Why Should Real Estate Companies Invest in Technology?

If there is one industry that is historically dependent on human intervention, it is the luxury market.

Any customer who invests a large sum on a product or service seeks full value for their money. Clearly, the stakes are higher when a chunk of your hard-earned moolah is locked in an investment.

In spite of this, post-purchase service in the high-end market is quite poor. Just like how an investor hates to lose money in an expensive deal, the seller also avoids any type of liability after a sale.

The property market sees the biggest financial investments by individuals and companies compared to any other luxury product market. Handholding a customer from start to finish is imperative if you are a good real estate agent. Starting from pre-screening properties, scanning the neighborhood area, choosing the ideal building and to complete legal and monetary formalities, an agent has to don the role of a friend, philosopher and guide to the customer. This is both, a trust building as well as relationship building activity to ensure the investors feels confident to put their money on the real estate in question.

A dedicated, real estate agent will rise above all this to close a deal. However, the ever changing market dynamics do not provide comfort in terms of time. More and more agents are now dependent on property portals, mobile devices and CRM products to cater to a very competitive industry. Real estate market is changing by the day. Big data and backend analytics are driving the sales among the big players. Social media is huge when it comes to marketing real estate services and individual listing of properties.

Dubai with its smart city initiative has converted many of the manual processes into technology-enabled services. Dubai Land Department (DLD) is proactively changing the way international investors are looking at the property market in the city. DLD has erased borders in property transaction process by introducing Real Estate Self Transaction (REST), a platform for conducting real estate trading and transactions with multiple parties using a paperless system.

Companies such as MyVilla.com provide the ideal platform for high value real estate with an easy user interface. Agents who subscribe to the full suite of services on the platform benefit from availing services such as adding a listing with rich features such as detailed description, images, videos, pricing and more. Statistics on how well the listing is performing and insights on improving web traffic along with the portals social media marketing initiatives are all part of the technology infrastructure that agents can benefit from. Online tools such as price trends, mortgage calculator and authentication of properties are value additions that sellers will find vital to their success.

One may wonder, if this is all a vicious cycle where the technology bubble will burst and people will return to manual processes. While human factors play a huge role in convincing individual concerns of investors, technology will play big brother to ensure an informed decision making process by providing data accuracy and bringing transparency into the system.