For decades, residential real estate has been shaped by geography: who can show up, who can attend, who can get eyes on a property. The market has long rewarded proximity in this regard. Buyers near an open house were advantaged and agents anchored to one ZIP code were limited by the simple physics of distance. However, as industries across the economy shift from physical presence to experiential reach, real estate’s long-standing in-person rituals are beginning to feel like artifacts of a previous era.
The most forward-leaning corner of the market isn’t asking how to get more people into a room. It’s asking how to make the room obsolete.
That question is now central to the work of Neil Anders, a mortgage executive who has been building a model around virtual experiences that expand—not just replicate—the open house tradition. His approach uses technology to break the geographic bottlenecks baked into the industry, creating a unified digital environment that can support agents, buyers, and sellers in any city or state.
Anders explains that virtual open houses aren’t a novelty; they’re a strategic extension of a system that has long been overdue for modernization. By shifting a historically in-person process into a digitally accessible one, his team enables agents nationwide to host the same event simultaneously, widening exposure while preserving the buyers value. Early responses have been strong enough, he notes, that agents and consumers view the approach less as a stopgap and more as a new standard.
This move is part of a broader thesis: that technology, long available but underutilized, can bring convenience, comfort, and consistency to a process that still depends heavily on physical presence. For Anders, virtual open houses are not a replacement for traditional showings, they are an expansion of opportunity. As consumer expectations shift toward immediacy and flexibility, the agents who can meet buyers where they already are, online, may ultimately shape the next competitive landscape in residential real estate.
