A virtual tour or pictures of the property, what do you think can elevate the user experience and prompt customers to step ahead in your sales funnel?
If you think the former one, it means you are adaptive to emerging technologies in real estate. If you think of the latter one, however, you have a lot to catch up with trends in real estate. Because trends are inevitable. And when you are a Realtor, you need revolutionary real estate tech trends to leverage your data and stand from the crowd in the digital landscape. Why?
Well, Mark Zuckerberg once said,
“Figuring out what the next big trend is, tells us what we should focus on.”
Tell you what, the mobile usage habit surged by 2 to 3 years in a single year, 2020. The reason was apparent that people had to hibernate from the COVID-19. That situation, however, made mobile devices an inevitably crucial instrument and a trend for engaging customers and growing businesses, regardless of the industry. And guess what? Real estate had no exceptions.
To make the most out of COVID’s digital demand, nascent and lineage, both real estate companies/agents began to adopt technologies. Consequently, investing in real estate mobile app development has become a new norm that popularized Property Technology— PropTech. You can perceive PropTech as a category of websites, mobile apps, and software products designed to digitize and simplify the cumbersome buying, selling, or renting properties.
However, PropTech or Real Estate Tech isn’t limited to just developing apps. Over time, real estate apps have gone through the roof to battle for delivering the best user experience. Real estate professionals weaponize Virtual assistants, Big Data, Smart homes, Property management software, Blockchain, and other Real Estate Technology Trends to compete.
The results property technology trends have gained make them so irresistible for real estate agents to adopt. For example,
- AppFolio— property management software won the 2020 Artificial Intelligence Excellence Award for Best Product or Service for its AI Leasing Assistant, Lisa. In the same year, it ranked #1 in Fortune’s list of Fastest-Growing Companies.
- Realtor.com, with over 100 million monthly active users, becomes the second most visited real estate listings website in the United States as of 2021.
- Zillow— the leading real estate and rental property marketplace, received 36 million unique visits a month as of October 2021.
And the list goes on with many such successful apps in the real estate industry. Now, if you are caught up with what trends can do to your real estate software, let us explore them in detail.
5 Most sought-after Real Estate Technology Trends
Blockchain in real estate
Despite being a relatively new technology, Blockchain has made its way across maximum industries. Blockchain adoption, nevertheless, has never disappointed any but transitioned businesses into more reliable ones. And again, Real Estate couldn’t get any exception. So how does blockchain technology help real estate apps?
Well, you know that the data is the industry’s lifeblood. Now, when other connections touch the data, there’s always a risk it might lose its core value. In contrast, if you use Blockchain, you can capture this data in a single source of truth with security, clarity, and efficiency for further real estate transactions. Find below the best ways to use the Blockchain to its fullest in your real estate application.
- Tokenization
Tokenization in real estate can be described as a process of creating a virtual token. These tokens would represent ownership of a real estate asset. It’s similar to NFT— non-fungible tokens, the recent digital asset craze. However, a real estate token would be confined to the physical asset’s value. Further, tokenization also empowers the customer to sell even a chunk of their property if they wish.
- Smart contracting
Smart contracts are nothing but agreements between buyers and sellers in the form of computer code. Since Blockchain proceeds smart contract transactions, it eases the verification and following process without any intermediate.
Example: Imbrex— The first decentralized (Ethereum-powered) real estate marketplace
Automated Property valuation with AVM
Automated Valuation Models— AVMs are becoming the new mainstream in property valuation, alleviating real estate agents’ and customers’ hassle to a great extent. AVM combines mathematical or statistical modeling with existing properties and transactions databases to calculate or compare real estate values.
As a result, AVMs produce numerous calculations and comparisons in seconds without needing you to visit the properties personally. On the whole, AVMs save time, money, and effort valuing properties. Not to mention, algorithms contradict human errors or misconduct. Therefore, the risk of deliberately mispricing or biases also vanishes.
Example: Zillow’s Zestimate— estimates home prices employing publicly available data with the help of ML.
Artificial Intelligence Algorithmic assistance
AI-enabled real estate software such as Zillow, Campus, or LoanSnap implies that Artificial Intelligence is the most influential trend to follow. You can find AI in every aspect of real estate buying, selling, and home financing. The data which humans cannot proceed with, AI algorithms go through in seconds. Consequently, AI empowers you to help buyers find the right mortgage and the perfect home.
Example: LoanSnap— San Francisco-based mortgage lender uses AI throughout the mortgage process, from finding the right loan type for a borrower to finding the suitable investor for the loan.
Despite gathering data, real estate management software uses conversational AI to provide 24/7 support to your customers. As mentioned in the beginning, AppFolio has even won the AI its leasing assistant Lisa.
Property management app development
From finding good tenants and keeping their records, ensuring the optimal condition of the property to overseeing financial and legal matters: property management covers a broad spectrum of responsibilities that used to be nerve-wracking. Yes, “used to be” because now you can automate nearly all these duties with developing property management software like AppFolio.
“AppFolio has given us real-time and robust insights into property, company, and employee performance,” — says Andrew Greenberg, VP at Trilogy Real Estate Management.
It’s evident and attractive how rental property management software automates numerous tasks that once required much time and effort. Since automation grows savings and saving grows profit, developing an app like AppFolio seems to be a surefire trend.
Virtual Reality is a big thing.
With the advent of the Metaverse, the Virtual Reality-VR has become the threshold of uncovering the technology’s potential. In addition to 3D pictures, many real estate apps have already started rolling out virtual tour features, rendering immersive experiences.
In like manner, real estate companies use VR to market their finished project before construction completion. At the same time, realtors can employ the technology to showcase properties from interiors to exteriors that are yet to build. Likewise, taking virtual tours, buyers can also decide whether the property is a good fit before stepping for an in-person tour.
Example: Realtors.com — Real Estate marketplace
What features can you build with virtual reality for real estate software?
- Virtual Tour or 360-degree videos;
- Virtual Staging to enhance purchase intents;
- Engineering Visualization— build 3D models to demonstrate and market the properties;
- Onboarding tenants with Virtual Instructions in rental property management software;
Want to develop an app like Realtor?
Putting it all together
That’s all for the top real estate technology trends. New technology emerges every now and then, opening gates for businesses to take a leap of success. Your job should be to keep an eye on trends and plan how to integrate them into your business.
While PropTech is developing, you have a chance to grow your real estate startup with it, being ahead of the curve with technology trends. Kody Technolab is a leading mobile app development company helping startups pave the way for growth. You can trust us and share your digital real estate startup idea with us. We can build your vision!