3D Realistate: A 3D Real Estate Marketplace

Let me begin with a short background on myself. I spent the first half of my life
growing up in Tokyo, Japan. At the age of twelve I immigrated to Israel, where I graduated from high school and served three years in the military. I held a range of positions in the central signal intelligence unit, including data mining, instruction, market and data analysis, and project management. Upon discharge I was hired by a Japanese internet security firm, and ended up returning to Tokyo for a period of six months. My passion aside from hi-tech is baseball, and I pitch for the Israeli national team. I am also pursuing a degree at Princeton University.

It was while working in Japan when I met my partner, Daniel Cesar, who introduced Second Life to me, right when things began heating up in the realm of the 3D Web. At first my reaction was that of relief; I had first envisioned the concept of a 3D virtual world a decade ago, thinking of an environment in which one could actually “live” and work in. I had hoped that the day would come, and it did.

What would be the best application for an environment like Second Life? That was the question that Daniel and I set out to answer. There are two primary advantages of the 3D Web, as I understood back then as well as today: Real-time collaboration and flexible 3D content generation. Coming from an interior design and Feng Shui background, I immediately saw how consultations could be conducted online using 3D models of homes and offices.

We met with Feng Shui Master Joseph Yu, which sparked a strategic partnership with him and his worldwide network of professional Feng Shui practitioners. That is how the initial venture, VirtueCode, started, though after a while in business it hit me: It should be real estate search integrated with interior design, and not the other way around. It would be significantly wiser to utilize Second Life for property touring and use interior design as part of the real estate search process.

We now have a clear vision of creating a 3D real estate marketplace, where properties from all over the world will be listed and toured by buyers and sellers together, in real-time. They will customize the properties they see with purchasable interior design and home improvement products, thus effectively choosing the perfect place for them. 3D Realistate will revolutionize the real estate industry.