Zoopla was the first UK property site to incorporate AR into its mobile application and Hall certainly makes an attractive, if anecdotal, case for taking the time to do so. It adds a certain window shopping, spur of the moment type approach to finding somewhere to live. Yes, you could do the same with an annotated version of Google Maps, but the point is that it’s a much more powerful connection when the house or flat that you’re sizing up remains under your gaze as you do so. What’s really holding AR back in this field is the amount and level of information that the apps currently display, something which Hall has been quick to recognise. “Accuracy of data and technical limitations are the key issues surrounding AR. Basically it can be difficult to pinpoint accuracy in real time due to the current hardware and technicalities involved.” For his first point, there’s the problem of how quickly the property websites are updated. Anyone who’s bought a house will tell you that most of the best properties never make it online before an offer has been accepted. You simply have to register with the estate agents to get first pick. Holding up your phone and getting all excited to find out that the house isn’t available doesn’t help the user think that AR is a good idea. Thankfully, though, there is the other part of the Zoopla app database which you can simply use to find out how much properties nearby were sold for, just to get a picture of whether you can afford an area you just found yourself taking a liking to, and that’s not so time sensitive. The second point is that the information available just isn’t rich enough for the moment and it seems as much a lack of imagination on the part of the developers as the technical challenges involved. For AR in property to really take off, the app needs to tell you everything you want to know the minute you hold up your phone to a house. In an ideal world, it would recognise the building and provide an overlay of the layout of the rooms which, perhaps, you could click on to offer 360 degree tours based on internal photographs, that the estate agents have taken, and a floorplan of the premises.
