Virtual tours get audio with CircleSpace.com

Real Estate Weekly, July 9, 2003

"Can virtual tours match the experience of visiting a property with a broker?" Thanks to Circlespace.com, the answer is "yes." Circle Space.com entered New York City's real estate market as the first residential and commercial brokerage in the nation to provide an on-line voice commentary to accompany on-line virtual tours of properties.

City Stage, a film production facility, and Forman HiDefinition Screening Room, a HDTV Digital Cinema facility, are the first commercial clients in New York to take advantage of CircleSpace.com's virtual tour technology for advertising purposes.

CircleSpace.com is believed to be the first virtual tour provider in the nation's real estate industry to offer the "Audio Tour Companion"--a pre-recorded voice commentary, which allows the agent's voice to be heard alongside the on-line visual tour to replicate the experience of viewing the space in a company of an agent. This innovation frees both brokers' and buyers' time traditionally spent on touring the properties.

In addition to introducing the voice tour feature, the company revolutionized the virtual tour production by utilizing new technology from Eggsolutions Optronics. It creates 3600 virtual tours through a simple and very brief "One-photo" process that requires shooting only one photograph in each space.

The technology eliminates the need for time-consuming and expensive multi-photography photoshoots and digital image "stitching" procedures (cutting and pasting photos to create a 360[degrees] image) of earlier virtual tour technologies. Ease of use of CircleSpace.com's process is unparalleled in the industry.

In addition to presenting its own listed properties, CircleSpace.com provides virtual tour production and hosting for other brokers and property owners. Virtual tours produced by CircleSpace.com can be viewed either on-line or from files on compact disks and do not require downloading any additional software applications for viewing on personal computers.

Brian Coles, director of operations, City Stage Production Facility, said: "We have received enthusiastic response from entertainment clients who have booked our stages after visiting the virtual tour on CircleSpace.com. The producers saved time and money by viewing our production facility from Los Angeles through a virtual tour, instead of traveling to New York to check out the space beforehand."

Coles also commented on the convenience and speed of the virtual tour production process: "Shooting photographs for the production of the virtual tour of our 30,000-SF facility took on only 50 minutes and didn't interrupt our operations. The tour was posted on the web within 24 hours from the time the photographer entered our facility."

Arkady Fridman, founder and president of CircleSpace.com, said: "Our technology and hosting program is an ideal way to search and view residential and commercial real estate as well as hotels, nightclubs, and social events. Facility owners and brokers can burn the virtual tours onto CDs and hand them out to potential buyers as digital business cards or brochures to be viewed in the comfort of their own offices or homes."