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ANSIiGuideMeasurementsTranscript

Transcript: iGUIDE Refresh: New 3D Tour Display and iGUIDE ANSI Floor Plans16680

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WGAN-TV: | iGUIDE Refresh: New 3D Tour Display and iGUIDE ANSI Compliant 2D Floor Plans | Guest: Planitiar (iGUIDE) Marketing Manager Chris White (@Chris_iGUIDE) | Episode: 140 | Thursday, 7 April 2022

Example of iGUIDE Refresh

WGAN-TV Transcript: iGUIDE Refresh: New 3D Tour Display and iGUIDE ANSI Compliant 2D Floor Plans

Hi All,

[Transcript below ...]

On WGAN-TV Live at 5 (5 pm ET | GMT -5) on Thursday, 7 April 2022, my guest will be Planitiar (iGUIDE) Marketing Manager Chris White (@Chris_iGUIDE) to show and tell about:

WGAN-TV | iGUIDE Refresh: New 3D Tour Display and iGUIDE ANSI Compliant 2D Floor Plans

iGUIDE, an industry leader in 3D tours and floor plans, introduces an enhanced interface designed to create a faster, better, and more attractive user experience.

The iGUIDE enhanced 3D tour (example above) promises to create a fresh yet familiar way for viewers and virtual visitors to interact with a space.

"Changes are thoughtfully designed for maximum impact while retaining the functionality current iGUIDE users value," writes Chris.

Changes to the iGUIDE Viewer include:

1. Streamlined floor plan for better navigation and a more immersive experience
2. Grouped toolbox to put commonly used commands together for ease of use
3. More refined menu bar with a new background and space for branding and an address

Offering the capability to minimize the menu bar and floorplan, users will enjoy a more immersive virtual environment while retaining robust control of Viewer functions.

In addition to showing and telling about the iGUIDE Viewer refresh, Chris will discuss what's new with iGUIDE.

Questions for Chris?

Best,

Dan

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Video: 74. iGUIDE Providing ANSI Z765 2021 Compliant Measurements and Reporting for North American Clients | Video courtesy of WGAN-TV YouTube Channel | 9 March 2022

WGAN Forum Podcast #74


iGUIDE Providing ANSI Z765-2021 Compliant Measurements and Reporting for North American Clients

Introduction by Planitar (iGUIDE) CEO Alexander (Alex) Likholyot (Alex_iGuide):

Property measurement standards are not a topic that gets a lot of attention in the industry media, but they are core to our business at iGUIDE.

Fannie Mae will require all its appraisals to follow ANSI Z765-2021 Measurement Standard starting April 1, 2022.

The ANSI Z765 standard was originally created in the 90's and lately has seen a string of updates in 2019-2021. In February 2022, Planitar added the ability to choose a square footage reporting standard for every iGUIDE.

We currently support RECA RMS, which is mandated in Alberta with several other Canadian provinces looking at it, and ANSI Z765-2021, which has been a recommended standard in the US, is required in North Carolina for MLS listings, and which will now grow tenfold following the Fannie Mae's announcement.

---

WATERLOO, Ontario, Canada - PrZen - Monday, 28 February 2022 -- iGUIDE – creator of an industry-leading spatial data solution for use in the real estate, insurance, restoration, property management, and affiliated industries -- announces ANSI Z765-2021 compliant measurement and reporting to facilitate highly accurate residential square footage measurements for clients throughout North America. The ANSI Standard is the accepted method for the National Association of REALTORSⓇ and, most recently, by the North Carolina Real Estate Commission.

"This process has been about bringing our clients in America the best, most accurate services we can align with their systems. We also wanted to be looking at expanding our influence to states like North Carolina where there is an understanding that reporting the square footage is critical to giving prospective purchasers accurate knowledge, and building trust between the agent and their client. We want to be the tool to help facilitate that," said Michael Vervena, the iGUIDE VP of Sales & Marketing.

Developments in the residential real estate market have resulted in a growing number of square footage disputes among home buyers, home sellers, Real Estate Agents, Brokers, and appraisal professionals. Due to this, an increasing number of real estate boards are beginning to require the use of ANSI standard when measuring and reporting square footage.

Using iGUIDE significantly reduces the time needed to get the ANSI-compliant, highly-accurate measurements and obviates the need for manual square footage measurement, calculation, and reporting. Thanks to ANSI, the residential square footage measurements become a point of agreement rather than a point of contention.

Most recently, North Carolina began to require real estate agents reporting square footage of their properties to follow ANSI Z765-2021 standard. Many, if not most, appraisers are following the ANSI Z765-2021 standard.

The North Carolina Real Estate Commission said in its decision, "Although real estate agents are not required by the Real Estate License Law or Real Estate Commission rules to report the square footage of properties offered for sale (or rent) when they do report square footage, it is essential that the information they give prospective purchasers be accurate."

The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) adopted a standard for measuring single-family residential buildings in 1996, called the American National Standard Z765-1996. This standard was last revised in 2003. The standards were developed by consulting with several industry groups, including Realtors, Architects, and Appraisers.

For more information on iGUIDE, visit: goiguide.com

About iGUIDE

Founded in 2013, in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, Planitar Inc. is the maker of iGUIDE, a proprietary camera and software platform for capturing and delivering immersive 3D virtual tours and extensive property data. iGUIDE is the most efficient system to map interior spaces and features accurate floor plans, measurements, and reliable property square footage. By integrating floor plans and visual data, iGUIDE provides an intuitive and practical way to digitally navigate and explore built environments.

---
Source: iGUIDE via Planitar (iGUIDE) PRZen

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www.iGUIDE.com

---

Transcript (Video at top)

[00:00:02]
Dan Smigrod: -Hi, all. I'm Dan Smigrod, Founder, the We Get Around Network Forum. Today is Thursday, April 7th, 2022, and you're watching WGAN-TV Live at 5. We have an awesome show for you today;

[00:00:17]
iGUIDE Refresh: New 3D Tour Display

[00:00:21]
Dan Smigrod: and iGUIDE ANSI Compliant 2D Floor Plans. Here to talk to us about that is Chris White. Chris is Marketing Manager of Planitar, the maker of iGUIDE. Hey, Chris, good to see you.

[00:00:37]
Chris White: -Hey, nice to see you too. Thanks for having me back.

[00:00:38]
Dan Smigrod: - I should say, good to see you again because you've been on WGAN-TV Live at 5 giving us an iGUIDE introduction; iGUIDE PLANIX Camera Kit; iGUIDE Stitch and iGUIDE RADIX.

I'm super-excited to have you back to talk about what's the latest and greatest with iGUIDE. Chris, before we jump into today's topic, how about giving us just a short overview of iGUIDE from a real estate agent's perspective.

[00:01:11]
Chris White: -Yeah, absolutely. For those not familiar with iGUIDE, it is a 3D tour with a real strength in measurement. With every 3D tour comes floor plans, room dimensions, and square footage totals.

The iGUIDE itself is a content platform. That content platform can deliver more than just the 3D tour; plus those measurements. You can also include video. You can include still images.

That's amazing from the perspective of a real estate professional because when you are listing a property, gathering all your materials together and using them in your marketing can be challenging. iGUIDE obviously is a fantastic way to put everything under one link and then share it really easily on something like an MLS and then say on something like www.realtor.ca or www.realtor.com.

[00:02:02]
Dan Smigrod: Awesome. For iGUIDE from the perspective of a professional real estate photographer?

[00:02:10]
Chris White: From the perspective of a real estate photographer. I can say this, because I was one, iGUIDE is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Because what it allows you to do is create marketing materials that are extremely valuable.

Floor plans, for example, and 3D tours are the norm now, not everywhere, it's going to be different from area to area, but they're very commonplace and they're considered very high value and important in a real estate listing. iGUIDE gives you the technology to make those things very quickly, very easily and gets into your client very quickly.

That means that you can create 3D tours, floor plans, and then obviously package up the rest of your materials and deliver that to your client in a really compelling and attractive package.

[00:03:01]
Dan Smigrod: -Awesome.

[00:03:01]
Chris White: -How does that sound?

[00:03:02]
Dan Smigrod: -That sounds awesome. iGUIDE Refresh New 3D Tour Display. How about showing and telling us?

[00:03:11]
Chris White: -Absolutely, let's do it. I'm going to share my screen in just a moment.

[00:03:15]
Dan Smigrod: -While Chris is getting set up the website is www.goiGUIDE.com. That's: www.goiGUIDE.com. Chris, what are we looking at?

[00:03:32]
Chris White: -Good question. Let me just full-screen this so you can see it a little bit better. This is the iGUIDE.

For those who haven't seen it before, you're going to notice that there are 360 degree visuals and floor plans. I know that sounds really obvious, but that's important because the iGUIDE is always going to have those two things.

There are lots of different types of tours out there. They've all got their pluses and minuses of processing and their cons.

With the iGUIDE, the core experience is about providing important information to people who are going to be making decisions. It's about empowering people with property information. The way the iGUIDE does that is providing this experience, 360 degree visuals, look wherever you want.

