New AI-generated floor plans integrated with Zillow 3D Home tour and listing photos provide home shoppers a more authentic and immersive digital shopping experience
Zillow is unveiling technology that will change the way home shoppers tour a home remotely. The new 3D Home® interactive floor plans bring together rich media content on for-sale listings into a simple and powerful digital shopping experience that all Zillow users can access for free.
Instead of viewing each media type separately with limited listing detail, the floor plan now serves as a dynamic guide to help shoppers more seamlessly navigate a home online. Together, the 3D Home tour, still photos and AI-generated floor plan give a more accurate sense of the home’s flow and space than was possible before.
Zillow uses panoramic photos captured by an agent or photographer with the free 3D Home app and a 360-degree camera, and then applies the company’s computer vision and machine learning models to generate a 3D Home tour and interactive floor plan — including AI-predicted room dimensions, square footage and the location of the listing photos relative to the other media. The 3D tour and floor plan are automatically uploaded to the listing and can also be added to the MLS, embedded on a website, or shared via email or social media.
“We are redefining the virtual tour experience by using AI to break down the barriers between listing media — like photos and virtual tours — and listing data, such as square footage and room dimensions,” said Josh Weisberg, VP of Zillow’s Rich Media Experience team. “This new integrated experience will help shoppers better understand the relationship between still photos and the layout of the house, provide a better sense of the space and home features, and improve the overall shopping experience.”
Available now in 25 markets with more being added throughout the year, 3D Home tours with interactive floor plans make it possible for all homes to be showcased to attract more buyers and help home shoppers narrow their choices and act fast in today’s hot housing market.
This next-generation 3D Home tour is the latest example of Zillow innovations designed to help improve the remote home shopping experience. The pandemic brought new demands from shoppers, and Zillow saw the number of 3D Home tours published on for-sale listings more than triple between 2019 and 2020 because buyers and their agents recognized the tool as a safer way to tour, and sellers and listing agents saw it as a cost-effective and high-quality way to highlight and share listings in a hot housing market.
Agents leveraging technology such as Zillow’s free 3D Home tours have also seen improved success for their listings through increased views and saves on Zillow. Based on data collected May 2020, buyers saved listings with 3D Home tours 32 percent more often than listings without.
The surge in 3D Home tours on listings and further enhancements to the integrated experience provide photographers with greater opportunity to support agents. Photographers can easily use the Zillow 3D Home app and a Ricoh 360-degree camera to capture high-quality tours that help agent listings stand out.
