Colliers International Closes Deals Faster with Matterport

Closing commercial real estate deals is always challenging. The costs and stakes are high for buyers, and sellers face tough competition as they seek to match the right buyer with the right space and location. 

Buyers and sellers in 68 countries trust Colliers International to make the right connections, whether they’re a potential tenant looking to lease a commercial space, a developer or building owner wanting to sell, or an investor adding to their property portfolio. Colliers professional services teams add valuation and advisory services, project management, and other services that help clients unlock a property’s potential.   

Virtual Visits with Impact

The range of variables in leasing, buying, and selling commercial real estate is huge. For Colliers clients, it’s impossible to make such high-stakes decisions based on static photos or driving by properties. And in the end, buyers and sellers typically have to spend a lot of time showing and touring properties that ultimately aren’t even close fits. More recently, the entire process was complicated further by COVID-19, with far fewer people wanting or being able to travel to a site.

In response, Colliers chose Matterport Capture Services to create immersive 3D tours of properties, allowing clients to explore what’s for sale or lease without the costs and uncertainty of travel or even having to book an appointment. 

“Matterport enables us to bring dynamic 3D spaces to our clients so they come away with a good feel of how it maps to their needs,” says Colliers Senior Vice President Chris Irwin. “By experiencing it from different perspectives, clients really get a better understanding of the scope and flow of the property than when they see it firsthand. It’s helped move deals forward and also saves us time by eliminating options that clearly aren’t a match.”

Accurate Scans, Global Reach 

The ability to virtually experience a space in 3D with Matterport is an essential part of moving ahead, and Matterport Capture Services makes that possible from any location. Colliers schedules Matterport Capture Technicians skilled in using Matterport Pro2 high-definition 3D cameras to capture scans of properties. The result: 3D virtual tours that deliver a realistic and immersive experience for clients.

“Matterport 3D virtual tours are extremely effective because of the accuracy of the scan,” Irwin says. “We know how good it is, and our clients do too. If people physically visit a space they are interested in, they realize it’s exactly the same as they saw it online. Their confidence in the space goes up, and the whole decision-making process is faster.”

Matterport is even more crucial for Colliers’ long-distance clients. Being able to get a solid sense of a property well in advance can save not just hours, but days and a lot of money by avoiding unnecessary travel.

Elevating a Challenging Listing

Colliers struggled with a property near Chicago’s Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs. The first-floor space had mirrored windows that prevented prospective buyers from doing a quick walk-by on their own, so dozens of in-person tours with dozens of customers had to be scheduled. And the consensus among prospects who viewed it was the same: it just didn’t work. 

Four other brokerages stepped in and tried to sell it over the next two years, but all of them failed. Colliers later picked up the listing again, during the COVID-19 pandemic no less, but this time it moved quickly thanks to Matterport. “Within four weeks we had somebody interested in the property for a different type of use we hadn’t envisioned,” Irwin says. “Matterport gave us the tools to give this property the exposure it needed.”

Clear, Smarter Decisions with 3D

Using Matterport helped Colliers and their client in unexpected ways as well. The buyer was able to secure a small business administration loan faster from a distant bank because the lender could see the property in detail without having to spend a day driving to see it. At the same time, the buyer’s designer used the virtual tour to figure out in advance how to transform what was formerly an office space into a medical space. 

Before Colliers switched to Matterport, many prospects looked at 2D images online but couldn’t decide if a site would work until they saw it in person. Since partnering with Matterport, the company has seen the number of in-person site visits drop by more than 50 percent. Now, prospects can thoroughly walk through a property before taking the next step, saving a significant amount of time for everyone involved.

Equally important, visits by interested clients are more productive now. Potential buyers and lessors who have already seen a site with a Matterport virtual tour tend to stay longer in person. Because they can view a digital floor plan and measure hallways, rooms, and common areas in the 3D scan, they already know they can work with the space and spend their onsite time looking more closely at the details. This new way of doing business has helped speed up decision making. 

“Matterport is extremely effective for me and my team and makes us much more efficient,” Irwin says. “We have more targeted and productive conversations with clients because a lot of initial questions are already answered with the Matterport virtual tour experience.”

ABOUT COLLIERS INTERNATIONAL

Colliers International is a real estate professional services and investment management company operating in 68 countries. It provides services to commercial real estate users, owners, investors, and developers, and it serves the industrial, hotel, retail, mixed-use, and residential sectors.

colliers.com

HEADQUARTERS

Toronto, Ontario 

INDUSTRY 

Commercial Real Estate

EMPLOYEES 

15,000+ employees 

CHALLENGE

Create powerful virtual tours to help commercial real estate buyers and lessors accelerate decisions about a property from wherever they are in the world and shorten time to secure signed contracts. 

SOLUTION

Matterport Capture Services™ enables Colliers agents to schedule 3D scans with experienced and reliable Matterport Capture Technicians™ across geographies. With immersive virtual tours, thousands of hours spent traveling and showing properties are saved by allowing clients to explore spaces virtually and find the right fit faster.