[00:04:13]
Dan Smigrod: -I do want to point out, as you're walking around this house, it's a little bit herky-jerky, but that has nothing to do with iGUIDE, that's all about WGAN-TV and the technology that we use to do the screen-sharing, etc. Know that it is a very silky, smooth walk-through experience with the iGUIDE.

[00:04:39]
Chris White: -That's right. Let's not blame my shaky hands either. It's probably not done. What this allows you to do in the iGUIDE is look at what you're interested in looking at, but then also navigate the property in any way that you choose and really quickly and easily.

What I mean by that, imagine that this experience is very much like walking through a space while holding a map. It's a very common thing to think about doing, although I guess people have maps on their phones now but whatever.

The nice thing about this is that you can use the information to get the information you want quickly as I said. If I want to look at something, I can obviously click on the visuals and move closer to it. I can zoom in. I can change the direction of the camera, but at any time I can go over and I can look at the floor plan and I can get a sense of where I am in space and how the rooms connect. I can also obviously move around the space by clicking on the visuals to go where I want to go visually.

But then when I look at the floor plan, I can instantly go where I want to go and teleport there.

These two types of navigation are really complimentary because there are times where I want to know more about a space I'm currently in that I can see there are times where I want to know more about a space that I cannot.

A huge advantage here is that if I'm a serious home shopper and I'm trying to figure out the answers to my questions, they're almost always the same. "I have three kids, so it's like what did the bedrooms look like?" I'm not going to walk visually around the property for 15 minutes trying to find the bedrooms.

I'm just going to look at the floor plan and I'm just going to click on the bedroom. That is fantastic when you are trying to get the information that you want right away without fussing about it.

That's a huge advantage. The core experience here is 360 degree visuals plus floor plans. But there's a few ways you can modify this experience. I can minimize the floor plan to get a better view and I can also minimize the top bar. That's a relatively new addition.

What this means is that you can get greater immersion by taking the UI and setting it to the side. But you'll notice the floor plan is still here. It's not gone. It's never gone. You can't hide it.

That's because it's a core part of that experience. You always have it with you and available to you if you need it, which is neat. Does that make sense?

[00:06:59]
Dan Smigrod: -Yes. But it does beg the question, because I see lots of things in the top right corner, something in the middle, I see something to the right of the floor plan. I see different colored 'lollipops' in the middle. Take us through everything that we're looking at.

[00:07:17]
Chris White: -Let's do it. Let's start with the floor plan. I mentioned before that this floor plan is useful for navigation. Well, there's more than that. This is an actual floor plan.

What that means is that it's actually set to scale and then you can measure on it. If you look down here at the bottom of the screen here there's a little toolbar.

That toolbar has really – we would argue are the most important things you need when you're looking at a property. Those three things are a measure button, which looks like a ruler, a button for tags, so those are the little 'lollipops' you're seeing there, and then a button for share.

Measure is exactly what it sounds like. I'll give you a demo in a second, allows you to measure anything you want on the floor plan or on the visuals. That's amazing from the perspective of a real estate marketer.

Because a lot of the questions that you're going to have or that your potential buyers are going to have about a property are about measurement. "How big are the windows?" "Will my bed fit in the bedroom?" "Will my grand piano fit in the living room?"

Or any other question that might relate to where things might be placed in a home or, if you want to get really fancy and you're considering doing renovations, you can calculate the cost of, "how much paint do I need for a wall?" Or, "how much flooring do I need for the kitchen?" Or something a little more advanced than just furniture placement.

But measurement, it can give people enormous amounts of information online without them having to go to a property.

Things have happened over the last few years that have really pushed people toward online experiences rather than physical ones. That means that this gives them the ability to get the information that they would have from a physical experience but online instead.

[00:09:01]
Dan Smigrod: -I'm wondering if my sofa is going to fit? How do I do that measurement to see –

[00:09:06]
Chris White: -Excellent question. Let me show you. You click the measurement tool and then anywhere on the floor plan, I can click and drag and I can draw a line and measure from point-to-point. I don't have any way to zoom in exactly, but I hope you guys can see that.

I just clicked and I drew a line and it says 6 foot, 8 inches. But I can draw as many lines as I want. If I want to draw a box, I can do that. If I want to measure the distance from the sofa to the fireplace to see if my side table fits, for example, I could do that. Actually this one's really popular.

If I want to measure above the fireplace to see if my TV will fit, that's a big deal. You can do that. You can measure anything on that floor plan just as though you were holding a paper floor plan. This floor plan is not for show. It is a real floor plan that can be measured on and that is accurate.

[00:09:59]
Dan Smigrod: -Do I see measurements within the tour itself?

[00:10:03]
Chris White: -Right, so yes. Let me show you. If I go down here, this is a little bit more advanced, but what you have the ability to do is also measure anything you want on the visuals.

I can click on the ruler again and I'm going to get measure modes two and three. These aren't for the average user. They're a little bit more advanced, but they're extremely powerful. I'll give you a real quick example.

If I switch to measure mode 2, what I can do is define a wall. I'm just going to move forward a little bit here. Give me one second. Then, I'm going to look over – We'll say here we'll measure the fireplace. What I'm going to do is I'm going to click on measure mode 2. I'm going to define a wall by drawing a line.

[00:10:52]
Chris White: Now, anything I click on will define a point and any other point I click on will draw a line between the two giving me the distance. What this allows me to do is precision measurements.

In a residential real estate sense, this is cool, you can measure windows for blinds, and you can measure really precise intersections between things, that's pretty neat.

There are industries like facility management or insurance restoration construction, where you're really trying to define the exact precise area where something has occurred in 3D space. Not that that doesn't have applications in residential real estate, but it's not as popular.

[00:11:24]
Dan Smigrod: -That measurement says 5 feet, 11 inches. How accurate is that or is it ANSI accurate and that's what we're going to talk about in part two of our show today?

[00:11:39]
Chris White: -It's completely separate from ANSI measurements, but it's a similar principle in that there's always going to be some margin for error.

If you actually look at the top, the estimated measurement uncertainty on that measurement is 1 inch. I'm not going to pretend to be a complete expert on exactly how this is done.

But the measurements are done basically within a margin of error that will be reported to you and it will vary depending on circumstances.

That message isn't always the same, it's not static. It will change depending on the pano that you've chosen and the measurements that you've done.

[00:12:14]
Dan Smigrod: -The pano is the panorama: the 360 images that compose the tour?

[00:12:20]
Chris White: -Exactly, if that wasn't clear. Thank you for the explanation.

[00:12:23]
Dan Smigrod: -That measurement, if we went back there, for example, and they say, "well, the window is broken," we probably don't want to use that measurement to order precision cut glass. But if we needed to know approximately what the size of the window blinds might be. Again, not to order the finish window blinds, but just to be able to estimate the cost based on the size.

[00:12:51]
Chris White: -Yes, exactly. I am very confident in these measurements, but I would still do physical ones if I really wanted them to be super-precise. Blinds are tricky, you need an eighth of an inch on either side. That's going to be a bit rough.

But I'll give you an example of where this can save you just enormous amounts of time and money. I was able to shoot around the exterior of my home and I shot an iGUIDE where I had exterior data as well. I was able to use the measurement tool outside of the house to draw in a proposed fence.

Then I sent the image of that to as many contractors as I could get a hold of showing them the exact length of – it's just an L-shaped fence, showing them exactly what I wanted. I was able to get, I don't know, five or six quotes within a day.

That allowed me to narrow down my choices significantly faster than to have five or six people physically come out and they didn't have to go out and draw or use a giant tape measure to measure it out. In terms of speed and accuracy, it was vastly better than what I could've done manually.

[00:13:52]
Dan Smigrod: -When I'm ready to get a fence, I'm going to come back and talk to you. ;-) You mentioned a third measuring tool or a second advanced tool.

[00:14:02]
Chris White: -That's correct. Yeah. A measure mode 3 is different in that what it allows you to do is it allows you to triangulate measurements on two different scans.

It's going to sound complicated, but it's actually really easy to do. I'll just choose it and show you.

If I define two points. I hope you guys can see this. You've got point 1 and point 2, but there's question marks. That's a little bit weird. Now I'm going to move to another scan and I'm going to do the same two points. I can't remember if I started at the top or the bottom. I think it was the top. Here we go. Using the two scans now I've got 7 feet, 2 inches on this particular measurement with a different measurement uncertainty.

What that means is that I can measure anything in 3D space provided I can click on it on the image as long as I have two scans to triangulate in.

[00:14:53]
Dan Smigrod: -What would I use that for?

[00:14:55]
Chris White: -In residential real estate, not so much, but if you're doing something like construction and you want to measure a very specific run of piping. Piping is not on a wall, it's in the middle of the room. You can technically do that in order to estimate costs.

[00:15:10]
Dan Smigrod: -For most of us that are doing residential real estate and really for the purpose of a homeowner doing a measurement within the floor plan, that really probably suffices. But to know that there is an advanced feature or two.

[00:15:26]
Chris White: -Exactly. For most people, the lion's share, if people are going to use measure mode 1 that I'm showing right now, you measure on-screen, and the nice thing about this one, especially for people in real estate, is that it's really, really easy to communicate and understand, which means it doesn't require a whole lot of thought. People really get measuring in two-dimensions. That's really nice.

