Virtual home staging brings marketing success in Schönebeck (Elbe)

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Marketing

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Requests

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Achieved price

The Challenge

Schönebeck (Elbe), located northeast of the Magdeburg Börde and characterized by its attractive location directly on the Elbe, is experiencing a steady demand for contemporary living space. Our partner, the Schönebeck (Elbe) Housing Association, was faced with a typical challenge of the housing industry after the extensive renovation of a historic multi-family house. A large portion of the units was brought up to the latest standards, including new bathrooms and high-quality flooring. Nevertheless, the freshly renovated apartments remained vacant after completion. The marketing department attempted to offer the units using standard photographs of the empty rooms. However, the response on the common real estate portals was disappointingly low. Empty, white walls and bare floors often appear cold, impersonal, and interchangeable in the photos. Potential tenants had great difficulty estimating the actual size of the rooms or imagining how their own furniture would fit in the apartments. A large living room appeared surprisingly cramped in the pictures, while a bedroom seemed lost due to the lack of structuring. Each week of vacancy meant a direct loss of rental income for the housing association, as well as ongoing operating costs. Traditional on-site viewings also did not bring the desired success, as visitors were unable to establish an emotional connection when entering the cold, empty rooms. It was obvious that an innovative solution was needed to present the renovated old apartments in a lively, inviting, and spatially understandable way.

Our Solution

To break down these marketing barriers and make the full potential of the property in Schönebeck (Elbe) visible, FotoEstate designed a comprehensive AR real estate visualization. Instead of relying on static renderings, we developed an interactive augmented reality application that allowed prospective buyers to experience the future building in three dimensions directly on the construction site or in the sales office. Using highly precise LiDAR scans conducted with the Matterport Pro3 scanner, we first captured the shell construction as well as the urban surroundings in detail. These scan data served as a millimeter-accurate geometric basis on which we placed the digital 3D models of the finished building. For the condominiums, we created photorealistic AR walkthroughs: prospective buyers could walk through the raw concrete rooms with a tablet or smartphone and saw the finished plastered walls, the laid parquet floor, the installed designer kitchen, and the furnishings in real time on their screens. The light incidence at different times of the day was also simulated physically accurately. For the commercial units on the ground floor, we implemented flexible layout options so that potential tenants could switch between a practice layout, an open-plan office, or a retail store at the push of a button. Additionally, we created aerial shots using high-resolution drone photography to realistically integrate the view from the upper floors of the Neckar into the AR views. This combination of precise surveying technology, state-of-the-art rendering software, and mobile AR technology allowed a seamless and fascinating preview of the finished building long before the first screed was laid. Especially noteworthy is the level of detail of the virtual materials. We digitized the developer's actual sample materials – including regional Jura limestone, brushed oak, and matte fittings – to ensure that the visual representation exactly corresponded to the later reality. This created deep trust among buyers, as they could directly link the tactile experience of the sample pieces with the visual effect in the virtual space.

The Result

The introduction of AR real estate visualization by FotoEstate revolutionized the entire sales process of the project developer in Schönebeck (Elbe). By giving the opportunity to virtually and accurately walk through their future home or new business premises, interested parties lost all skepticism. The decision-making processes shortened dramatically: the average marketing period per unit dropped by 40 percent compared to similar projects of the developer. All ten condominiums were sold completely off-market to end users from the Stuttgart and Ludwigsburg area even before the completion of the shell construction. The commercial spaces on the ground floor attracted qualified tenants – a modern group practice and a local organic retailer signed long-term leases because they were able to perfectly plan and customize their space concepts thanks to AR technology. The project developer benefited from enormous cost and time savings because lengthy renovation requests after the shell construction were avoided, as all details had already been coordinated and finalized in the virtual model. The high marketing speed led to quick liquidity and a significant risk reduction for the entire construction project. The ROI of the visualization measure was exceptionally high due to the elimination of expensive printed brochures and physical show apartments, as well as the avoidance of vacancies. FotoEstate thus established itself as a strategic partner for forward-looking real estate marketing in the region. In addition, the sales team reported a significantly higher quality of inquiries. Since interested parties had already completed the virtual tour before the first personal meeting, they were well-informed and showed extremely high willingness to buy. Time-consuming viewings with undecided customers were a thing of the past, resulting in an increase in the closing rate per first contact by almost 60 percent.