Zillow has officially announced the launch of five new features, each one designed to to make home shopping, selling, and renting easier.
According to certain reports, this assortment of solutions delivers, for starters, a solution called SkyTour, which happens to be a first-of-its-kind, user-guided view of a home’s exterior from above.
Beyond that, Zillow will conceive Offer Insights, Rentals Costs & Fees Breakdown, Tour Itineraries, and BuyAbilitySM upgrades that make it possible for users to explore listings, understand costs, and at the same time, schedule tours, all in one place.
More on the given development, when leveraged together, tread up a long distance to simplify home shopping challenges like hidden costs and budget uncertainty, while simultaneously conceiving a straightforward mechanism for browsing, planning and touring. All in all, thanks to such tools, Zillow will conceive smart, seamless digital experience which customers would generally prefer to be evident throughout their real estate journey.
Talk about the whole value proposition on a slightly deeper level, we begin from SkyTour. Available, at launch, on eligible Zillow Showcase℠ listings, the stated solution arrives on the scene bearing an ability to provide dynamic, drone-like 3D view of a home’s exterior.
Complementing this would be a collection of simple, intuitive controls that let buyers fly around a property virtually to get a sense of the exterior layout, lot, and area surrounding the property, all of it accessible right from their phone or computer.
SkyTour also leverages Gaussian splatting, an emerging rendering technology used in gaming, virtual production and more, SkyTour to transform drone footage into a smooth and interactive 3D experience. In fact, this development makes Zillow among the first in the industry to implement and scale Gaussian splatting technology, redefining the online home tour experience.
Next up, we have an innovation named Offer Insights which gives buyers and their agents a better picture of how different offer prices might perform in today’s market conditions. In essence, the tool allows home shoppers to toggle between various offer levels and simulate strong their offer might be.
In case that wasn’t enough, the innovation also works in conjunction with the Zestimate, recent sales and local market database, to let home shoppers access estimated likelihood of their offer being accepted, empowering them to move forward with confidence.
Then, there is a technology committed to rental costs and fees breakdown. This translates to how Zillow now includes a detailed cost breakdown of move-in expenses, monthly charges, and any extra fees on rental listings.
Almost like an extension of it, rental listings now also feature a custom calculator which renters can bank upon to get personalized estimates. Such fee transparency, like you can guess, really goes the distance to help renters plan, compare options, and avoid surprise costs.
To understand the significance of such a development, we must take into account one research, where it was revealed that nearly all renters (94%) want listings to show every piece of cost upfront, but having said so, many still face unexpected expenses. The available data also indicates that more than half of U.S. households, living on rent are cost-burdened, as they are spending at least 30% of their income on rent.
Further contextualizing its significance would be the fact that 94% of buyers use online tools to search for homes and 64% prefer to schedule tours online.
Another detail worth a mention relates to Zillow’s Tour Itineraries solution, which simplifies the process for buyers and their agents to plan and manage home tours. You see, after connecting with an agent, buyers can seamlessly add homes to a shared tour list, and at the same time, coordinate logistics from a centralized tab on Zillow’s app and website.
Rounding up highlights would be the BuyAbility solution. BuyAbility is an affordability tool powered by Zillow Home Loans. The technology bestows home shoppers with a real-time, personalized estimate of the home price and monthly payment they can afford, as well as their likelihood of qualifying for a loan.
