Cool Tools While Campbell and Patterson hold doubts about new Web technologies (like animation) others think there may be a place for these tools as long as they are affordable. Alliance Residential’s Ward looked into virtual tours for his mid-rise product and estimates they’d cost between $10,000 and $15,000 per property. “We wouldn’t need a lot of leases to make that up,” he says. “Virtual tours are coming. Hopefully, we’ll be implementing that soon.”
For those interested in online interactivity, technology companies offer multifamily developers a host of options, including frontal elevations, interior renderings and 3-D floor plans, but virtual tours seem to be the showstopper. These unit tours (which can be available on the Internet, saved on a CD-ROM, or viewed at the sales center) show the kitchen, living room, and bedroom from a resident’s perspective. The tours will often end on a balcony with a panoramic view of a city skyline or beach, if applicable to the property. “If you have something that’s 20 stories tall in downtown Orlando, you want to show off that view,” Cady of Renderings.com says. “People can’t get in a crane and jump in an office tower downtown.”
Tours can also take a renter or buyer through the building, starting out on the street, going through the lobby, the gyms, the pool deck, and maybe even the business center. While the tour will feature amenities, Cady says the real selling point is lifestyle. “They’re imagining themselves in that setting and what it would feel like for them,” he says.
Of course, the technology makes sense for condo developers, who have different financial expectations than apartment firms and need the sales edge that such tools provide. “They [condo developers] may need a 50 percent sellout before the bank will start giving them money,” Cady says. “Funding is very different with rentals. We’ve only done a few apartments where they wanted to start pre-rentals ahead of time. It’s a new concept and a lot of apartment developers haven’t really jumped on the bandwagon with it.”
But as would-be residents rely more and more on the Internet to explore their apartment options, that could change.
“There’s a final step where a person looks at a living room, bedroom, and kitchen and says, ‘I want to live here,'” he says. “The more you can get a person through that step, the easier it is to get a signed lease. Technology allows you to take a person through a building that hasn’t been built yet.”
