Tour Wrist, a mobile app developed by a Tampa company, recently assisted in a record-breaking real estate sale in St. Petersburg.
Listed by St. Pete native Eileen Bedinghaus of RE/MAX Metro on Tour Wrist -- an online and mobile marketing tool that offers 360-degree panoramic virtual tours -- the residence at 2040 Brightwaters Blvd. sold on August 5 for $9 million. The previous single-family home purchase record was set in March 2006 with a $5.3 million sale.
"In the simplest terms, Tour Wrist is basically the world's first teleportation device," says Spark Labs CEO Charles Armstrong. "As far as homes go, it becomes a moveable window. As you point it up above your head, or at a window, or at the floor, you're controlling where you're looking inside of the house: You can check out the tile on the floor, see how high the ceilings are or look down the hallway. It's basically like going into the house without actually going into the house. It's pretty amazing."
The 12,412-foot property, known as Villa Terranova, is a 6 bedroom/8 bathroom home located on 1.6 acres of waterfront property on Snell Isle. Boasting features such as an Olympic-sized infinity swimming pool and 6,000 square feet of outdoor patio space, the luxurious property even has room to accommodate a 112-foot yacht, a 45-foot boat and an additional boat on a lift.
"Real estate and the economy are inexplicably connected and tools like Tour Wrist help agents take control of the current weak market," says Armstrong. "There's an interesting set of statistics out there that says 73 percent of prospective homeowners are more likely to buy from a real estate agent who uses video in their listings while 0.8 percent of realtors are actually doing so. That type of significant divide shows that there's a tremendous opportunity to capitalize on market interest by applying new technologies."
Featured regularly by Apple, Tour Wrist has reached 20,000 listings and is seeing approximately 20,000 downloads per week.
Writer: Alexis Quinn Chamberlain
Source: Charles Armstrong, Tour Wrist
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