[00:15:43]
Dan Smigrod: -Chris, I still see some other toolkit items there on that bottom menu. Can you take us through that?

[00:15:51]
Chris White: -I can indeed. If you look at the center icon, you guys can see this. That is a tag list, one of the unique features of the iGUIDE is this list. When I click on it, I hope you guys can see this. There's a list of tags on the left.

[00:16:06]
Dan Smigrod: -Yes. Just in case our viewers can't. I see five different colors. One is images, video, links, links to panoramas, links to text.

[00:16:23]
Chris White: -There are a lot of different types of tags. In case it's not clear. A tag is a piece of information that is placed in 3D space. What that means is I'm going to take some type of information, an image, text, a video. It doesn't really matter. I'm going to attach it to something using one of these 'lollipops'.

[00:16:42]
Dan Smigrod: -I'm surprised when you clicked on that image, we didn't see the video. I think when I've done that in the past, I've actually seen the video.

[00:16:50]
Chris White: -It should be here. That's my mistake. This is actually an un-branded version of the tour, so the videos won't show up, but the images will. That's just that's on me. But typically the video would appear there. That's my fault. Sorry everybody.

[00:17:00]
Dan Smigrod: -When the tour is created, they're both branded and un-branded versions so I imagine at some point you're going to take us into the branded version, then we'll be able to see that video.

[00:17:10]
Chris White: -That's exactly right. Tags are information that's added to a tour in order to enhance the experience and they are extremely powerful. You can have video images, any kind of text you want. There's obviously no limit to the number that you can create.

But the tag list is special to an iGUIDE. It's technically available in a few other tours, but it's natively available in an iGUIDE without having to do any extra work. It's really, really important because you've got different types of experiences and people like to experience things in different ways.

People are different. Some people like an off-the-rails type of experience where they go wherever they want and they look at wherever they like and that's great. I do that myself. Other people don't want that.

They want something a little more curated and they want to be told what's important in the property. What this does is this gives you a big list of things that are important in the property.

From the perspective of a real estate marketer, this is amazing because I can say, "here's the five things I want you to look at." "I want you to check out the granite countertops." "I want you to check out this fireplace." "I want you to check out this amazing renovated bathroom." "I want you to check out this master bedroom built-in bookshelf."

That means that there are not just two ways to navigate an iGUIDE, visually – around the tour – there's actually three. You can navigate entirely from the tag list by just clicking on a tag.

If you click on it, it takes you to that important piece of information.

This is an extremely valuable companion to the other forms of navigation because it empowers, I would say, the real estate marketer, by allowing them to communicate exactly what it is that they want. Like I said, because you can include video, it means the amount of media you can include in an iGUIDE is essentially limitless using tags, which is very interesting.

The possibilities are also endless with tags.

[00:18:55]
Dan Smigrod: -Excuse me, Chris, I think we did look at one that had images. I guess it was a bicycle.

[00:19:01]
Chris White: -I got in there.

[00:19:05]
Dan Smigrod: -Can there be more than one image within that carousel?

[00:19:09]
Chris White: -There can be. You can have as many images and texts as you want. Now, when you start adding a lot of text or images, that means that the way you navigate with that tag becomes more complicated. If I load this up full screen and it's got a lot of content, I can actually scroll through all that content. I don't have an example of one that's overloaded because we don't typically do that.

[00:19:31]
Dan Smigrod: -Yes.

[00:19:31]
Chris White: -But you could include an entire essay if you really wanted to, including video and images, like a fully formatted website within the tag should you choose to.

The people don't usually use them that way though they usually choose one really targeted piece of information.

[00:19:45]
Dan Smigrod: -The obvious way to get to a tag looked like clicking on, I called it a 'lollipop,' you call it something else?

[00:19:54]
Chris White: -I just called them tags, but it does look like a lollipop now that you've said it.

[00:19:58]
Dan Smigrod: -You clicked on the tag, but I also see on the interactive floor plan, the colored text. Can I click on a tag?

[00:20:07]
Chris White: -You can indeed, yeah. That's another huge advantage is that the floor plan, because it's an interactive floor plan, has the tags built-in as well. What you'll notice as well is that the tags are colored and they can be colored in any way you wish.

That means that you can organize via color. If you've got five or six tags that are all blue, that can represent whatever you wish. That could be all of the electrical outlets in a room or blue or something like that or all of the features.

[00:20:33]
Dan Smigrod: -Okay, got it. Going down to that menu again, it looks like the next item is a sharing icon. Could you take us there?

[00:20:41]
Chris White: -You got it. Let me close this first. The sharing button is arguably, if not one of the most important elements in any online experience. Because if no one ever sees your tour, then they're not likely to see the value of it. The share button is exactly what you think it is.

When you click it, you can then instantly share to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or Pinterest or email. Fun fact though, there is a link to current 3D View feature.

If I click this checkbox, it's a little hard to see, but it adds some extra 'fancy pants' code on the end of this URL. What that means is whatever I am looking at, it will remember the zoom level and the angle and the pitch here. It will include that on the URL when this is checked and when I send that URL to someone, they'll see exactly what I'm looking at. All those details get preserved in that text.

That is really powerful because I can say, "this light fixture is really important" and I can show it to my wife. I say, "check out this light fixture" and I can copy this. Then after she looks at it, she can look at the rest of the tour or I can just share the tour.

[00:21:47]
Dan Smigrod: -Chris is default automatically, the 3D tour?

[00:21:51]
Chris White: -It always is by default, correct? If you want, you can share the tour. Actually, it depends. You can set the default to be whatever you wish it to be. That means on the backend, someone could set the default to be the video for example.

That's one of the other advantages to iGUIDE because it includes that extra media that I mentioned before. You can actually configure it to start with something really eye-catching, like a drone video and then transition to the tour. Default represents whatever the creator intended it to be initially.

But if you don't like that, you can then manually switch it to immediately show the video of the photos or the 3D tour.

[00:22:30]
Dan Smigrod: -I'm confused. Let's say there is a video. I shouldn't say that because this is the un-branded version, so let's make it a little bit harder for me.

[00:22:42]
Dan Smigrod: I was looking at this earlier and I saw a 'virtual showing,' where do I find that?

[00:22:49]
Chris White: -Because this is the un-branded version, we don't have the virtual showing, but that's okay.

[00:22:52]
Dan Smigrod: -No, that's fine if I don't see it.

[00:22:53]
Chris White: -I can go switch over. Virtual showing... is a way of sharing the iGUIDE so that it is displayed on someone else's screen.

[00:23:06]
Dan Smigrod: -The one we've embedded in the We Get Around Network Forum is the branded version. Do you want to look at that one? [www.WGANForum.com]

[00:23:12]
Chris White: -Yeah, let's do it.

[00:23:15]
Dan Smigrod: -If you scroll down and there you go.

[00:23:24]
Chris White: -It's too easy. Too easy.

[00:23:26]
Dan Smigrod: -Let me scroll and then you can make that full screen. Do you want to make that full screen?

[00:23:31]
Chris White: -Yeah, for sure. Here we go. virtual showing.

[00:23:35]
Dan Smigrod: -Great, because that's what I was looking at earlier today. But first, why don't you tell us what this is and then maybe demonstrate it.

[00:23:43]
Chris White: -I will. Hold on one second, let's go back. Let's go full screen again. Virtual Showing is a way to send the iGUIDE to someone and have their experience be guided by yourself.

If I'm a real estate agent, I can send someone a link, and they won't have control over what they see, I will. It's not a video share, but you can think of it as being similar to that.

[00:24:06]
Dan Smigrod: -Could you share the tour with me?

[00:24:09]
Chris White: -Yeah, let's do it.

[00:24:10]
Dan Smigrod: -Click the link. This is putting your name in it.

[00:24:15]
Chris White: -That's correct. What I'm doing is I'm basically becoming what is essentially the host. Anyone can host a virtual showing. That means that if I find an iGUIDE online, I could do a virtual showing for my wife.

[00:24:25]
Dan Smigrod: -an iGUIDE that is branded.

[00:24:27]
Chris White: -Correct, that is exactly –

[00:24:29]
Dan Smigrod: -It automatically added the link, then why don't we just come out of screen sharing for a moment, maybe you could pass me the link.

[00:24:38]
Chris White: -There you go.

[00:24:40]
Dan Smigrod: -It just take me a second. Incidentally, if you went to see that branded tour that Chris is showing now you can go to the We Get Around Network Forum: www.WGANForum.com Chris, you're good to go ahead and share.

Go to www.WGANForum.com and then just search the subject line for iGUIDE or go into the Tag section and search for iGUIDE. Since this show happens to be about 'iGUIDE Refresh' if you type that in the Search bar; it happens to be at the top.

But if you're looking at this a year from now, you still could go to the We Get Around Network Forum, go into the Search bar and just type in 'iGUIDE Refresh'... And then you'll find the link that we're demoing now.

[00:25:37]
Dan Smigrod: My tour is not moving around, Chris.

