Examining Young Adults' Willingness to Adopt Virtual Reality for Real Estate Purchases

Immersive Virtual Reality (VR) technology adoption for real estate shopping remains largely unexplored, though VR environments hold potential for enhancing property understanding and experiences. However, limited research exists into user readiness and acceptance factors that influence intentions to use immersive VR for residential real estate purchases. This knowledge gap served as impetus for the current study, which aimed to develop and evaluate an immersive VR Property Showhouse application using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) framework to determine key factors driving young adults' behavioral intentions to adopt VR for real estate shopping. An interactive and immersive VR Property Showhouse was created using Unity3D game development platform and tested with 32 young adult participants aged 18-24 who completed guided simulation tasks within the VR environment followed by a survey measuring TAM constructs of perceived usefulness, ease of use, sense of presence, attitude, and intentions. VR Property Showhouse enabled users to explore a virtual residential property in first-person 3D perspective for an authentic simulated experience. Participants were prompted to navigate different areas, customize wall colors, and gather information from a virtual assistant. Upon completing the VR trial, the survey data was analyzed to reveal principal results and conclusions. Key findings highlighted VR's ability to engender a strong sense of presence and positively enhance attitudes towards the showcase, with perceived usefulness being particularly salient in predicting adoption intentions. The study found that VR's experiential property viewing effectively shapes buying motivations compared to traditional digital viewing methods, as evidenced by positive user perceptions. While the small homogeneous sample size warrants caution in generalizing findings, the results provide initial evidence of receptivity and practical insights to inform VR environment design, showcase features, and targeted integration strategies for mutually beneficial VR-enabled property viewing experiences among young adults. As immersive technologies continue to mature, bridging development with user motivations can help transition VR from novelty to impactful mainstream adoption in the real estate domain.