Virtual reality can be game changing

Properties offering virtual reality tours attract an additional 72.3% of prospective buyers to on-site inspections compared to properties that don’t provide virtual reality tours, say business school researchers Professor Deborah Levy and Dr William Cheung, who, together with co-authors Chuyi Xiong and Michael Allen, used data from one of the largest real estate brokerages in China.

"We found the use of virtual reality in property marketing motivates buyers to physically inspect a property, reduces the property's time on the market, and improves information transparency, narrowing the difference between the asking and transacted prices of a property," says Dr Cheung.

The study data includes residential property sales from 14 districts in Wuhan. In total, more than 4,000 housing transactions were analysed. The transaction data contains each property's characteristics and whether virtual reality (VR) was incorporated in marketing the property.

In addition, the dataset includes detailed social media interactions for each property, including numbers of followers and viewers.