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Zibber employee holding a BLK2GO

Zibber and BLK2GO Accurately Measure and Visualize Homes to Meet Real Estate Industry Regulations

By Christopher Dollard

|
07/29/2021

As surveying and reality capture technology progresses at a rapid pace, so do its uses among different industries, and especially real estate. Zibber, a real estate documentation and visualization firm in the Netherlands, provides accurate floorplans to real estate agents to make sure that homes are measured as precisely as possible. And Zibber is the first in the real estate industry to adopt the BLK2GO handheld laser scanner to document properties.

Why is this so important? Because a home is perhaps the most significant purchase a person might make in their life, and so the valuation of a home, determined by measurements, must be as accurate as possible. One of Zibber’s main missions is to calculate the correct square and cubic meters to meet industry-wide measurement regulations. Zibber is dedicated to helping real estate agents, potential home buyers, and other stakeholders in the measurement, design, and transaction process adhere to standards to make sure that homes are valued and sold properly, according to regulations.

This process is of high importance to real estate agents because in Netherlands, there’s quite a high standard for real estate measurement. This standard is defined in branchebrede meetinstructie (industry-wide measurement instruction) BBMI, a Dutch regulation for “the exchange of uniformly structured information in this field.” “Our clients find peace of mind with the BLK2GO involved in our process because it creates a very high standard of measurement accuracy for real estate,” said Dogan Kahveci, CEO and co-owner at Zibber.

Portrait of Dogan Kahveci“For example, if measurements are wrong and the house is valued too high and sold, a real estate agent can get in legal trouble. So, this helps both parties. The person buying the house, which is their most valuable belonging, knows the information is correct,” Dogan explained, “and the real estate agent can take confidence in the high standard of data, which not only helps them follow the correct valuation process but also to deliver the best data about the house to their clients.”

Helping both parties achieve a fair transaction according to proper measurement is quite important, but Zibber doesn’t stop there. They also provide highly immersive visualizations derived from high-resolution photography and from the same BLK2GO data. When Zibber surveyors scan a home, they don’t just capture measurements, but they also capture the entire design, look, and feel of someone’s potential living space. “We distinguish ourselves from our competition by acting as an extension of the real estate agency,” said Hans Meeuwsen, CINO and co-owner at Zibber.

This allows us to relieve the real estate agent of work and bring homes to the market faster by processing all media, fully automated, after the appointment and deliver everything to the broker within one working day. These automations in combination with the BLK2GO give us a big advantage over the rest of the market.

Zibber’s complete packages of deliverables are of high quality, produced with speed and accuracy, and offered at a competitive price. Zibber visualizes properties with dedication to their craft. They measure dozens of homes every day. They calculate correct dimensions. And they provide high-end photography to complete the package for marketing the home as best as possible.

How the BLK2GO helps Zibber rise above the competition

“Leica is known as a brand that’s here to stay and working together with Leica not only helped us with hardware, but all of the other possibilities in automating our processes,” Dogan continued, “When we found out how willing Leica is to make this successful in our business, that really attracted us to the company. It’s great that a company like Leica will work with us not just as a client, but as a partner.”

As for the BLK2GO itself?

“We quickly saw that Leica was the first group to offer mobile scanning in a small, single package, rather than multiple components,” said Dogan. “It fits in a briefcase that we already carry, and it was so easy to integrate it into what we already do. It’s basically a dummy-proof product that anyone can use, which is a huge advantage. It’s a great device, our people love it, and within a day, training is done and everyone can operate it.”

Woman scanning a stairwell with a BLK2GO

Zibber currently operates the largest fleet of BLK2GO scanners in the Dutch market, and Dogan and his team were able to train their photographers, who capture and measure properties, to use the BLK2GO so that they only need one person to do the job with the scanner and a camera. Which, according, to Zibber, adds a “cool factor” to the process.

“If there are other people at the house, they always think the scanner is a cool device that looks great, and they ask about what it does,” Dogan said. “So, we explain how it measures everything so accurately by simply walking and holding it, and they’re always surprised and amazed. Using the phone alongside the BLK2GO also shows people how it works, and they’re flabbergasted with what it does when they see the live visual feedback on the phone.”

So how does Zibber do it? And how does it change the real estate industry?

Zibber’s process is simple. They turn the BLK2GO on, load the app, and walk through the house. “It’s amazing to see the real-time map of the house pop up as you walk,” Dogan said. “Then you set it on a table to transfer data to a laptop, and in the meantime, we take photos of the house.”

Once the BLK2GO captures a home, Zibber’s team transfers the data into a fully automated data stream from their cloud servers that process the BLK2GO data—Zibber’s own creation, their backbone to process all point clouds—and deliver it straight to their production house in Vietnam immediately after the scan is completed.

Woman scanning a space with a BLK2GOThe production house then takes the data, creates a very nice, clean floorplan with exact measurements, and sends it back to Zibber. This process enables Zibber to deliver the floorplan and photos to their client with a one-day turnaround, and sometimes on the very same day. So how does that impact the real estate industry? Simply put, the BLK2GO rapidly advanced Zibber’s workflow with speed and accuracy to provide a superior deliverable compared to their competition. And the BLK2GO also makes sure Zibber’s measurements and floorplans meet important industry regulations.

It’s exciting to see Zibber take advantage of highly agile mobile mapping tools like the BLK2GO, and to adopt the cutting-edge surveying technology within the BLK2GO for real estate industry uses. The device clearly performs well for Zibber and their clients and delivers what all stakeholders need. We’re excited to see the other innovative uses of the BLK2GO with Zibber’s industry-defining work.