[3D Panorama Scanning Case Study] How Did Little Hinges, Australia's Largest Real Estate Marketing Company, Achieve a 20% Monthly Sales Increase?

【3D Panoramatic Scanning Case Study】How Little Hinges, Australia's largest real estate marketing company, achieved 20% month-over-month growth?

Little Hinges' achievements in real estate:
►20% monthly sales growth
►Doubled lead generation
►Sold properties in a quarter of the time
►50% faster leasing time

Buying a home is often the most expensive and important purchase in most people's lives. It is also one of the most valuable. In today's market, with low housing inventory and fierce bidding wars in many areas, homebuyers often have only a few minutes to inspect a home before making an offer. Remote home buying is becoming increasingly popular, but it presents challenges when a physical visit isn't possible.

Little Hinges is a real estate marketing company that uses 3D tour experiences to simplify the property experience for agents and homebuyers. CEO Josh Callaghan says, "Our mission is to digitize the entire property transaction, from listing to closing."

In just 18 months, Little Hinges has grown to become one of Australia's largest providers of virtual property tour services. It combines Matterport digital twin technology with its own analytics and insights dashboard to provide unique insights to agents and vendors. Clients receive virtual tours captured by a Matterport Pro3 3D panoramic scanner, 10 instant messages tagged with Mattertags within the tour, floor plans, an analytics dashboard, weekly performance reports via email, and an integrated platform with a customer information management system.

( Source: Little Hinges Official Website )

The company was founded in early 2020, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, when businesses were closing, employees were leaving offices, and homeowners didn't want dozens of strangers visiting their homes. But Josh Callaghan took on the responsibility of ensuring his employees could make a living, and he realized it was the perfect time for the real estate industry to transition to virtual tools.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Callaghan's co-founder Josh Kindred owned a coffee shop chain and a real estate company, Kindred Property Group. When the coffee shops had to close during lockdown, he promised his team there would be no layoffs. Kindred trained baristas to become Matterport technicians. It was an excellent opportunity for him to grow his business while ensuring his employees still got paid.

Immersive and Interactive 3D Virtual Home Tour Experience
3D real estate tours are not new, but many early 3D technologies were rigid. "The Matterport experience is completely different, and everyone who uses it can feel it," says Callaghan. "It's like you're actually moving through the house, rather than jumping from one point to another and having to reorient yourself each time you click the mouse."

↓Check out the 3D home tour below↓

Hawaiian Oceanside Villa

"Video marketing," once popular, is truly outdated!
From a marketing perspective, modern people are exposed to thousands of advertising messages every day, and they need to capture the average attention span of 8 seconds. While videos have a fixed playback time longer than 3D tours, in reality, every person viewing a house is interested in different things. Some prioritize the kitchen, while others focus more on the living room, bathroom, or layout. The fixed perspective of videos forces everyone to view the same aspects, making it impossible to maximize the selling points of the house.

But with a Matterport tour, visitors can explore their virtual property at their own pace. They can decide where to look, what to zoom in on, and how long to stay before moving on.

Because interested buyers can see all the details—from the layout and room flow to the tile work and fixtures—they can book in-person viewings and make offers with more confidence than if they only saw photos, knowing beforehand which houses might be suitable for them, having enough rooms and space, the right configuration... and so on, they can easily imagine what it would be like to live there.

One of the problems with in-person viewings is that interested buyers often have very little time to view a property, perhaps only 15-30 minutes at most. Those who spend an entire day viewing properties cannot possibly remember all the information about all the houses, what each kitchen looked like, or how large the living spaces were. However, those who can revisit a house virtually are better able to decide which house they like best, and often without needing to schedule a second in-person viewing to confirm.

For some buyers, a Matterport tour provides enough meaningful information about the overall look and feel of a home to make a purchase decision. Callaghan recounted a time when a visitor made an offer to purchase a property based solely on "two hours of Matterport viewing."

Making Better Decisions with Analytics and Actionable Insights
Little Hinges' new clients have already started using 360-degree photography and 3D tour services from other companies, partly because of the immersive feel of Matterport tours, but also because of Little Hinges' analytics capabilities. Every time a visitor virtually tours a property, the company collects data and uses the Matterport API and SDK to build data visualization dashboards.

