Meadow Stone Lodge and Timber Ridge Mountain Homes

In partnership with San Rafael, CA-based Provident Pacific Corporation, Claresco developed a real estate virtual tour that resulted in sales of new luxury condominiums months before the actual model units were ready to be shown. The scene is a gorgeous one: a brand-new condominium complex nestled among the pine trees and snow-capped mountains of Kirkwood, a popular Lake Tahoe-area ski resort town. The spacious interior of the condo include a large living room, kitchen, and three bedrooms. The master bedroom suite sports a Jacuzzi tub, steam shower, and a study nook off the side of the room. Fireplaces softly flicker in the late-afternoon sunlight, and shadows from the bedroom lamps reflect against the cream-colored walls. It's a picture-perfect vacation home, displayed expertly on the development company's Web site.Except for one thing. This is not a real home - at least not yet. It's a virtual tour of a condo complex still in the construction stages. But even without a model unit or a completed building, potential buyers are lining up at the front door based solely on the strength of the virtual tour. That's how San Rafael, CA-based CFC Corporation sold half the new condos at the Meadow Stone Lodge Mountain Homes in Kirkwood even before the first model unit was ready for viewing. Using the same virtual tour-based sales model, they've also sold 25% of the units at their second development, Timber Ridge, also located in Kirkwood. Together, the two projects are worth $42 million. It's all part of a marketing package, including the web virtual tour and a companion CD-ROM brochure, put together by the design and graphic artists at Claresco. It's a known fact in the business of real estate, according to CFC Corporation owner Charlie Oewel (rhymes with "jewel"). You cannot sell properties without a sample unit already built. But after seeing a development in Southern California marketed with a virtual tour, Oewel decided to change his own assumptions about how to market the luxury condominium project. "Ski season was approaching and I thought it was important to change [the traditional real estate marketing] model," says Oewel, who has been a developer since 1978. "I knew some of the work done by Claresco, and I was impressed by it. So we did the virtual tour [for Meadowstone], and then did the second one [for Timber Ridge]." The results were astounding. Even as the project's completion was delayed, interest in the properties remained high. "We still don't have a finished product at Meadow Stone," Oewel says, "yet we've sold the project over 50%. I attribute that largely to the virtual tour and to the kind of target audience we had - very wealthy people, many of whom are involved in the venture capital business. They're very efficient people, and they liked the virtual tour." Claresco's chief graphic and multimedia designer Alex D'Ambrosio was at the center of the project. He came up with the intricate texturing and lighting that gave the 3-D models an impressively realistic feel - so much so that some potential buyers didn't realize they were looking at a computer rendition of a future building and not a photograph of the actual home itself. "Without texturing, everything would just look gray and flat - there would be no shadows cast by the lights, or a roaring fireplace," says D'Ambrosio. He used catalogs of the actual appliances, furnishings, and fabrics that were being installed into the condos to create a completely natural look and feel to the virtual tour. The entire project took six months to complete. Oewel appreciated not only Claresco's technical expertise, but also the firm's proven ability to partner with clients who are not technical experts. "I've talked to a number of consultants, and Claresco's people have an uncanny ability to communicate," Oewel says. "They understand the world of computer modeling very well, and they are able to translate that in layman's terms. There's nobody better than them in dealing with 'non-techie' people like me. Whatever I thought was important, they put that on their top priority list. Claresco is service oriented, customer oriented and results oriented, and they don't get me mixed up with their jargon. The project has been successful beyond my wildest expectations."