Real estate has donned a digital avatar with online registration of properties, virtual tours, 24x7 chatbots, optimised searches and much more.
Real estate is very much a brick-and-mortar business in India. Yet this industry is rapidly adopting technology, thanks to the pandemic. Proptech (the use of technology in real estate) is an upcoming field, with both developers and real estate consultants transitioning to tech tools in a big way. The government too is moving towards this direction.
Covid-19 has only accelerated the need to adopt technology in Indian real estate. This will not only help the industry reduce its overall operational costs but also deliver projects much faster.
The most significant impact of digitalisation has been on the home search and buying process. Most of the developments have been seen in the customer-facing segments such as search optimisation, virtual tours, and automation. However, processes such as property registration have also become tech-based. Let’s take a look at some of the key technologies that have transformed the real estate industry in recent times. To read more, go here.
Augmented And Virtual Reality (AR, VR)
AR and VR allow buyers to experience properties virtually. Experience makes or breaks an investment decision in real estate, apart from influencing the pricing factor. VR has been around for some time, assisting by way of walkthroughs, virtual staging for prospective buyers and architectural visualisation to enhance the benefits of development to the buyer.
Smarter Chatbots
Chatbots have made 24x7 assistance possible. Not only that, they make life easier for a buyer by narrowing down the choices with less effort. Parameters like budget, type of property, size, etc., ensure that the buyer is only provided the most relevant listings immediately, which piques their interest in a relevant way. For sellers, chatbots help in retaining the attention of the buyer, thereby increasing the probability of making a sale.
Big Data Analytics
One of the problems that has plagued the real estate market is that it is very fragmented. Big data analytics helps decipher the market dynamics. Based on specific parameters, big data can help arrive at profitability on an investment, the right time to exit an investment and even the strategy to build a portfolio.
IoT-Enabled Homes
Internet of Things (IoT) is a holistic approach to connect all physical objects that have the necessary hardware to process and exchange data. Many residential developments use such smart devices in segments such as temperature regulation, lighting, security and electronic devices.
Shorter Paper Trail
Among all investment documents a person has, the thickest file tends to be the one that holds property-related papers. The government has for long been trying to shorten the paper trail that property transactions entail, with some success especially in registration of property becoming almost fully digitised. This has increased convenience and transparency.
The Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 (RERA) was introduced in 2016 to bring more transparency to the real estate sector, and is almost completely a digital platform.
Many steps have been taken to digitalise the real estate industry, but much work remains to be done. India is a huge market and not all players have woken up to the need of tech adoption. This may create a lopsided playing field where players who want to stick to traditional ways of doing business may be faced with a disadvantage. In the future, only entities that embrace and imbibe technology in a big way will remain relevant for consumers.