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As auctioneers turn to virtual reality, the real estate community must decide whether this tech will outlive the trend cycle or not.
Last month, Ray White Cheltenham auctioneer, Greg Brydon, made real estate history when he wore a pair of Apple Vision VR goggles during an auction for a 100-year-old converted church.
It was a move that, for Brydon, ended in triumph: on auction day, he successfully sold the property for over $1.4 million to an East Melbourne family.
But opinion on the wider use of VR goggles during auctions is divided. Andy Reid, an auctioneer and self-described proptech “geek”, believes that VR offers a mixed bag of benefits and pitfalls to real estate professionals.
In his opinion, the greatest benefits of VR technology will be in the results it yields for internal training and compliance.
“The ability for an auction to be witnessed in the first person after the event means that there are no arguments as to what’s happened,” Reid said.
And, unlike with third-person tripod filming – which has been taking place at Australian auctions since 2007 – VR recording means “there are no arguments as to what the auctioneer saw and heard”.
The benefits of this are twofold. First, Reid argued that first-person film and sound capabilities would improve transparency, and, as a result, “the number of people that would be busted for non-compliant activity would be more that we care to admit”.
“The ability to audit that level of compliance is tremendous,” Reid said. “That’s amazing for consumers, because if we can tangibly raise the bar from a compliance point of view, by osmosis, it improves the level of professionalism.”
Second, Reid pointed to VR’s substantial potential for improving training and development for auctioneers.
“You can train and develop using that first-person stuff, because you’ll be able to stop, slow down, you’ll be able to make someone who is self-critiquing see a situation in real time.”
Over time, watching the recordings back and identifying mistakes could help auctioneers refine all aspects of their craft, from volume to tonality, pace and body language.
Despite the benefits of this technology, Reid warned industry players to be cautious not to alienate consumers.
“The thing we’ve really got to understand is that until it is commonplace in homes, consumers aren’t going to be having a bar of it,” said Reid.
Until VR headsets are normalised for the public, VR auctions risk “bringing the attention away from buying a house and towards the guy who’s wearing these specs”.
“The removal of eye contact makes people more nervous,” he said. “That’s a barrier to entry.”
In his opinion, good visual design can go some way to bridging this barrier. VR headsets that look like “a Star Trek character” are more off-putting than headsets that look like an ordinary pair of glasses, like Reid’s personal favourite, the Ray-Ban Meta glasses.
“A lot of tech can be very faddish,” Reid said. “It’s like, ‘Oh, look at this shiny new toy!’ and then it will drift off into the ether.”
“We’ve got to talk about transparency in the transaction, compliance, and training and development, because for those three things, this could be amazing.”
“That is game-changing, potentially.”
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