▼API (Application Program Interface) is a programming system, and within the Matterport platform, you can customize any interface you want your customers to see.▼

 

"Callaghan says: "Agents can see who is looking at properties every day, even every minute. They can see how many people are virtually viewing the property, what they are looking at when they view it, how long they stay, where they are viewing it from, and which real estate portal they found the listing on. Agents can then use this information to make better decisions about their rental property marketing campaigns."

▼SDK (Software Development Kit) is a software development toolkit that visualizes a lot of data. Below are the applications mentioned by Callaghan▼

For example, if most visitors are drawn to the kitchen, then the listing agent can use the kitchen as an opening selling point in their marketing materials to capture the attention of potential clients first, rather than relying on anecdotal evidence from properties without data.

Insights Portal Contains More Than Just Numbers

Agents can see regional and global maps with pins marking the location of each visitor, some of whom are from thousands of miles away.

Almost no buyer planning to move from a distant location to a new city would be willing to schedule an in-person viewing unless they are very confident they have found the right place. With Matterport home viewing services, consumers can make quick decisions.

Callaghan says, "We had a client auctioning a property in Cairns, a remote part of northern Queensland. His buyers were from Sydney and Melbourne, over a thousand kilometers away. Both buyers flew in for the auction, and although they didn't see the house in person, they toured it virtually through Matterport. That was enough to convince them to hop on a plane and start bidding. At that auction, a local won the bid, but the house sold for a higher price than it would have without interstate bidders."

He also added a key point: "It's one thing to say 3D tours are better than photo and video tours, it's another thing to prove how these tours attract the best buyers, drive up prices, and open new markets."

Kindred Property Group reported that buyer inquiries doubled since the company introduced 3D property tours for its listings. "Every month we are breaking buyer inquiry records, and we attribute this directly to the addition of virtual tours. Before Christmas, we would receive 600-700 buyer inquiries per month, and this month we have already received 1300 buyer inquiries, and these are all genuinely interested buyers for the properties we are showcasing," says Daniel Lyngcoln, Marketing Executive at Kindred Property Group.

RE/MAX Results (an American international real estate company) found that partnering with Little Hinges led to faster property rentals. "We've seen a definite increase in properties being rented without a physical viewing, whether it's during busy periods, or for interstate or isolated clients. The floor plans and photos, as part of the Little Hinges virtual tour, are a huge benefit for those looking for rental properties, as it has proven that if virtual tours and floor plans are included in the advertisement, more people will confidently apply to view the property," says Faith Williams, Property Manager at RE/MAX Results. "In today's super busy world, this technology has allowed my agency to rent properties almost 50% faster than competitors in the area."

Glen Williams, a top sales agent at Ray White Surfers Paradise Group, claims he sold properties in a quarter of the time after incorporating Little Hinges virtual tours. "In the last three months, I have sold 10 properties, with an average time on market of just 34 days, and the most recent sale taking only two weeks. This is a fantastic achievement compared to the 180-day average time on market for Surfers Paradise apartments," says Williams. "Through virtual tours, I tracked nearly 2300 client groups for my last 10 apartments, a large proportion of whom were from other states."

Achieving 20% Monthly Growth
There's an old saying, "Little Hinges swing big doors," and that perfectly describes Little Hinges. Although it's a new company, it has achieved 20% monthly growth and is capturing digital twins for hundreds of properties across Australia every month. Clients are responding very well to the analytics, and Little Hinges plans to delve deeper into data customization next year. "Little Hinges is able to attract more buyers from a wider range and sell properties at higher prices, ensuring Little Hinges will thrive in the long term, even after Covid-19 becomes a distant memory."

Matterport Pro3 features groundbreaking LiDAR innovation, capable of millions of measurements from dim spaces to direct sunlight, allowing you to experience outdoor beauty immersively.


 

 

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Little Hinges is a Matterport Platform Partner, leveraging the Matterport API and SDK to build and commercialize applications, while integrating with Matterport's market-leading spatial data platform, providing you with a range of business benefits.

 

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