Move over model homes.
A new app and web platform roOomy from 3D-visualization company Loft, Inc. allows users to virtually decorate an existing space with real furnishings from partnering retailers, all from their smartphone. In a digitally-dominated era where the National Association of Realtors reports that 90% of home buyers search online during the home buying process, the need to bring the wow factor to internet listings is more important than ever.
“Our technology allows you to convert any 2D image of a room scene into a 3D space and then select the real products you like most from home furnishing retailers,” says Pieter Aarts, CEO of Loft and co-founder of roOomy, which he founded in the Netherlands six years ago. The app launched in June 2105.
Aarts knew there was a growing opportunity to connect real estate professionals with home products and change the way we visualize properties today, which is usually in a 2D photo format online. Just imagining what you could do with a blank canvas can be tough, so allowing potential buyers to decorate rooms from for sale listings or model home photos and picture ways they would make the space their own could change the home buying process.
roOomy also provides model staging’s for Realtors, builders, and multifamily property owners to use with their listings, eliminating the need to build expensive and time consuming model homes.
“We have our own roOomy design guides where we offer different design styles, so for the same room we can provide a rustic style or contemporary style and really view the full potential of the room,” says Aarts. “For a fairly low fee we’re virtually staging properties in different styles and our turn around time is only two days.”
The company has partnered with a number of leading home furnishing retailers including Wayfair, Crate & Barrel, Design Within Reach, and more. The database consists of over 5,000 purchasable products.
“Being on the intersection of real estate and retail is really cool,” says Aarts. “The industries are really supporting each other, and real estate [professionals] should be on top of new technologies like ours in order to differentiate themselves.”
