brambelton did have was a clear vision, a number of high quality still renderings of amenities and some imagination.

Working with Reston, VA.-based Fraser Wallace Advertising and Soave Enterprises, the developer created a compelling set of videos using stock video, stock photos, images from the area, digital renderings and voice-overs — essentially bringing Brambelton to life.

"Perhaps it [the Video] was more believable because it used recognizable imagery. Consumers could put themselves into that location," says Fraser Wallace, of Fraser Wallace Advertising. This type of video — with its evocative images, stock video and a few local images/renderings — can be done at relatively low cost for just about any amenity-rich community long before the amenities are complete.

Brambelton's Web site: http://www.brambleton.com/web/main.html.

Using Video Early at Trademark

How can builders leverage video for marketing a new neighborhood? — Virtual reality and video.

Virtual reality, in combination with video, is helpful in selling a community before the infrastructure is in place. Used together, video and virtual reality can be extremely powerful. In one excellent example, Shea Homes, Lennar Homes and Centex Homes linked together to develop Rivermark — a master planned community — in Santa Clara.

For the Rivermark community, the development team not only created extensive virtual reality representations of the community, but also augmented the virtual reality representations with video that sold the developers, the vision and testimonials from prospective buyers.

According to Gauger Associates' David Gauger, "It (virtual reality and video) was key to the whole marketing strategy."

Rivermark's Web site: http://www.rivermark.net


© 2008, Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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