Brokerage Buys Into Virtual Property Tours

PORTLAND-When Tom Hayes saw it, he bought it, because he knew the customer would appreciate it–and respond to it. Several months later, the owner of Corporate Property Services in Oregon has added 360-degree virtual tours to nearly all of the company’s Internet property listings.

The technology Hayes purchased is called the IPIX multimedia system from Houston-based Internet Pictures Corp., a publicly traded but not yet profitible company currently getting hammered on the Nasdaq. The system consists of a special camera and software that about $2,000.

The user takes two high-resolution photographs, shot through a fisheye lens, and then uses the software to digitally combine them and create the virtual tour. The user can then host the images himself or pay a hosting site like LoopNet to do, and when people click on the listing and then on the image the picture “pans” in a 360-degree arc on the computer screen.