What Exactly is Proptech?
Technology is seemingly transforming every sector it is exposed to, from improving your healthcare experience to saving high street retail, and real estate has been undergoing the same transformative process in recent times. The technological development in real estate has been coined as proptech and concerns just about any technology that is utilised in the real estate space. It aims to streamline the industry, allowing it to be operationally efficient, ensuring that the new age of digitalisation sweeping the globe doesn’t leave it in the dust. Proptech can take a variety of forms ranging from software that can be used on mobile and desktop-based applications, to physical hardware such as VR headsets. Its usage has grown incredibly over past decades reflected in the funding proptech firms receive, which has increased to almost $15 billion globally from just a few million in the early 2000s.
How Proptech has Helped the Consumer Experience
You, the modern consumer, are becoming increasingly demanding. Whilst purchasing a good or service you want the experience to be close to perfection, and as efficient as can be, from the initial thought to the eventual acquisition. The real estate industry has been previously accused of falling short of the mark: While other industries pioneered digital solutions to cater towards an efficient consumer experience, using technology to provide choice along with ease of access and contact, real estate and the property market were left in the past. Proptech however, has increasingly allowed you to be in control of your experiences in more ways than one.
Feel like buying new furniture, but unsure of how it will look in your home? Ikea has developed an augmented reality app that allows you to place items in any location around the house, making it easy and simple to observe how a certain purchase would fit in the home. Feel like painting the walls to match your new furniture? Dulux has that base covered with their Visualizer App, allowing the projection of their entire catalogue of colours onto your walls. It can also provide recommendations through its Colour Picker Technology that observes existing colours in the scene, offering an ideal selection of colours.
Even property viewing becomes a hassle-free experience with the acquisition of a VR headset. Simply place one over your head, and view the property you desire, saving the probable time and money that would’ve been expended on an in-person viewing.
How Proptech has Helped Firms
Many firms have acknowledged the benefits proptech has to offer, with 95% having a digital transformation lead within their organisation helping to streamline their operations. This includes incorporating AI technology, for example implementing a chatbot that can answer your queries, issues, and even book maintenance for tenants 24/7, removing the need for constant human monitoring. It also removes the human errors that arise from misjudgement, as operations are based on the data and statistics the systems would be drawing upon.
It also allows for buyers to be matched with the right property listings quickly through platforms such as Zoopla. This is achieved through the provision of a wealth of choice and tools to you, the potential buyer, allowing for quick identification of properties based on budgets and preferences. Firms can also easily place adverts on the site which can allow for maximised exposure of their listings, increasing the chances of finding a potential buyer quickly.
The adoption of this technology by firms creates an industry that has the increased capacity to respond and provide services and sales, in an increasingly efficient manner.
Moving Forward
If you hadn’t noticed already (which would be hard to believe), the Covid-19 pandemic has affected almost every industry that you can think of. So how has it affected proptech in this industry? If anything, it has created an extremely viable use case for the technology within real estate and property markets. In a time where in-person viewings and appointments could not be maintained, digital viewings, browsing, tours, and Zoom calls took precedence. Given how time and cost-efficient these practices have ended up becoming, they’ll be here to stay. The next time you are on the lookout for property, you may very well be viewing, decorating, and finalising a purchase all from the comfort of your own home.
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