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Augmented Reality has infiltrated NYC's art galleries and now, it'll be a part of our daily lives on the street.
StreetEasy has developed a program in its iOS app that can scan the street you're on and show you stats about its residential buildings and whether there are units available. It's called StreetScape and it's coming out this summer.
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"We’ve all experienced it: you walk by a building and immediately wonder what it would be like to live there and whether that’s even a real possibility," said Peter Lim, a StreetEasy product manager. "We are building StreetScape to marry the digital and physical experience of home shopping in New York, a crucial step toward getting that level of confidence you need to make a move on a new home. Having that information immediately at your fingertips when you’re in front of a building will help home shoppers act fast, which is especially key in today’s competitive market."
Interestingly, a StreetEasy Instagram poll found that 95% of people have walked past an apartment building and wondered if it has an available unit that meets their criteria. At the same time, 77% have had trouble identifying a building’s address to search for later.
The new app will scan the street and reveal floating icons in front of residential buildings that you can click on to learn about the building and its amenities, discover units available on StreetEasy, and view photos, floor plans and virtual tours of the building’s units.
It will be a helpful tool for those entering the super-competitive housing market this summer, where rents are high and the number of listings is few, according to StreetEasy. Being able to walk in the neighborhood you're looking to live in and scanning a street you like could yield some promising results—and quickly.
StreetScape is the latest example of StreetEasy’s innovations designed to help improve the NYC home shopping experience. Others include the launch of 3D home tours, providing home shoppers with an immersive tour experience directly from a listing, and StreetEasy Flexible Search, a smarter way to search that enables renters and buyers to easily specify which unit and building amenities are need-to-have and which are nice-to-have.