Zillow's new 3D home tours are captured with iPhone

Real estate website Zillow plans to let users explore potential homes in a more immersive way — in 3D. These 3D tours will be made available on for-rent and for-sale listings, giving interested buyers a way to explore the home in a more life-like way. The tours will be made possible via an upcoming iOS app that enables real estate agents and home owners to create the tours using an ordinary iPhone.

The home tour capture is made possible by the Zillow Group Home Capture App, which is currently in what the company calls an early test phase limited to Scottsdale, Arizona. The app works by recording 360-degree panoramas of a home's various rooms. These panoramas are stitched together by Zillow's software into an immersive tour, a process that takes a few hours and happens on Zillow's side of things.

Once finished processing, the tour is added to the Zillow listing. Overall, Zillow says it will take about half an hour to capture a 3,000sqft house. The entire thing is free, making this the only free mobile home capturing app of its kind. Assuming the testing process goes off without any issues, Zillow plans to launch the app for more people to use starting next year.

The idea here is that traditionally capturing these type of panoramas would require dedicated, expensive cameras and would need a degree of technical skills. By having the user download an app and use the iPhone they probably already own, the user's part of the process is simple. The more advanced work is done by Zillow after the panoramas are uploaded.

Talking about this, Zillow's Chief Marketing Officer Jeremy Wacksman said, "Photos have always been vital to the home search process and now 3D tours can give buyers and renters a realistic understanding of what is would be like to live in the home."

SOURCE: PRNewswire