[00:25:39]
Chris White: -If you load up the link what should happen is that I should see you appear in the top, so maybe I've shared the wrong link with you; that's possible. Here we go. Let's try it again. Give me one second.

[00:25:54]
Chris White: That's why, it's the wrong link. That's my fault.

[00:25:57]
Dan Smigrod: -Again, I know we're trying to do so many different things here.

[00:26:01]
Chris White: -Now you're there. I'm going to share my screen. There we go, share. In the top right-hand corner now, I have me, myself, Chris, and then I also have you, Dan. Now, when I move my camera, you should see what I see.

[00:26:20]
Dan Smigrod: -I do. I didn't type in Dan Smigrod. How did you know that it was me?

[00:26:24]
Chris White: Right. That's a great question. That means that your browser saved a cookie with your name in it and you've done this before. This is not your first virtual showing.

[00:26:34]
Dan Smigrod: -No, it's not, I've seen this before. Just to clarify for our viewers then, if this had been my first time, I imagine it would have asked me for my name, and then it would have displayed the name for you.

Since I had looked at this tour earlier today and I had already typed in my name, it remembered me so I didn't need to do that step.

[00:26:58]
Chris White: -That's exactly right.

[00:27:01]
Dan Smigrod: -Now I could imagine, Chris, you might have a choice to say, "I'm on the phone with my client" and I've just pass them the link and I'm talking to them or it could be by Zoom or Skype.

[00:27:15]
Chris White: -Exactly. Yeah, you got it.

[00:27:17]
Dan Smigrod: -Or any other way that I do a voice chat or a video chat, but this is a virtual showing where you're in control.

[00:27:30]
Chris White: -You got it. You can imagine this would be very much like a showing except online. If I'm a real estate professional, I'm going to say, "here is the first bedroom. It has a closet, it has a bathroom attached, it's right off the entryway."

Then I would guide them through the home and show them the things that I think are important.

This is relevant and valuable because what this does is it gives a real estate professional another tool that they can use to help sell that home and to help people understand the property. Not only is a homebuyer empowered because they're getting more information, but the agent themselves is empowered as well because they have a really amazing tool to make their job easier.

[00:28:13]
Dan Smigrod: -Two questions and points of information. Anyone can do a virtual showing with anyone else as long as it's the branded version of the tour.

[00:28:25]
Chris White: -Exactly right.

[00:28:26]
Dan Smigrod: -Simply going to that Share button.

[00:28:29]
Chris White: -You got it.

[00:28:30]
Dan Smigrod: -The two questions are: can you share with more than one person at a time?

[00:28:40]
Chris White: -Boy, can you? I can't recall the limit, but it's over 500, so that means that there essentially is no limit, which means that you can share with 16 people simultaneously. You could organize a webinar.

[00:28:53]
Dan Smigrod: -When I have an open house and promote the day and time, and here is the link and I'll give you a guided tour.

What if you posted that link but you're not on at the time that I decided to look at that link. Does the link still work?

[00:29:10]
Chris White: -It does, yes. People would arrive and then they would basically wait for the host to begin....

[00:29:18]
Dan Smigrod: -As a real estate agent I could promote, "here is an example of an iGUIDE tour. You can self guide the tour, but at 2 PM on Sunday, I'm doing a virtual open house and I will be walking through this house, giving a guided tour, so join on this link and you can watch."

[00:29:43]
Chris White: -Exactly.

[00:29:44]
Dan Smigrod: -I'll be on Zoom if you want to interact with me.

[00:29:51]
Chris White: -You got it. That is a really interesting strategy because it has become so much more relevant over the last few years, because people, for reasons, can't physically get into a space for as long as they'd like.

Maybe there's isolating happening so they can't be in the property with other people. Open houses aren't like they used to be.

Or maybe it's a hot market and there's a hundred showings in the day and you really only get about 15 minutes in the house. This gives the person marketing at home the opportunity to give people the time they need to be able to get the information they need to make decisions.

[00:30:22]
Dan Smigrod: -Or could actually be simultaneously.

[00:30:24]
Chris White: -Technically, yeah.

[00:30:24]
Dan Smigrod: -It could be, literally, is 2-4 PM Sunday open house but my team member is doing a virtual open house for those that can't attend in person.

[00:30:36]
Chris White: -You got it. That's exactly it.

[00:30:37]
Dan Smigrod: -The pitch might be from the photographer to the real estate agent is when you're pitching your client to win the listing that we anticipate having more people walk through the home in order to get more offers sooner for the most money and those more open house tours are actually going to be virtual. Either be virtual or it could be both virtual and in-person.

[00:31:06]
Chris White: -It looks like the future is definitely a hybrid. There's a lot of people who are moving around. Maybe they've been emancipated from work and they no longer have to go physically to their office. There's my cat, did show up. Look at that, good stuff. He's waiting.

[00:31:19]
Dan Smigrod: -That's Pico. ;-)

[00:31:19]
Chris White: -That's right, Pico.

[00:31:21]
Dan Smigrod: -Pico doing a cameo. My other question, Chris, looking at this tour is there were some things that I wanted to show you in the house but I can't take control of my screen. Is there a way to give me control?

[00:31:34]
Chris White: -There is not. At the moment, for security reasons, only one person can show the tour. There are times where what is being shown in the tour is very very specific.

Perhaps, there could be a zillion reasons; maybe there's personal photos. There's some data in that property that you don't want people to see, so for security reasons, only one person can be the host.

What that means is that some iGUIDEs might not be public, but still may be available for a virtual showing where very specific content is shown by a specific person.

For security reasons, what that means is that, I don't want anyone else to be able to take control and just go where they want. It has to be locked down so they can only see what I show them.

[00:32:12]
Dan Smigrod: -I'm cool with that. Could you go back to the sharing?

[00:32:15]
Chris White: -Yeah. For sure.

[00:32:15]
Dan Smigrod: -Do you want me to disconnect or not necessary?

[00:32:18]
Chris White: -I'm going to close it. I think it'll get tossed out either way.

[00:32:23]
Dan Smigrod: -That's a nice screen.

[00:32:24]
Chris White: -I was just going to say that looks familiar.

[00:32:25]
Dan Smigrod: -Let's go back to the tour and then back to that sharing.

[00:32:35]
Dan Smigrod: We're in the branded version. I was hoping to see the start page, let's say that video. We didn't get to see the video.

[00:32:43]
Chris White: -This tour doesn't actually have a video included, unfortunately.

[00:32:45]
Dan Smigrod: -Yeah, it does. Almost positive that I saw it. I want to say it's the video.

[00:32:52]
Chris White: -What were you going to say?

[00:32:55]
Dan Smigrod: -The green 'lollipop.'

[00:32:57]
Chris White: -Oh, you're right, you're totally right. Here you go.

[00:32:59]
Dan Smigrod: -Yeah. Because I was looking at this earlier today. If I wanted this to be the start point now how do I share so that the first thing is this tag that contains a video?

[00:33:10]
Chris White: -Good question. At the moment what you would do is you would look straight at the tag.

You would click this, and then you would click linked to current 3D view. Now, whenever you share this link with someone, it's going to have this zoom level and show this angle and point straight to that tag.

[00:33:24]
Dan Smigrod: -I'm confused. It still said video is an option.

[00:33:30]
Chris White: -That's something slightly different.

[00:33:32]
Dan Smigrod: -Can you show us?

[00:33:35]
Chris White: -I can't with this particular iGUIDE, but I can explain the principle. Some iGUIDEs have an overarching video, as in one video that's included on this menu bar up top. We can actually talk about that next.

You can choose to show that video ahead of the iGUIDE. Do you know what I mean? One video to rule them all.

[00:33:51]
Dan Smigrod: -Yeah. If we were looking in the top right corner, I don't want to put you through it because I want you to do a longer demo of it. But there could be one other option: there is video.

[00:34:04]
Chris White: -Correct.

[00:34:04]
Dan Smigrod: -Then that's the page that we go to when sharing. Could you go back to the sharing one more time?

[00:34:10]
Chris White: -Absolutely.

[00:34:14]
Dan Smigrod: -Okay, so sharing can be either a 3D tour, photos, video and when you share a 3D tour, you can go to a specific point and then in Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, email, I presume they automatically pre-populate the social media.

[00:34:33]
Chris White: -They do. That's exactly right. I'll click it and we'll see if it works.

Actually I'm not logged in, it won't work. But if I click on the Facebook link, for example, it will pre-create a Facebook post for me. I don't have to do anything other than click "Submit" and that's it.

[00:34:45]
Dan Smigrod: -Okay, great. Then I see three dots on that menu at the bottom.

[00:34:52]
Chris White: -That's where the fun hidden stuff is. I'll briefly walk you through it. None of this is all that interesting. You've got help. If you're really interested in getting some more tips, there are little help windows built-in, so that's kind of neat.

There are some other tools that were previously a little bit more visible, but are still here, but they've been hitting a little bit. But you can download an image of the floor plan.

