Real estate is one of the largest and well-funded industries in the world.
By the beginning of 2022, the real estate market will have reached unprecedented heights – almost $7,2 Trillion.
It is not surprising that the real estate sector, as one of the significant players in the market, is a leader in the introduction of new digital approaches and innovations.
The start of active online actions turned to 2020 when worldwide property businesses appeared on both web and mobile platforms.
Change the World Using Property Technology
Property Technology (PropTech) is a way when real estate companies use powerful technological tools to help their customers. It can be expressed in making robust market research, using modern technology systems while transaction support, etc. The industrial technology industry is in great demand among businesses that want to keep up with the times and solve the volume problems of users.
Real Estate Technology Trends in 2021
Every business choosing a tool for a company’s promotion should focus on its field of activity. The golden rule is those tools that improve business strategy in one area may not work at all in another. But it is worth saying that there are universal options, such as software. Real estate development software is a working way.
- Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality
Virtual and augmented reality are now at the peak of digital popularity because they have interactive features that cannot fail to impress. Since the modern world is mired in Covid-19 and it seems for a long time, it is no longer enough for a sophisticated user to watch a video about the proposed real estate. Now visitors of real estate platforms hope to see 3D tours of the desired purchase.
A 3-D tour is what buyers expect from a modern real estate platform. And buyers are right, they will save much time and effort using this function. What’s more, customers, in this case, will have the opportunity to see more options.
The best real estate example is Zillow that uses 360-degree cameras to show customers the property.
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Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
The technology of artificial intelligence makes computers able to understand visual perception, as well as recognize human speech, translate different languages, and, in some cases, even make their own decisions.
In proptech, artificial intelligence, as well as big data technologies, help with analyzing the real estate users’ preferences and requirements. Therefore, the users can receive the fastest, the most precise, and personalized suggestions, for instance, accommodation suggestions.
Moreover, artificial intelligence can assist with management, tracking changes in listings, and creating the most precise price comparisons.
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Property Value Estimation
How else can artificial intelligence help real estate?
Definitely, with property value estimation tools. By implementing such tools, the real estate services help their customers to calculate the price of the accommodation, as well as its mortgage, fees, or loans.
Moreover, property value estimators may differ depending on whether a user is buying or selling.
Sellers use these tools to calculate the approximate value of a house according to various criteria, while buyers use such calculators in order to estimate their monthly mortgage payments.
Zillow has built “Zestimate”, a product that with the help of ML estimates home prices based on publicly available data.
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Blockchain
Blockchain technology is not innovative, it has been spread around the world for a long time. However, in 2021, this digital system can bring great benefits to real estate, let’s figure out exactly how.
There are 2 ways that real estate can benefit from the blockchain:
✔ Tokenization is the division of its real estate assets into tokens that are stored in the blockchain. The modern practice of cryptocurrencies allows clients to invest in tokens and sell their assets using electronic money. Investors have been playing with cryptocurrency for a long time, and in most cases, they receive profits and asset gains.
✔ Smart contracts are a modern way that sellers and buyers will conclude before a transaction. This is a special type of contract that will speed up the process of finding housing, its further verification, and, as a result, making a real estate deal.
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Big Data
Need to store or process large amounts of data inside your real estate service? Use big data!
While the traditional data-processing software often appears too weak to process loads and loads of information, big data can cope with analyzing or extracting information from large sets of data.
In real estate applications, big data technology helps to store, process, and gather information about the service users. Later on, the information that was gathered during the big data processing can be used for the prediction of the behavior and decisions of each customer in order to create the perfect searching suggestions for each of them.
How to Keep Up with Real Estate Digitalization?
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Adopt New Technologies Earlier Than Your Competitors
It’s important to be ahead of the market competitors: doing so helps to attract more potential customers. Especially when it comes to the new technologies implementation, which helps with providing instant digital services for customers.
For example, it is possible to implement AI-powered chatbots for a better user experience or start to use CRMs powered by artificial intelligence. With this being done, both customer experience and staff work can be improved and raised to the next level.
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Customize Technologies To Your Specific Needs
Finding the right technology that fits your niche is the key. No technology is going to be perfect just for you. You need to tailor it to your specific requirements.
For instance, if the real estate project is dedicated to selling properties, the technologies should help in providing potential buyers with recommendations, useful search tools, or smart listings. Therefore, it’s very important to customize the technologies to specific business needs.
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Make Technologies Benefit Your Business, Not Replace It
Any technology is a disruptor in some way to any industry there is. Once they enter your niche, it is vital to make technologies work for your business, not against it. Usually, modern technologies help people to make it easier to automate some working processes.
For example, it’s nice to include such things as a 3D virtual tour of the accommodation or add chatbots for more convenient and up-to-date customer support.
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Leverage the Tools You Have or Create Your Own
Some basic tools are helpful and convenient as long as the real estate business is small. Once it starts to grow, some basic tools such as good old spreadsheets stop working as effectively as they used to.
At this stage, the need for new tools grows significantly. And it’s always nice not only to start using some robust technology to improve the working process but even…create your own one. Implementing some unique CRM or property management systems, creating your own virtual tours, or even building a platform to represent the services can be the first step into the digital present.
Though, being one of the most traditional industries, real estate had experienced a big shift to the online world in 2020.
More real estate agencies became aware of how important it is to have a digital presence, either by simply having an online platform to promote their services or by integrating some modern approaches into an already existing online real estate business.
The old good real estate services are now enriched with personalized client recommendations, smart search results, AI-powered chatbots and CRM systems, virtual tours, and others. As years go by, it is becoming more clear that real estate digitalization is here to stay.
