The Moinian Group Adopts Google’s Tour Creator

NEW YORK CITY—Students, teachers, online raconteurs with travels to share and now the commercial real estate world are tapping into Google’s virtual reality tool, Tour Creator.

Google selected the Moinian Group as one of the first real estate developers to gain access to Tour Creator. The web-based application allows users to create virtual reality tours using footage from 360 cameras (with eyeball-shaped lenses that record video looking north, south, east and west), plus Google Maps street view content.

Users can annotate the video with facts and comments. They can immediately publish their tours on Google Poly. This is a website to view, download and distribute 3D objects and spaces. Viewers can look at the site poly.google.com without additional tools, or using Google Cardboard (virtual reality lenses in cardboard frames) or any other virtual reality headset.

The Moinian Group will use the technology to produce tours covering its 20 million square feet of commercial and residential real estate. The real estate company’s director of marketing Michael Mignosi tells GlobeSt.com that they are in the midst of shooting every individual unit in their portfolio so the marketing and leasing teams can make it easier for anyone interested in seeing a particular unit.

“This new tool that Google has created will be an extremely valuable resource for those of us who work in the world of real estate,” says Mignosi. “Tours has given us the ability to virtually allow an individual to immerse themselves in a space without physically seeing it. They can easily move around in a unit or building, explore the highlights, and then share the experience with their peers.”

He adds, “In New York, leasing an apartment can be a very stressful time. Renters typically have small windows of availability for touring places, so we do our best to get them the information they need before they even set up a tour. This helps our leasing team get a better understanding of what the prospective renter is looking for before they walk into our buildings.”

The developer will launch the tool at Sky, its 71-story, luxury rental apartment located at 605 W. 42nd St. The building’s website lists rents ranging from a studio priced at $3,220 up to a one bedroom at $4795. The Moinian Group next plans to use Tour Creator at Oskar, its newest luxury rental building at 572 Eleventh Ave. Move-ins for that building are scheduled to begin this spring. The developer will then implement the tool for viewing its entire real estate platform, across the country.

In addition to offering a virtual reality experience with the lenses or headsets, the tool allows sharing tours with a unique URL. The Moinian Group can embed the videos directly on the properties’ websites, and host them on Google Poly.

The Google technology is free for both The Moinian Group and any viewers. This is one of several of the real estate firm’s technology partnerships. Through its technology investment arm, Currency M. Companies, it has invested in the co-living startup Ollie, the flexible office space provider Knotel, and on-demand painting start-up Paintzen.