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Real Estate Tech Trends for 2018

Written by Posted On Thursday, 12 October 2017 10:42

 

The real estate world is being rapidly transformed by technology, and the growth of demand for these new real estate technologies will only increase as buyers and sellers become more familiar with the existence of these tools. Tools such as video chat are a prime example of this trend toward greater use of technology, and Gartner predicts that 20% of the world’s Fortune 500 companies will be using video chat by 2018.

 

If you’re looking to stay ahead of the curve, then here are the five biggest tech trends in real estate that you need to be aware of.

 

Real Estate On Demand

One of the biggest changes created by the increased use of technology in all aspects of our lives is the trend toward on-demand service from real estate agents. Buyers and sellers want real-time access to you and to information about listings that you’re working on. This means that you need to invest in tools that provide this real-time access to you and your data, whether that’s done by setting up live videoconferences between you and a client or making sure that your website is regularly updated with the best information on listings available today.

 

While having on-demand services like videoconferencing is important, it’s essential that the quality of this service is incredible. When you’re integrating something like video into your business, the last thing that you want is for your high-definition videoconference to be plagued by buffering and other technical glitches, regardless of where you (or the client) are trying to connect from. Video chat Services like Agora.io allow you to create these connections quickly and easily, and are less reliant on connection quality to deliver a fast, HD connection.

 

Augmented Reality / Virtual Reality

Any real estate agent who works with clients regularly is most likely tired of answering questions like: “I wonder how my sectional look in this room?” For years, there was no clear answer to this question, but Augmented Reality (AR) is now offering the opportunity to provide an answer. Augmented Reality lets you superimpose a piece of furniture or a fixture into a room, giving your client a clear picture of what a piece of furniture would look like in their home. This can help you push past common last-minute questions and ink deals faster.

 

Virtual reality offers a similar experience, but it also allows you to create an immersive tour of a home that clients can view from anywhere in the world. This makes it dead simple to allow clients to truly tour a home, even when they can’t find time to make it to the home itself.

 

Internet of Things (IoT)

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a term that’s used to describe devices that are connected to the internet. This could mean a variety of things, depending on the device. Three common IoT devices that are quickly making their way into homes are smart locks, smart thermometers, and smart lighting. Smart locks allow you to lock and unlock a door using your smartphone, or even remotely, and they can be a real estate agent’s best friend when touring multiple listings, allowing you access to the home without a key.

Smart lighting and smart thermostats give you the ability to control the home remotely, changing the temperature settings a few hours before an open house begins so that the home is ready for visitors by the time the open house begins. These technologies not only save time, but they can also save money, and they are also a huge selling point for clients.

 

Automation

One of the biggest constraints that many businesses have, by far, is in their ability to manage the cost of their biggest expense: themselves. Automation is making huge waves in real estate because it takes common, time-consuming tasks that you do regularly and completely eliminates you from the equation. For example, if you regularly send welcome emails to new clients, automation can make it dead simple for you to do this without ever needing to sit down at a computer. Not only does automation let you save time, but it can also improve the quality of the output that you generate. As you think about automating your business, you’ll find that you have more time to refine the tasks that you do automate, increasing the value-add that each of those tasks has to your business.

 

Taking the welcome letter example a step further, over time you could refine your welcome letter and introduce new, automatic letters that include customized resources for new clients, an improvement you wouldn’t have the time to work on otherwise.

 

Big Data / Machine Learning

Every real estate business has data that they collection as part of their normal day-to-day operations, but big data and machine learning are allowing you to not only visualize that data in new and interesting ways but also to learn from that data to make better decisions for your business. No matter what type of data it is, as long as it's digitized, there are companies that are trying to help you understand how that data can drive your business forward. This is a constantly evolving target, but big data is a technology that will definitely help your business grow in 2018.

 

There are plenty of technologies that will impact real estate in the upcoming years, and many of them haven’t even been conceived yet. Similarly, there are plenty of technologies that won’t make as big of a splash as was originally intended. That being said, the five technologies above are highly likely to make serious waves in the real estate industry. Which ones are you pursuing? Let us know in the comments.

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