That was added for insurance restoration, construction people, but we found that it had a lot of value for everyone, so it's available for everyone. What it allows you to do is basically create a JPEG of the floor plan just right from here. What it will do is it will allow you to save your measurements.

Let's suppose that you are on an iGUIDE and you want to measure all the windows and a window quote, you could use measure Mode 1, measure every single window. I'm doing a terrible job here.

[00:35:48]
Dan Smigrod: -It's okay. Keep telling us. We get it.

[00:35:51]
Chris White: -Then I could click download and I'll basically download an image.

[00:35:55]
Dan Smigrod: -Let's go back because you had a couple of options. Went a little bit quick.

[00:35:59]
Chris White: -Hold on.

[00:35:59]
Dan Smigrod: -If go back you can include the tags if you like, and rotate floor to have the first measurement vertical. That's great.

[00:36:09]
Chris White: -That's a peculiarity for IRC. If you need to take that floor plan and bring it into separate software to do some estimates, sometimes you need to set.

[00:36:17]
Dan Smigrod: -You said some letters I missed.

[00:36:20]
Chris White: -If you're going to bring this floor plan into separate software, sometimes you need to rotate the floor plans slightly.

[00:36:25]
Dan Smigrod: -IRC?

[00:36:26]
Chris White: -Insurance. Restoration. Construction. (IRC)

[00:36:28]
Dan Smigrod: -Thank you. That's the download. What else you got under those dots?

[00:36:35]
Chris White: -What else we got? Autoplay. It's very exciting. I'll click it. You can watch.

[00:36:39]
Dan Smigrod: -I presume you can set the iGUIDE to autoplay on the backend when you share the tour. But this is if I was on a front end and maybe I was in the Realtor's office and I wanted to put this up on a screen, I could use that tool to enable the automatic rotation.

[00:36:57]
Chris White: -You got it, that's exactly what it's for. Then you've also got units imperial versus metric. It's very uncommon for people to change this on the fly. Because typically whatever region you're in, it's going to be pre-configured. You're going to set to metric if you live in Europe or Canada.

[00:37:12]
Dan Smigrod: -Imperial being feet and inches and metric.

[00:37:19]
Dan Smigrod: If you were measuring in the mini-map, the interactive floor plan on the left, you could specify whether you wanted feet and inches – Imperial – or you wanted it in metric.

[00:37:34]
Chris White: -That's critical for people to use the tour in different regions.

[00:37:37]
Dan Smigrod: -Chris, I'm a little bit confused because I thought when I was looking at it, I could also download the iGUIDE floor plans, very detail.

[00:37:50]
Chris White: -You can. So that's a perfect segue into our top menu bar.

[00:37:55]
Dan Smigrod: -Okay, great.

[00:37:56]
Chris White: -Up here there's a lot more information. It's not that it's not part of the core experience, but it's an accompaniment to it, and that's why it's set up this way.

The 3D tour is what we just talked about and it's amazing. But according to the National Association of Realtors report for home buyers and sellers, photos are the number one thing people are looking for when they're buying for homes, so we've created a gallery that you can use that contains photos. It's exactly what you think it is.

It's a bunch of photos and you can click on them and then view them and you can explore the property that way. That's a different way to get information about a property that is sort of in-between –.

[00:38:34]
Dan Smigrod: I'm sorry, could you just toggle through three pictures so we can see –

[00:38:38]
Chris White: -Oh, yeah.

[00:38:39]
Dan Smigrod: -We can go from picture-to-picture.

[00:38:41]
Chris White: -There you go. This is something people are very comfortable and familiar with looking at photos in order from start to finish. It's a very curated, composed, framed experience that people enjoy and they like. That is in the iGUIDE.

That means when you share the iGUIDE, you can have that experience as well. Real estate photographers put an enormous amount of energy and time into their still photos and this allows you to use those to make the tour better.

Instead of pulling photos from the camera directly; which you technically can do, you can include your photos from your camera system that you've spent so much time and money and effort on and you can include them in the tour so that everyone can see them in the one link. But on the next tab, the Details tab, we have arguably the most important information in the whole tour.

The reason I say that is that this particular screen doesn't get enough credit. Because a lot of the information here is critically important and this will segue really well into our ANSI discussion later.

[00:39:46]
Dan Smigrod: -Would you mind doing the download of the PDF?

[00:39:50]
Chris White: -Yeah, there you go.

[00:39:51]
Dan Smigrod: -If we're looking at that because all the measurements that are listed in the iGUIDE are actually coming from these floor plans.

[00:39:58]
Chris White: -That's correct. This really shows you the strength of the iGUIDE, which is that it's not just a pretty face, it's not just a tour. It comes with a full set of PDF floor plans, which are actually available in PDF, SVG, JPEG, and DXF.

[00:40:13]
Dan Smigrod: -I'm sorry, what was the last format?

[00:40:16]
Chris White: -DXF, that's a weird one. It's an AutoCAD exchange format.

[00:40:20]
Dan Smigrod: -If you're a space planner, that's going to be an important file.

[00:40:26]
Chris White: -Absolutely you are a designer; you work with CAD, you're going to love that one.

You get a summary page, and then you're also going to get each floor obviously one-by-one on its own page and then you get another summary page that has the property details.

Property information like room dimensions and total square footage are really important. If you're a real estate professional, you want to list a property because you have to enter all those room dimensions into your MLS.

[00:40:53]
Dan Smigrod: -Is this ANSI compliant?

[00:40:56]
Chris White: -Yes, it is.

[00:40:58]
Dan Smigrod: -Let's not jump into ANSI yet. I just want to know that it's compliant. We're going to do a whole separate discussion, in a little bit greater detail on that. I still wanted to see the 3D tour display.

[00:41:12]
Dan Smigrod: ... Was there anything else on this iGUIDE with the floor plans to show us? If not, then let's go back to the tour.

[00:41:20]
Chris White: -Right. There's one more thing I'll just mention from the menu bar. In addition to the property details, you also have a neighborhood map.

If you look at the iGUIDE as a whole, the way it was designed was to give people the information that they're looking for when they're marketing or buying a home.

We know exactly what people are looking for. They're looking for, in-order, photos, floor plans, detailed property information.

If you look at the surveys that are done about what people want, they're like a roadmap of what the iGUIDE provides. In case anyone was curious about why things are set up this way, that's why. This is the information that we're looking for.

[00:41:55]
Dan Smigrod: -I see in the top right, it says EN, presumably that's English.

[00:41:59]
Chris White: -Correct. Yeah.

[00:42:00]
Dan Smigrod: -Are there are other languages? French. Are there other languages?

[00:42:04]
Chris White: -There will be, there aren't at the moment. It's just English and French. But those are obviously critical in North America.

[00:42:10]
Dan Smigrod: -Then I see the property address at the top in a little icon of a person.

[00:42:17]
Chris White: -Correct. Yeah, you do have sharp eyes, Dan. The property address is exactly what you think it is, it's the property address.

But clicking on the little person allows branding information to be displayed. That branding information is almost always used for whoever ordered the tours, so that's usually in a real estate agent.

The branding does a few different things depending on who you ask.

But the branding is extremely valuable because what it does is it connects the buyer and the seller in a real estate transaction, without that branding there's nowhere to go with all the information you just got. How do you make that connection?

The branding is valuable in the sense that it completes that connection and it connects the dots there.

[00:43:01]
Dan Smigrod: -I see an arrow to the right. Is there an unlimited number of social media links?

[00:43:13]
Chris White: -Yeah. It varies depending on what you put in. Correct. It's going to be dynamic and it's going to scale.

The reason that it's set up this way is that, on the right side here, you can have the option of having a logo, so you can have a headshot and logo.

The logo that I put was the iGUIDE one which doesn't really fill the space particularly well. That means that if that weren't there, this would just extend over. But yeah, you can have all of the links all there and display some of them.

[00:43:37]
Dan Smigrod: -What's interactive on this? I can click on any of those links? Presumably it's going to take me to the agent's Facebook Page or their LinkedIn Page or their website.

That address, I'm guessing, is interactive. If you are on a smartphone, I would imagine you could click on the phone and it would place a call.

[00:43:56]
Chris White: -Yep, you got it. This was designed to be a way to really show people what's important when you're connecting with the person listing the property. Phone; you want a phone call?

[00:44:05]
Dan Smigrod: -I think there's only one icon that we haven't looked at, maybe it looks like a VR in the bottom.

[00:44:14]
Chris White: -Yeah, the VR, absolutely.

[00:44:15]
Dan Smigrod: -If we are on mobile, we could look at this in virtual reality.

[00:44:19]
Chris White: -Correct. Yeah. You can take the tour and you can load it into VR and view it on any headset you want. For the most part, I haven't tested in all of them, so I can't say that's 100 percent.

But if you were to load the tour onto a phone and use it in a Google Cardboard experience if that even is still a thing, it's not bad. But where it really shines – the VR – is when it's on a fairly high-end headset like an Oculus [Meta] Quest 2. Those are relatively rare, not a lot of people have those, but they're actually a really fun way to experience a property. VR was supposed to be the biggest thing since sliced bread around 2015, 2016.

It didn't really live up to a lot of the hype because the technology wasn't there yet. But the funny thing is, the technology is there now.

