Langley Real Estate

KERRY GOLD

Vancouver — From Friday's Globe and MailPublished on Thursday, Jun. 24, 2010 3:00PM EDTLast updated on Thursday, Jun. 24, 2010 3:03PM EDT

 

Brian Shuster built a mini empire developing internet marketing tools, and now the one-time Silicon Valley player is based in Vancouver and looking to capitalize on the city’s extreme real estate obsession.

Mr. Shuster is famous for creating those irritating old pop-up ads that made internet surfing an obstacle course, but he says he also invented banner advertising as a business model. Early on, he also carved out a lucrative career in the adult entertainment business, as a porn webmaster. For the last few years, he’s been focusing on 3-D internet worlds, such as social networking game Virtual Vancouver — which looks like a world of beautiful people. The social networking game has users attending simultaneous real-time art gallery openings, concerts and comedy shows. Mr. Shuster sees the 3-D virtual cyberspace as the future of the internet, and real estate is a “killer app” for it.

“I am largely credited with building a lot of foundational elements that the flat web works on, and I have dozens of patents on those pieces too from many years ago,” says Mr. Shuster. “For a long time I’ve dreamed of how the next version of the internet would really work. So this has been very exciting, but it’s all been done because of my past successes contributing to this project.”

The web developer, marketer and CEO of Utherverse has trained his high-tech sites on Vancouver’s often lucrative real estate market. This month, Mr. Shuster launched virtual house tours so that potential buyers can examine a house on the market without having to actually step foot inside it. If successful, it might save buyers time and realtors money because it would lessen time spent driving potential buyers around on house tours. It is also available to non-realtors — homeowners who’d simply like to have their home made into an online facsimile, accessible through a website. Users will soon be able to “prop edit” furniture in rooms and change paint colour, also making it useful for interior decorating. Anyone who’s ever used an avatar in a virtual world game like Second Life will understand the look and feel of Utherverse’s home tours.

“From the home buyer’s standpoint, there’s no longer the frustration of being taken out to a house and rolling your eyes at the realtor after the 20th time, and saying, ‘Ok, let me explain this to you again. I need a workable office space. Don’t show me houses that have a closet for a work space,’” says Mr. Shuster.

 

Downtown Vancouver realtor Paul Albrighton held the first virtual open house earlier this month for Mr. Shuster. One of his clients also happened to be a manager for Utherverse, and the connection was made. As the inaugural tester for the service, Mr. Albrighton was waived the $300 to $400 fee that Utherverse will charge to build a virtual 1,500 sq. ft. space.

“They noticed that I do a lot of business online — it’s probably 60 per cent of my business,” says Mr. Albrighton, who specializes in marketing lofts. He also maintains a website as a loft listing service.

For Mr. Shuster’s 3-D home tour project, he chose a 1,355 sq. ft. loft that is listed at $1.099 million. It is available for viewing with the downloading of free 3-D software available on his website.

“I guess the key is that the user is in control,” says Mr. Albrighton. “With the normal video tour, you have either a panorama shot around the house or suite and you scroll left or right. It’s like a camera with a really wide picture.

 

“With this, you get a better feel of how the space feels. You can sit down and get a feeling of perspective like ceiling height…it’s almost like a video game.”

Roz McNulty, whose Burnaby condo was also used in an initial experiment, says that one photo is stitched together seamlessly on a virtual tour. Traditional video tours can be shaky and not show how rooms connect, she says.

So far, realtors have supplied Utherverse with pictures of a property, including floor and ceiling shots. They upload the pictures to Utherverse and their team builds the virtual interior. Mr. Shuster envisions the day when a realtor will have a whole list of virtual properties to show a potential buyer. Users will one day be able to enter Virtual Vancouver, look up a listing address and find a virtual door to knock on.

“This could take them to all of their properties in minutes or an hour, because it’s so easy to virtually teleport from the first house to the second house.”

Because of Utherverse’s 3-D research over the years, the pricing, he says, is the breakthrough.

“This could have been done a year ago, but the software for the same house would have cost between $50,000 and $100,000. We’ve been working on tools so that we could do it in a streamline process.”

Mr. Shuster says he’s got a waiting list of realtors who want to use the service. “We have a couple of hundred properties we need to build. There are several major real estate companies on the list, and of course there are dozens of individuals that have asked us to do their homes.”

Macdonald Realty’s VP Dan Scarrow is curious about the technology.

“It won’t replace drive-around tours, but it has the potential to help people narrow down their decision from the comfort of their own living room,” says Mr. Scarrow. “Instead of spending three days in a car with your realtor, there’s the potential to narrow that down to one or two [days].”

No amount of technology can save a falling market, however. Mr. Albrighton says he hasn’t yet sold a unit based on a virtual tour. But he considers it a useful extra step in marketing a high-end condo at the beginning stage.

“I think it would be quite positive for special suites. I don’t know if I would do it for a small, quicker transaction,” says Mr. Albrighton. “I think the largest potential and what they will go after is developer business, places that aren’t built yet. The display suite is usually the best suit, but this would allow them to make a virtual tour for quite a few floor plans.”