Future of tech in Real Estate

by Vikram Kotnis, Founder & Managing Director, Sell.Do

PropTech or Property Technology is the new buzzword in the real estate industry, and India represents the largest market for PropTechacross the Asia-Pacific region. India has reportedly received an investment of enormous 928 million in the PropTech sector and witnessed the highest amount of deals in the region. PropTech is only a small part of the wider digital transformation of the real estate industry.

The tech revolution in the real estate sector started in 2007 with the advent of technology-based portals. Since then, the industry has witnessed many technological innovations. With the integration of technology, it has become simpler for real estate companies to sellmoreproperties and manage their businesses.

The multiple online portals available in the market have increased the reach and distribution of properties. A real estate company can sell a property even without physically meeting a consumer.

There are new tech platforms that help real estate business streamline their different division of business and make it more efficient. For last few years, we have been developing sales and marketing automation solutions that have helped real estate companies sell more properties and reduce marketing overheads.

Technology has helped real estate companies to make their business more efficient and productive but I still feel that the technological advancements in real estate have not reached the maturity stage and are still growing. With the Government’s intense focus on smart cities, technology will become the key to create scalability and efficiency in this sector.

Here are a few areas, I feel, where technology will have an impact on the real estate sector:

The speed at which the automation sector is innovating, soon the sales automation tool for a salesperson will become their virtual assistant. With voice research and predictive analysis, the system will start understanding the salesperson conversations with a consumer, will schedule follow-ups and site visits automatically as per these conversations and will also suggest strategies to convert the lead.

Chatbots, integrated into the sales platform, will have the initial conversation with a new lead, and as the lead progresses to a detailed questioning, a salesperson will take over.

With more such innovations in sales automation, every member of the sales team will become more efficient, delivering a much higher output in the process.

Another milestone advancement for the real estate businesses has been the incorporation of virtual reality. With the ability of VR and 3D displaying, a real estate company can deliver a superior consumer experience than a physical site visit. Through virtual site visits, a consumer can even experience how a property would look during different times of the day. A developer gets the chance to show yet-to-be-fabricated spaces to the customer a newer dimension of experience.

In the future, a virtual site visit will be something like a virtual living experience. Through a virtual tour, consumers will be able to experience the complete look and feel of their lives in a particular property unit and even the neighbourhood experience.

Also, the application of VR has made the life of both real estate property sellers and buyers much more comfortable as they do not have to visit the site location every single time. Moreover, it saves the time and cost for both. A sales rep can direct more sire visits and furthermore persuade a consumer for a site visit effectively as they just need to be online for a few minutes.

Setting up a 360-degree marketing campaign and executing it on multiple channels is very challenging. When it comes to the real estate business, excessive ad expense has been a trend till late. It has been difficult to manage the various channels and get the most out of the huge advertising budget. New-age companies are exploring tech solutions to optimise the advertising budget for a real estate company.

We have developed a unique ad automation platform for real estate business, where a real estate company can execute their entire media plan, and cover all possible channels on one single platform. The platform, powered by AI algorithms, tracks the ads across channels in real-time and automatically reshuffles the budget and optimizes spends among the channels so that a business can attain the best possible ROI. The AI additionally lets the system automatically select the best range of search keywords for Google campaign in seconds, which would take days to achieve otherwise.

Big real estate players have already started integrating smart home technologies into their projects. It promises a better lifestyle and security to the customers. As consumers have become more tech-savvy, smart homes have become a key selling point for renowned real estate developers.

With smart homes, a customer can control and monitor their entire home from their devices, even while being away. All appliances like TV, AC, lights, refrigerator and more can be integrated into the cloud and be monitored from anywhere. Many smart home providers are working on developing affordable solutions that not only make life more comfortable but also save a lot of energy.

Smart homes technology is yet in the experimental stage and has a huge scope. In the future, a smart home tech solution would be able to report the exact status of groceries available at home and even order it using AI. The smart home systems will learn user patterns and health conditions to automate all the home appliances and provide a healthy lifestyle.

The way we live will transform with these newer technologies. Real estate companies will look forward to integrate these technologies to sell more properties and provide a smarter & secured lifestyle to their customers.