[00:45:06]
Dan Smigrod: -I have an agent that wants to use VR, why is the iGUIDE virtual reality VR experience special?

[00:45:13]
Chris White: -Right. What it allows you to do, is it allows you to have the same experience where you have the floor plan and the visuals, but it allows you to get that extra immersion to feel like you're in the space.

That means you still get the feeling of control, but you can feel like you're there. You have to try it in order to really get it. But it's very much like a VR experience. You've got a full 360 head tracking, you can look up and you look down. Sorry, go on.

[00:45:37]
Dan Smigrod: -Excuse me. I wanted to say the super-cool thing is the interactive mini-map is there as well. You can actually interact with – I forget whether it was by eye or by tapping, you're tapping?

[00:45:50]
Chris White: -No, it's by eye. You just look at where you want to go and you go.

[00:45:53]
Dan Smigrod: -You look. If you look at the mini-map and say I want to go to the dining room, then that's how I can do that.

If I just want to walk through the space, just keep staring through the space and it'll just walk through it.

[00:46:07]
Chris White: -You got it. It's actually really fascinating because the way it's designed, the map actually floats like in 3D space ahead of the visuals, so that means it feels like you have a magical floating map in front of you. It's quite cool.

[00:46:19]
Dan Smigrod: -Cool. Chris, Before we jump into: iGUIDE ANSI Compliant 2D Foor Plans – is there anything else that we haven't covered on iGUIDE Refresh: New 3D Tour Display?

[00:46:31]
Chris White: -One thing. Go back to the branding and I'll mention something.

The other aspect of that branding is that what it does is it allows the person who ordered that tour to see the value in it. If you are for example, a real estate photographer, and you provide a service for someone, you create marketing materials for them, they may not come back and order that again if they don't see the value.

Having the ability to share, but then also connect a buyer and a seller is huge. Because if someone who orders your product can see the value in it, because they've literally generated a lead or it's helped them in the sale of a property, rather than anecdotally, is an actual physical thing.

That means that they're far more likely to come back to you to order another one. The iGUIDE is designed to not only give people the information they're looking for, but to help empower people in that process of whatever it is they're doing, but in this case a real estate transaction, so that they see the value and they come back again. They want to order more.

[00:47:31]
Dan Smigrod: -I'm actually going to refer our viewers who are interested in yet even a deeper dive into iGUIDE. Chris and I did an entire show, Introduction to iGUIDE, and we also did an entire show on iGUIDE Stitch, which is the backend platform for creating these tours.

As Chris took us through the experience today, you're scratching your head wondering, how did he do that? We literally did an entire show on the backend of iGUIDE Stitch, and you can find these episodes by going to: www.WGANForum.com We Get Around Network Forum.

So it's: www.WGANForum.com Go either to the search bar and type in iGUIDE, or go to the tag section and look for the tag either for iGUIDE or that tag for iGUIDE Stitch or the tag for iGUIDE Planitar, whatever you're looking for. iGUIDE ANSI Compliant 2D Floor Plans.
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(Continued from above)
----
First, I'm going to ask this question, and you can answer any way you like, it's an open-ended question. Why are ANSI compliant 2D floor plans important?

[00:48:54]
Chris White: -That's an excellent question.

[00:48:55]
Dan Smigrod: -Or maybe what is ANSI, and why does that matter?

[00:48:59]
Chris White: -All right. I'll answer all your questions. I'm going to preface this by saying this is a big deal for iGUIDE because the core of our product is about measurements which are compatible with ANSI. This is a good thing for us. It's a good thing for everybody.

[00:49:12]
Dan Smigrod: -I'm just going to point out, ANSI is the American National Standards Institute.

[00:49:18]
Chris White: -Correct.

[00:49:19]
Dan Smigrod: -A-N-S-I, and Chris is going to refer to these standards, you can actually go see the standards with a shortcut that we created: www.WGAN.INFO/ansi

[00:49:37]
Dan Smigrod: Forgive me. iGUIDE is ANSI compliant. Today is Thursday, April 7, what happened on Friday, April 1, 2022?

[00:49:50]
Chris White: -Good question. Fannie Mae on April 1st, and actually prior to April 1st they announced this. By April 1st, [Fannie Mae has] requested that all mortgage appraisals done where a property is measured and in some cases floor plans are created, must use the ANSI standard of measurements, the ANSI certified standards. What that means is that Fannie Mae is trying to get some consistency with regards to the way homes are measured, and that's what the ANSI Z765-2021 standard is all about. It's all about providing a consistent method for measuring properties so that those square footage or area totals can be used to determine the value of a property.

[00:50:40]
Chris White: Fannie Mae has requested this and they're not alone. Other measurement standards .. The ANSI and other measurement standards have been appearing over time. The trend is toward measurement standards being the norm rather than not.

There are lots of examples. The North Carolina Real Estate Board or Association has mandated that ANSI measurements are required as well. There's a good example in Canada where the RECA or Alberta RMS, measurement standard is required.

[00:51:16]
Dan Smigrod: -It's RECA, Alberta RMS which is similar to ANSI. But for Canada.

[00:51:23]
Chris White: -That's right. Exactly. It's for Western Canada, but yes.

The reason this is a big deal is that if in a real estate transaction, an appraisal is required, that means that ANSI compatible measurements are extremely valuable because those may be required to do the property appraisal in order to get financing.

That means that having those ANSI compatible measurements means that closing can occur significantly faster because you don't have to go out and measure the property, it's already done.

[00:51:58]
Chris White: iGUIDE provides you with the option of having either RECA, RMS or ANSI compatible measurements when you create your floor plans, which means that you're good to go.

That's a very compelling reason to provide iGUIDE because you can make that real estate transaction significantly easier and faster for your client by having those ANSI measurements available for the properties even listed.

[00:52:22]
Dan Smigrod: -Let me see if I can give a more compelling reason for iGUIDE. I'm going to take it to the next level, as these standards which were announced a long time ago, which now are in effect – effective April 1, I would imagine that we're going to see more and more MLS platforms across the United States requiring ANSI compliant 2D floor plans.

If that floor plan is going to be used in the marketing of a house, if it's going to be used in the MLS.

If you're building a business and you want to make sure that six months, a year, two years from now, everything that you've been doing in creating for your clients is compliant with these measurements standards, then iGUIDE already checks the box not only for the North American standard, for the American Standard but for the Canadian standard as well.

[00:53:31]
Chris White: -That's right. Not all floor plans are created equal. If you want to be confident that your floor plans will be valuable for you and your business, then you should definitely consider getting ones that are ANSI compliant.

[00:53:52]
Dan Smigrod: -This begs the question to say, maybe you're using another platform for creation of floor plans, one might go back to your existing 2D floor plan maker and the questions to ask if you're in the United States, "are you ANSI compliant?" – It's specifically "ANSI Z765-2021" – Ask that very specific question. If your 2D floor plan provider is not ANSI compliant, ask them if or when they will be.

Second, if you happen to be in Canada ask the same question. "Are you RECA RMS compatible?"

[00:54:45]
Chris White: -That's right. Yeah.

[00:54:46]
Dan Smigrod: -Chris, there are other platforms, so 3D, 360 Virtual Tours –

[00:54:52]
Chris White: -There's a few, yes.

[00:54:53]
Dan Smigrod: - that offers floor plans. Some platforms you can order floor plans through another service. Anything you want to say about the competitors meets ANSI?

[00:55:05]
Chris White: -I'll speak to iGUIDE's strengths. Then if anyone wants to compare that with what they're currently using or if they're considering an alternative, that'll give them a leg up on figuring out which one is better. But iGUIDE gives you the ability to choose which standard you want to use.

You have that flexibility. iGUIDE also gives you a method of measurement from which to understand the square footage totals that you're using. Every time square footage is used for anything there's a little bit of risk involved because there is especially with property appraisal, a dollar amount associated with that total number.

That means that if you can use square footage totals that have been created based on standards, you're far safer than if you're using ones that aren't in terms of liability and the repercussions later when people begin to question those numbers. The flexibility, consistency, and accuracy of iGUIDE floor plans are definitely the strength there.

[00:56:04]
Dan Smigrod: -Yeah. Awesome point. I think this is a two-part punch here. 1) "how was the space captured for the purpose of measurement?" 2) "how was the drafting of the floor plans accomplished such that the measurements are considered ANSI compliant or essentially the same."

There's one truth about measurements whether you're a buying agent, the selling agent and appraiser or photographer and to the extent that you're ANSI and or RECA RMS compliant, maybe one of those things that enable everybody to sleep better, knowing that you're reducing the risk related to potential lawsuits over the measurement, the usage of square foot. I think as photographers, we've all been there.

We've looked at it at a listing for the house previously. We've scanned the space and we got square footage numbers that are different from the numbers that the previous agent has used.

We may be providing numbers that are bigger than, same as or less than how the house has been marketed in the past. I'm going to guess as a photographer, you really want to be able to say, "Hey, we meet the [ANSI] standard. It's five pages long.

