Live Smartphone Tours Let Prospective Office Tenants Scout Sites at a Social Distance
As companies are required to practice social distancing because of the coronavirus, one office landlord is live streaming property tours for potential tenants.
Boxer Property, a Houston-based investment firm with 16 million square feet of office space, signed its first office lease since using its new video live streaming platform. And the signing was purely digital.
Boxer Property launched its video live streaming tour service as more companies require workers to stay at home to try to curb the spread of the coronavirus. The service is provided in cities where there is not a stay-at-home mandate but where prospective clients still want to practice social distancing.
While many firms offer 360-degree virtual reality video tours, Boxer Property spokeswoman Heather Shuttleworth said the company wants to mimic the feeling of an in-person, individualized tour in real time. Prospective tenants can view floor plans and property photos on Boxer's website and book a live video tour online. They're then contacted by a member of the Boxer Property team who schedules a time for someone to show the property via a Skype app on their phone or tablet.
Once it is time for the scheduled tour, a Boxer Property representative then walks through the space while Skyping with the prospective tenant. Using a mobile device allows the landlord representative to show the property in real time and allows tenants to ask questions and see parts of the space that might be missed in a standard pretaped video tour, Shuttleworth said.
"It's a little more of a high-touch experience in that it’s not just your standard virtual tour," said Shuttleworth. "They can get as close as if they were standing there with the camera."
Tenants sign contracts with the online contract platform DocuSign, then schedule a time to pick up keys and move into the sanitized space.
On March 20, Boxer Property signed its first deal since launching the platform for a 500-square-foot private office to an undisclosed tenant at 1100 Nasa Parkway in southeast Houston, near Clear Lake and the NASA Johnson Space Center.
A few days later Harris County, which includes Houston, was put under a stay-at-home order that requires all but so-called essential workers to remain home, similar to orders put forth in dozens of cities, counties and states across the country.
Boxer Property has buildings in Chicago, Boston, Houston, Denver, Cleveland, New Jersey; Fort Worth, Texas; Colorado Springs, Colorado and Shreveport, Louisiana, that are all under some sort of stay-at-home mandate. Boxer Property plans to resume offering live video tours in those cities once the orders have been lifted. It also has operations in Atlanta and Phoenix, which were not under stay-at-home orders as of March 26, and it can conduct the live video tours there.
Shuttleworth said the Houston office had led 15 live video tours between March 18 and March 23 before the stay-at-home order took effect. The company plans to continue to offer the service after the pandemic ends.
"We do expect this to become a norm post-coronavirus. People are embracing digital solutions and we are evolving to meet their needs," Shuttleworth said.
For the Record
Donna Svec, leasing manager for Boxer Property, represented the landlord in the deal at 1100 Nasa Parkway.
