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Strategy Lab · Real estate

December, 10am. Does the sun reach the living room? Sunlight Time Machine: a 3D sun-path listing idea for real estate

Heraklion apartment living room with late-afternoon light on the terrazzo floor and a sea view through the balcony doorThis image was created with an AI tool (AI Act, Article 50).
60 sec · no sign-up
Left and right arrows for the time, up and down for the month.
  • Living-room aspect: south-west
  • Shading from neighbouring buildings is approximate.

The demo in words: a simplified 3D model of an apartment block in Heraklion, with a south-west living room and balcony. Two sliders change the time and the month; the sun moves along its real path for those coordinates, the shadows shift, and a counter shows how many hours of direct sun the living room gets that day. The city switch changes the latitude.

Photos of a home show one hour of one day. The buyer deciding from Munich wants to know what happens in December at ten. A 3D model with the real sun path answers before they book a flight.

Sector
Real estate
Mechanics
You see the result on you or in your home before you buy.One master asset, thousands of local versions.
Demo engine
3D
Complexity
1 = configuring existing tools · 5 = custom R&D
Production cost
Netex production only, excluding media and data licences. € under €2,000 · €€ €2,000–6,000 · €€€ €6,000–15,000 · €€€€ €15,000–40,000 · €€€€€ over €40,000. Netex estimate.
How this mechanism runs for a business in this sector, step by step.Example values that show how the calculation works.

Decode

How it got you

Sunlight Time MachinePlay → Decode → Deploy
Mechanism
Sv · Self-visualisation + Hl · Hyper-local at scale. Buyers see their own day inside the home, and one template works for every listing.
Psychology
When we can see how something works, we trust it more. And when we picture ourselves inside a home, it starts to feel like ours. Buell, Kim & Tsay, 2017 · Peck & Shu, 2009 · academic research
Platform signal
Time on the listing, and sends between couples: "look at December mornings". A Reel with a year of light crossing the living room in 15 seconds.
Honest range
Listing dwell time 3–5× a photo gallery; +15–40% enquiries from buyers abroad. Typical range for a pilot in a Greek SME · Netex estimate

Deploy

How it runs, step by step

  1. We capture the property: drone photogrammetry, a scan from phone video, or a light 3D model from the plans for new builds.

  2. A web viewer with hour and day sliders runs the real sun path from the coordinates. Overlays read "Direct sun in the living room: Dec 3h 40m · Jul 9h 10m", and a button shows the sunset from the balcony on 15 August.

  3. Optional: AI virtual staging in the buyer's chosen style, always labelled.

  4. Optional: a narrated walkthrough in German, English, French, Hebrew or Polish, with a disclosed AI voice.

  5. "Send me the sun at 7pm on 15 August" emails a render of that moment and opens a lead in the CRM.

Channels and tech

Channels
Listing pages · links out from Greek property portals · WhatsApp sharing · retargeting
Tech
three.js and SunCalc · a Gaussian-splat scan viewer · neighbouring building heights from OpenStreetMap for shading (approximate) · CRM (e.g. HubSpot or Pipedrive)

Complexity 3–4 of 5

€€€ per development project · € per listing once templated · excluding media

What to expect, honestly

We don't promise viral. We promise a mechanism you can measure.

  • Time on the listing 3–5× a photo gallery
  • Enquiries from buyers abroad +15–40%
  • Wasted viewings Fewer; we count them per listing, we don't promise them.

most likely on a first run · A first run usually lands in the lower half of the range.

Before launch we fix one primary KPI and a control: a holdout area, off-trigger days or the previous period.

Control: listings with and without the model, in the same area and price band.

Guardrails

  • Shading from neighbouring buildings is approximate and labelled as such, on the model itself.
  • Orientation and coordinates are checked on site before the listing goes live.
  • AI staging and AI voice are labelled, and staging never hides defects in the space.AI Act, Article 50
  • No automatic geolocation of the visitor. The city is chosen.
  • The buyer's email is collected for one purpose, the render they asked for, with a box that isn't pre-ticked.

Why it works

A buyer abroad pays for two things no photo can prove: light and view. A wide-angle lens at noon in July says nothing about a December morning.

Precision reads as honesty. When the buyer can see how the number is made, coordinates, date, sun path, they trust both the listing and the agent. Buell, Kim & Tsay, 2017 · academic research

And as they drag the sun, the buyer pictures themselves in the living room, coffee in hand, at ten. That sense that something is already a little bit ours is powerful in the biggest purchase of a lifetime. Peck & Shu, 2009 · academic research

Fewer wasted viewings are the gain no ad shows: whoever turns up has already seen December.

Who did it before us

Third-party results are mostly self-reported, from award entries and vendors. They show a mechanic can work, not what it will do for you.

Year Who What they did Result
2023–25 Google AI try-on Since 2025, shoppers see the garment on their own photo. Alphabet called engagement "extremely positive", especially among Gen Z. company statement source (opens in a new tab)
undated Invisalign, SmileView A selfie becomes a preview of a new smile in about 60 seconds, then a route to a dentist. An engagement tool; accuracy isn't guaranteed and independent validation is limited. press report source (opens in a new tab)

The other hemisphere

A listing with a sun is software, not a plugin.

One model per property, a CRM that opens the lead by itself, an email that renders the exact hour the buyer asked for. We build it as custom software that talks to the systems you already run.

The same sun geometry also works out how many hours of sun a factory roof gets.

  1. Property model
  2. Viewer
  3. Email render
  4. CRM lead

Mechanism Sprint

What can't your photos show?

December light, the view from the third floor, street noise at eight. We find it and turn it into a listing that answers.

In 10 working days we design, produce and measure one mechanism for your sector, and set up the automated DM replies. From €1,500 plus production.

We reply within one working day.

The scenario you just played goes straight into the form.