Builder Spectrum Skanska using 'virtual reality tours' to sell homes. (Technology: Update).

The model home, long considered an indispensable marketing tool for selling new homes, is getting some tough competition. Instead of bricks and mortar, some innovative homebuilders are using state-of-the-art computer technology and dazzling special effects to create a virtual reality home that takes buyers on an animated 3D tour.

One of the leaders in this new technology is Spectrum Skanska, Inc., the Northeast's preeminent builder of luxury homes, which is using the latest computer technology to create animated tours of its new homes - long before a shovel even breaks ground for construction.

"Typically, it takes about a year to complete a new model home. Our virtual home tours can be done in about three to six months at a fraction of the cost of an actual home. This provides us with a tremendous advantage in our pre-construction sales program," said Mitchell C. Hochberg, president and CEO of Spectrum Skanska. "In today's highly competitive market, you need more than floor plans and drawings to successfully market luxury homes. Our buyers are used to seeing special effects on TV, video games and in the movies. They expect to be dazzled," he added.

And dazzled they are.

At Spectrum Skanska's newest residential community, Legends at Half Hollow in Dix Hills, Long Island, the sales center features a large screen TV on which is projected a computer-generated tour of the various home styles offered at the community, where homes are priced from $1.1 million to over $1.5 million.

In the DVD format presentation, the viewer leisurely walks from room to room as if in a real model home. Using the same software used in Hollywood blockbusters such as "Star Wars" and "Lord of the Rings," the animators recreate each room in painstaking detail -- from the furnishings to the sunlight streaming through the windows onto the wood floors. In the family room there's a roaring fire in the fireplace and a movie playing on the TV. "By bringing the floor plans to life, buyers get a better understanding of what it would be like to actually live in this house. It's the closest thing to walking through a real model home," said Hochberg.

Creating these virtual tours takes hundreds of hours of work involving Spectrum Skanska's marketing department, the project architect, an interior designer and the animation company, which is based in the virtual design mecca of Montreal, Canada. The presentations are developed using proprietary software and an extensive computer library of images of furniture and interior design accessories that Spectrum Skanska has developed over the years. Since many of those involved in the process are located throughout the country, the design work is conducted over the Internet using a secured Web site.

But all the hard work pays off. For example, at Legends at Half Hollow more than half of the 45 luxury homes were sold less than one year after the sales center opened. And all without a single model home. "Our virtual realty tours are not just a novelty. They've become our single most important marketing tool," said Hochberg.

However, Spectrum Skanska is not about to stop building model homes. The new model homes at Legends at Half Hollow recently opened, attracting overflow crowds of eager buyers. "There's nothing quite like the look and feel of a new home. Technology will never totally replace the real thing. But it has made it easier for us to pre-sell our communities before making a large financial investment in new construction," said Hochberg.