This is what it is." We can't speak to how that floor plan from somebody else was created or the square footage but this is ANSI compliant. Here's the five pages if you want to read the minutiae on this.

But if you can provide ANSI compliant floor plans, you're taking the risk off the table for the real estate agent, the real estate broker for the home seller. Everyone has this truth because it's an accepted standard for measurement.

[00:58:17]
Chris White: -That's right. We've seen it before. I mean, that the writing is on the wall with this, the real estate industry has been wild west with square footage information forever.

This is a good thing for everybody, the consumer is going to benefit. Real estate market is going to benefit, everyone's really going to benefit from having these standards. In a real-world practical sense, if you're a real estate photographer, this helps with a lot of communication problems.

Sometimes what will happen is that you'll have an expectation about the size of a home. People will have a number in their mind and they will dispute. If you measure the home yourself, they'll dispute what you give them.

If you're following a standard, this just helps make that so much simpler because then the numbers that you're providing will have really clear guidelines about what's included versus what's excluded. That means that you can be really confident about those numbers and you don't have to worry so much.

[00:59:10]
Dan Smigrod: -Today, ANSI compliant and six months from now, a year from now, two years from now, I anticipate that we're going to see many MLS services require that any floor plans, any square footage, be ANSI compliant and therefore you can sleep comfortably knowing iGUIDE is ANSI compliant, is RECA RMS compliant.

If you're not using iGUIDE and you're using a different platform, you might want to ask that other platform, ask the other floor plan creator, "are you ANSI compliant?" "Are you RECA RMS compliant" if you're in Canada and if not, when? If you're really planning to offer floor plans as part of your solution, then you probably want to know that it's ANSI compatible.

[01:00:06]
Chris White: -Absolutely.

[01:00:07]
Dan Smigrod: -I think Chris, we could probably dive into the minutiae but I think the point is there's a standard. Are you compliant or not? iGUIDE is.

[01:00:19]
Chris White: -Yeah. You got it.

[01:00:21]
Dan Smigrod: -Anything else on that topic?

[01:00:23]
Chris White: -No. That's it. That's good.

[01:00:27]
Dan Smigrod: -Is there anything else that I haven't asked you about ANSI that we should cover?

[01:00:33]
Chris White: -No. I think we got everything. I would just add one extra thing and that's it. The change that has occurred on April 1st is very recent obviously. We're not going to really see the full effects of this for a while.

I don't think it's necessarily perceived as a big problem yet but it will over the next few weeks come to the forefront of people who start talking about it. I would just encourage everyone to pay attention because you might see it come up. This way you'll have a leg up when you hear about it.

[01:01:03]
Dan Smigrod: -Awesome. Chris, thanks for being on the show today.

[01:01:06]
Chris White: -Thanks for having me.

[01:01:08]
Dan Smigrod: -We've been visiting with Chris White, Marketing Manager for Planitar the maker of iGUIDE, visit the website at: www.goiGUIDE.com If you want to know more about the ANSI standards: WGAN.INFO/ansi For Chris in Canada I want to say Kitchener but you're no longer there.

[01:01:36]
Chris White: -I might say, I'm close to Kitchener, that is close enough.

[01:01:39]
Dan Smigrod: -For close enough to Kitchener, I'm Dan Smigrod in Atlanta and you've been watching WGAN-TV Live at 5.
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Video: iGUIDE Masterclass - ANSI Z765-2021 | Video courtesy of iGUIDE YouTube Channel | 20 May 2022

Transcript

[00:00:00]
Andriy Strebkov: [MUSIC] -Good afternoon everybody. We'll start shortly, maybe in a minute or two. Before I begin. Can everybody hear me? Can everybody see my screen? Because a couple of times before I was starting a presentation and nobody could hear me or I wouldn't share my screen. Perfect. Perfect. Thank you. Welcome everybody for this masterclass. Some of you already might know me. My name is Andriy Strebkov. I work at iGUIDE since late 2019.

My job is to consult real estate professional on the square footage measurements on floor plans, and of course, on 3D tours. So the title of our presentation today is ANSI Z765.

And some of you might know that we were officially introduce ANSI last month. So that's why we will be, That's why we decided to prepare this presentation, to maybe educate a little bit our operators on what ANSI Z765 is and how to use it with iGUIDE.

So today's, so today we're going to structure our masterclass in the following way. First, we are going to start with some basic definitions. You might already know those definitions anyway, but we'll still go through them to make sure that we're on the same page. Then second, we're going to review some biggest rules and biggest requirements of ANSI.

I'm not going to go into requirements so that they have in the document, but I'm going to cover a couple of most biggest points that you should know about. And of course, at the end I'm going to show you how to actually use your minimum standard to ANSI Z765 when you use iGUIDE.

What is ANSI? ANSI is American National Standards Institute. So it's an organization that was established in 1918, shortly after the First World War. What it does, it oversees the development of voluntary standards in many industries across the United States.

What it doesn't do though, it doesn't develop standards. So ANSI doesn't actually comes and develops standards for you. No, we just a credit standards developed by non-profit organizations, sometimes government organizations. But these standards are coming from the industry and ANSI job overseas their development and accredit them.

What is ANSI Z765? This is one of the standards that was accredited by ANSI.

It describes the procedures to be followed in measuring and calculating the square footage of detached and attached single house, single time and it causes. So as you can see from this definition here, you cannot apply ANSI Z765 for commercial building, for example, or you can't apply it for rather than a for apartment buildings. So it's strictly residential, single-family houses that you would use a ANSI Z765. How to create it? That's, that's a good question here.

Like why we have so many standards for, for everything regulations and all that. So back in nineties, National Association of Home Builders actually conducted a research and they surveyed multiple builders across United States from coast-to-coast.

And what they noticed is that everybody measured their properties differently. So it's not consistent. Somebody would include the balconies, porches in the total square footage. Some people would measure, some companies would measure paint to paint, and some people would include the exterior walls. There was no consistency in the industry.

In I994, National Association of Home Builders start to do a research. And they got other real estate organizations involved, for example, in National Association of Realtors was involved in this research and the development of future standard.

So in 1996 ANSI Z765 was officially born and it was overlooked and it is developed by Home Innovation Research Lab. So you can find all the information about ANSI Z765 on Home Innovation and Research Lab if you wanted to.

[00:04:46]
Andriy Strebkov: Even though it was developed in 1996 and the standard is still and being regularly reviewed. Every few years, maybe every year, you can see an update to the standard. So what are the benefits of it? I think it might be obvious, but I feel like first of all, it makes the industry more transparent and makes measurements repeatable.

So if two companies, so two people coming in and measure the same house, so they will get the same results. At least, they will apply the same, the same rules when they measure, of course the result will create the alignment across the industry. And it creates defensible methods for real estate professionals.

So, so for example, real estate agents can refer to ANSI Z765 and it's recognized standards. It has been for around four decades, for a couple of decades now. And it's very well-known so it's the defensible methods for real estate agents, for example, to rely on.

[00:05:52]
Andriy Strebkov: Who currently uses the standard? I might have overlooked, maybe I missed some other innovations, so excuse me here, but some of the biggest ones here. First of all, well, North Carolina Real Estate Board is, has a quite comprehensive and quite strict requirements in terms of how to report square footage.

It's not the same case in every single state in the United States, North Carolina requires you to follow either in North Carolina measurement guidelines or ANSI Z765 when you report square footage. So every real estate agents, that includes, quarter footage in the MLS, has to follow ANSI Z765, or North Carolina measurement guidelines that are very similar to antique. [inaudible 00:06:39] Second organization that recognizes and uses the standards as well, National Association of Realtors that you've probably heard of before, this organization.

Third one is, of course, the organizations that was on the roots of and like of creation of the Standard National Association of Home Builders. And starting April 1st, Fannie Mae switched to ANSI Z765. So now every now appraisers are required to follow ANSI standards when they report the square footage. What about definitions? Like I said, some of those definitions here, you probably already know, but let's actually review some of them just to be on the same page.

What is Finished Area? According to ANSI standard, Finished Area is an enclosed area in a house that is suitable for year-round use based upon its location and budding walls, floors, and ceilings that are similar to the rest of the house.

As you can see, Finished Area is not only the area that is, let's say, suitable for year-round use, it actually has to be similar to the rest of the house. It's very specific definition of what a Finished Area. Grade. Grade is the ground level, you, I'm sure all of you know, all these terms. Grade refers to the ground level. Floor is considered to be above grade. If it's floor level is everywhere above ground. The Wall Thickness. Well, it's the thickness of the exterior walls. Typically, standard wall thickness is six and a half inches. How to measure wall thickness?

Well, you just measure the exterior door or window. Just a few more definitions for you. Interior and Exterior Square Footage. Interior Square Footage is the inside surface of the exterior wall. It's pain to pain, typically. Exterior Square Footage. It's a surface determined by measuring the outside surface of the exterior walls.

Finally, Ceiling Height. Is the vertical line, a distance from the finished floor to the finished ceiling. Typically, the senior high, there's somewhere between 8 and 9 feet. Now, let's jump right into some of the ANSI Z765 requirements.

