Virtual reality (VR) isn’t just for gamers anymore—it’s reshaping how Shea Homes sells homes and communities.
The California-based builder, which ranks No. 34 on the 2025 Builder 100, has taken VR to a new level with immersive and interactive tours of not only homes, but full communities.
“Shea Homes has been using virtual reality on a limited basis for quite some time, but at the end of 2019 we made the pivotal decision to launch all upcoming communities and all plans in virtual reality,” says Ken Peterson, vice president of sales and marketing at Shea Homes Arizona. “We worked closely with our architectural team, marketing team, and Zonda to develop a process which ensured we had all the necessary assets to build our homes and communities virtually.”
According to Peterson, the division’s first venture was Acclaim at Alamar in Avondale, Arizona. The team divided the project into two phases. The first was a more basic VR for the internal frame-walk process, and the second was immersive VRs for marketing and selling.
“Overall, it was a huge success, so we quickly deployed two more communities, each time creating more efficiencies and launching new features,” he says.
Over the past few years, the company has continued to utilize VR, allowing new home advisors to effectively connect with customers, presell communities, and reduce model costs.
The Arizona division of the company also recently was recognized for its VR use in the “Best Innovative Use of Technology” category at the Home Builders Association of Central Arizona’s MAME Awards competition.
To learn more about Shea’s VR practices, BUILDER spoke with Peterson about home buyer interest in the technology, the biggest challenges in implementing VR, and if this will become an industry standard moving forward.
What inspired Shea Homes to be an adopter of immersive VR, and how did you envision it transforming the home buying experience?
We originally focused on VR to promote our communities and amenities to assist our sales team by telling the story of the entire community to our guests well before the completion of them. This was really well received by our customers and has truly helped our sales team by building the vision of what the community has to offer. Witnessing this customer reaction, we felt compelled to do the same for our homes. We felt we could be better than just traditional 2D interactive floor plans. While we still use them, however, we offer a much better solution with immersive VR for those customers who have a difficult time visualizing the home and understanding our interior design and the livability of the space.
How has implementing immersive VR changed your overall sales and marketing strategy, especially for presales?
To truly demonstrate the effectiveness of immersive VR, we launched Signature at the Phoenician with only community and home VR’s. Ultimately, we sold the entire community with no models or sales office and well before the community and amenities were finished. The results we experienced were the catalyst for us to move forward with VR’s at all of our communities.
Courtesy Shea Homes Arizona
What sets your VR platform apart from other digital home buying tools on the market today?
The seamless integration between our immersive VR’s, in conjunction with our Zonda digital sales assistants (DSAs), as well as our interpersonal selling system, helps to simplify the buyer journey through the process of selecting a homesite, plan, architectural style, structural options, and placement of the home on the site. Collectively, allowing us to clearly set buyer expectations and make the whole process fun and enjoyable for our customers.
How do home buyers typically react when they first experience the immersive VR tour—what surprises them most?
The first reaction by our guests is “wow,” in many cases it’s the first time they have the opportunity to tour every plan available, walk the entire exterior and interior of the home, place it on a specific homesite, and explore the backyard. At several communities we took it a step further and we illustrate the exact views from their homesite. We can even demonstrate the sunrise and sunset any day of the year. This feature especially helps seasonal residence.
Have you noticed any shifts in buyer behavior or decision-making since rolling out this technology?
Besides the benefits previously discussed, our ability to illustrate structural options like; cabinet upgrades, room changes, stair railing, etc. has made it much easier for buyers to make better informed decisions because they can see how it will actually look compared to a 2D floor plan. Additionally, we have seen an increase in option sales and the ability to capture lot premiums commensurate of the true value of a homesite.
Courtesy Shea Homes Arizona
What kind of collaboration was required to bring this level of interactivity to life—did you build the platform in-house or work with tech partners?
To fully execute immersive VR, it takes a close working relationship with architecture, purchasing, land development, and marketing. The adoption of this platform has really enhanced our internal process and added efficiencies for each stakeholder. Every department has a key role and understands the critical need to ensure they achieve our timelines. Overall, it has reduced our time to market.
What were some of the biggest challenges in rolling out this technology across your communities?
Change is never easy; it takes a clear message from leadership outlining all the internal and external benefits of VR and ultimately converting to a “customer centric” experience. From there, departmental collaboration is critical. Each department needs to clearly understand their role in the process and be able to share and review all aspects of the home. The better the deliverables to the Zonda team, the better results we all achieve. We even went so far as to convert a conference room into a dedicated VR Room. Any department can access all our community and home VR’s to ensure our customer information is up to date and accurate.
Do you see immersive VR becoming an industry standard in new-home sales, or is it still something that gives Shea a unique edge?
Well, it personally disappoints me how slowly our industry adopts new technology. We sell the most expensive consumer product and are far behind many industries. At Shea Homes, we will continue to focus on the deployment and enhancements to immersive VR and try to lead our industry by being a beacon of what is possible.
