Tech innovations drive business in Edmonton real estate

A new Edmonton business is letting homeowners and others walk through a space before it exists. CTV News Edmonton's Nicole Weisberg reports.

The idea to launch his real estate-related business came together quickly for Ryan Brown.

A year ago, a friend told him of an Australian venture that allows clients to physically walk through a floor plan using a custom projection system.

Six months later, Brown launched Direct Motion to do the same thing. A mechanical engineer by trade, he designed and built his own system, and has so far helped 25 clients design their houses and commercial spaces.

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Inside his leased warehouse space on Edmonton’s south side, Brown uses eight projectors hooked up to a computer system to prepare the drawings and display them on the floor.

Bringing the floor plans to scale “is one of the largest challenges that people find,” he said.

“We help them overcome that by making everything to the right size so that they can experience their house,” Brown told CTV News Edmonton earlier this month. “They can go through their build and fine-tune their design so they’re confident in their final product.”

Clients typically come to Brown when they have drawings of their project — be it a building, a renovation to an existing house or a backyard — and are almost ready to begin work on it.

“They’ll usually bring their interior designers, their architect or their design firm,” Brown said. “We’ll put it on the floor so that they can really fine-tune things ... and help them make adjustments.”

Brown said he knows of others who offer the same service in other cities, including Calgary, Vancouver and Toronto.

Using technology to help people conceptualize homes virtually isn’t new, but it continues to evolve, says John Carter, broker at Edmonton’s Re/Max River City.

Re/Max is currently testing artificial intelligence technology in Toronto to help prospective home buyers visualize a property’s potential, with plans to roll it out nationwide.

“People have a hard time visualizing space. Most people can’t look and see what the room will look like with a different paint colour, let alone different furniture or walls moved,” Carter told CTV News Edmonton.

He said if real estate brokerages and agents aren’t keeping up with technology in promoting properties, they’re losing out.

Carter said feedback from agents suggests buyers quickly pass over listings that don’t offer virtual tours.

“On the listing promotion side, it’s virtual tours, being able to be 3D immersive,” Carter said. “They need to be able to click, go in and walk themselves through the property on their own chosen device.

“If they can’t virtually see it and get a decision ... they will go look at the one that they were able to virtually walk through.”

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With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Nicole Weisberg