Exterior and Interior Square Footage, how do you measure it according to ANSI Z765? Well, when it comes to Detached House it's pretty simple, and you just include the exterior wall. You measure the exterior square footage for Detached Houses.

But when it comes to Attached Houses it's not necessarily obvious because you measure to the central line between the units.

For example, if you have a condominium or townhouse, so it's Attached House, in this case, you would measure the wall thickness to the central line between the two units. It's not that obvious because quite often people wouldn't measure, and for example, in Alberta, there is a different standard called Alberta RMS, and it's requires, in this case is that you would measure pain to paint.

You would not include the wall. But according to ANSI, you include the wall to the central line. It's quite important to understand the difference here. What about all the situations when you have Attached Garage? For Garage is obviously not Finished Area.

What do you do about it? The explanation for case is like this, where Finished and Unfinished Areas are adjacent on the same level, the Finished Square Footage is calculated by measuring to the exterior edge or unfinished surface of any interior partition between the area. Essentially you measure to the exterior wall on the side of the garage, if it makes sense.

We don't have to really worry that much about it, I guess we'll take care of it as long as you provide us all the information, as long as you standard the house properly and provide us the wall thickness. You don't have to worry about the details that much. Second big part of how ANSI works and what ANSI requires is how you deal with ceiling heights.

For the room to be included in the total square footage, the ceiling height has to be at least 70. Let's say you come into the room and the whole room is six feet, it cannot be included in the total square footage. You can still report it.

You can include it separately, but it cannot be included in the total above grade square footage. However, if under beams, so dark, the ceiling height must be at least 7 feet and 4 inches. That's something to keep in mind. But what about slope ceiling circles? There are quite a lot of situations where you have low ceilings and in this case, to be included, at least 60 percent of this room, height should be 7 feet for 50 percent of this room.

No portion of the room with less than 5 feet can be included. What it means, for example, scenario number one, you have, let's say only 30 percent of the room has a ceiling height of 7 feet. The other 70 percent of the room has the ceiling height of 6 feet, for example.

It cannot be included in the total square footage. However, if you have a 50 percent of the room that has a ceiling height of 7 feet, and the other parts has a 6 feet, the other 50 percent, it can be included in the total square footage. Scenario number two. For example, you have 50 percent of the room that is above 7 feet, 40 percent of the room, that is 6. Then you have 10 percent of the room that is, let's say 4 feet.

These 10 percent of the room that has 4 feet can not be included in the total square footage, the other part can. When it comes to stares, the space on the stairs, there is no specified requirements. It's up to you if you want to include the space or exclude the space in the total square footage.

Again, these details, we will handle the details, but it's important for you to understand especially the ceiling height part of it.

Now, there are a couple of more things. When it comes to the reporting itself, there should be clear distinction and separation between embodied in the little gray square footage. We're talking about Finished Square Footage.

For example, if you have a lot of Unfinished Square Footage, it can be included in the report, but it cannot be included in the total above grade or below grade work for the sheets. They are reported separately if included separately in the same report.

That's exactly what we're going to look at right now. How you actually create those iGIUDE, how do you switch to ANSI standards with iGUIDE? You're probably all familiar with it already. This is the iGUIDE portal. I assume all of you will already have access to this. I opened the back hand off the iGUIDE that was created here.

I click edit in general settings, I click edits on the right-hand side. Here I have a measurement standard. Here I can select ANSI Z765 or RMS that have used the number. You can actually learn more about two standards, right under the measurement standard fields.

There are two links here that you can use. When you click on ANSI it brings these straight to the home of innovation and research lab, the organization I mentioned earlier in this presentation.

You can find a lot of information to call these standards who were created and comments and all that. It's a very valuable resource for you if you wanted to learn more about ANSI Z765. For example, here I select ANSI Z765 and I get the warning here. It's at the ANSI Z765 measurements require a non-zero wall thickness to be calculated. What it means is, like I mentioned, you have to calculate the wall thickness if you don't,

[00:15:22]
Andriy Strebkov: you are not following ANSI standard, like wall thickness has to be included. How do you include this wall thickness? For example, you calculated the wall thickness and you are switching to ANSI, so you scroll down here. Here you can do a lot of stuff, you can make a lot of nice changes to your iGUIDE. When you click on this edit floor icon, right on the floor selector, when you click here, so that's the title of the floor.

But here you see a perimeter wall thickness. For example, I can indicate 6 inches. By the way here, I can also indicate if it's below grade, don't worry about grades. Typically, on our end we will help you with this as well. But let's say if you want it to be below grade for some reason you can make it below grade and it will be again, reflected on the answer report.

In this case, I just leave it just like this. Here you have perimeter wall thickness, 6 inches, I click okay, then I would repeat the same process, I would go to the basement, and let's say again, I would use 6 inches. Click okay. You have to change every room for garage, so you actually don't need to. But you have to make sure that all the floors have these wall thickness.

Then I click save. Here we go. Now we'll switch to ANSI standard. Here you would have ANSI square footage measurements included. But what if you want to use ANSI standards as a default? You will say, every single I got you create you want to be following ANSI standard.

There is an option for it as well. When you click on your profile here on the top-right corner, when you go to Settings and go to iGUIDE default and you scroll down, here you'll have measurement standards. You have three options, System default, RMF, and ANSI.

You select here, for example, ANSI and you just save it. Now every single iGUIDE you create will be following ANSI Z765 standards, so you don't have to manually change every iGUIDE you create, it will be automatic for you. Now, what a system default?

System default, the way it works right now, is that everybody from the United States and every iGUIDE to create it in the United States will follow ANSI Z765 standard by default. Every other iGUIDE created outside of the United States, for example, in Canada or in Europe by default will follow RMF standard.

[00:18:17]
Andriy Strebkov: If you are located in the United States, you don't have to actually choose ANSI as the default, it will be a default anyway. One more thing that I wanted to show you. Our drafters will actually take a look at the rooms you created and they will see the rooms are finished or not for you. However, you have a choice to manually include and exclude the rooms.

For example, living room, I can click "Edit" and I can select if it's included finished, excluded, if its exterior. That's really up to you. You can make it excluded, Save and that's it.

It will be excluded from the total square footage for any reason. Most likely it's going to be unfinished so that's why if you exclude it. You have this option to change this manually in case you need to. You have total control over it. The last thing to keep in mind that this option is first of all, will be available with every new iGUIDE you create and every iGUIDE is created after mid 2021 you will also be able to switch the ANSI standard. Thank you very much for your time.

I think these are some of the most important thing that I wanted to mention and share with you today. Let's take a look at some of the questions here. First of all, I see Dustin is asking, is it possible to have the basement ceiling height include it on the floor plans? There is no way at this point, unfortunately, to include the ceiling height right on the floor plan.

Peter is asking, but it's always a guess. Does anyone have a suggestion for wall thickness measurement? You can use the measuring tape paper as well tape measure, but I know some people who just automatically apply 6-6.5 Inches by default because it's really quite common. Now we have another question. Do you think measurement standards like ANSI will be mandatory across America?

We definitely see the trends towards it. We see the trend across United States and Canada. We see that there are in some jurisdictions, conversations are happening. At this point, every real estate board made the decision for themselves.

Like for example, like I mentioned, North Carolina Real Estate Board has made the decision quite a few years ago and now they have certain requirements in terms of ANSI Z765. For example, another great example is old birthday in Canada. They have fallen RMF.

It's a very comprehensive standards. Again, you know exactly how to measure. It makes it very convenient and transparent for everybody.

We see conversations happening in other provinces and states as well. There is a good chance that the ANSI, for example, in the United States, might become mandatory at some point. I believe it can be the case. Do you have web page? Yeah, I can send the agents to that talks about ANSI. Here we go. Here increase as well as share the documents here. Here's the page.

There's a question in the chat. In measuring a condo, should we only use half the wall thickness to calculate mid line measurement? Half the wall thickness. Yeah. That's exactly what's central line is. Yeah. That's pretty much halfway. It's half central point between in the wall between the two units. That you've got it. Here we go. Here is one more question.

Why the builder measurements are larger than our measurement. Oh, that's a great question. Never recommend to rely on the measurements coming from the developers, like pre-built measurements, because many of those measurements, or if not all, are calculated before the property was built. The reason is we get penalized for the difference unfortunately.

Yeah. You're right. For the agents, of course, they want to see bigger square footage, but it's actually dangerous situation for them. It's more dangerous for them, I would say than you, for example, as a photographer.

Because for example, if agent didn't want to take your measurements and they just use the builder measurements, well, what happens if let's say the home home buyer figures out that the square footage is actually at last minute wasn't reported, they can sue the agent or the sellers.

Yeah. Thank you very much for attending the symmetric class, and I hope you enjoyed it and hope it was useful. I would recommend contacting me when it comes to the question about ANSI.

Here I will write my email as well. If you have questions about ANSI, you can actually reach out to tech support as well. If you have some urgent questions you can open ticket.

You can ask questions in Q&A session that would have bi-weekly on Wednesday. [inaudible 00:23:46] Perfect. Feel free to follow us on Facebook and other social media resources and have a great day. See you later.
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