Real Estate Marketing & Beyond
It’s no longer a secret. And it’s no longer just a buzzword used by startups to justify yet another questionable product. PropTech is the next big thing in real estate, and it’s going to change the way people buy, sell, develop, and invest on a fundamental level.
Whether you like it or not, the industry is about to be “disrupted”. New markets will emerge, old ways of doing things will be discarded, new relationships will be forged. No one knows who the winners and losers might be just yet, but I wouldn’t bet against the next wave of PropTech taking the spoils.
However, there are countless avenues that the development of new real estate technology could take, but often it’s difficult to predict what will come first. Here then, we take a look at five ways the real estate market will fundamentally changed by the seemingly exponential growth of the PropTech sector, and what that might mean for the future.
One of the most visible aspects of the PropTech revolution is the smart home. This concept encapsulates a huge number of disparate technologies to create what might be thought of as “the home of the future”. However, just like the smartphone revolution, this segment looks set to explode over the next decade, and much of the technology developed during this time will very quickly become standard.
Whether buying, selling, or renting houses, the real estate sector will need to become increasingly tech savvy in order to both meet consumer standards and navigate the many different technologies that become part of the fabric of our homes in the near future. Smart homes are quite literally tearing up the book on what home buyers are now looking for, and as these technologies advance, they will become just as much a part of our homes as say, the last wave of home conveniences such as the washing machine and dishwasher.
The tenant/landlord relationship is almost as old as civilization itself, and many people think it’s time for a change. PropTech is set to make that change, however, and the concept of resident experience is very quickly becoming an integral part of a new rental market that increasingly sees the tenant as a true “customer”.
For landlords, great resident experiences supported by PropTech solutions provide seamless rent payment management, easy onboarding/offboarding of residents, and streamlined building management and maintenance. Concierge services can also be offered as part of attractive resident experiences, with everything managed from a single app. Companies such as Livly are already breaking ground in this area, reimagining the ways landlords and tenants interact as a single, centralized hub to deal with everything on both sides of the equation and cut costs at the same time.
It will change the way houses are bought and sold
There’s no denying that the way investors, home owners, and developers buy and sell properties is very much stuck in the last century. Additionally, transparency and efficiency in this area of the market are very much in need of an overhaul. PropTech aims to do this in a variety of ways.
Paper-based deeds and contracts are likely to be replaced by blockchain systems that contain all the required information within the physical transaction that takes place when buying or selling. In turn, this will streamline financing, creating simple online mortgage applications that can be processed instantly.
However, perhaps the most significant development in this area of the real estate market lies within property listings. Many predict that in the space of a few short years we will be using apps based on similar technologies to those of Uber and Airbnb to buy and sell, and as technologies such as virtual reality develop, we may not even need to leave our sofas to view, finance, and purchase our next realty deal!
