There are only a few weeks left in 2022, and already the real estate business is looking ahead to 2023. The uncertainty that has plagued our society since 2020 makes this very reasonable. You may have had to hold off buying an RFO house and lot and other investment ventures, but real estate technology in 2023 is here to surprise you.
Technology Trends Entering the Real Estate Industry
Every player in the real estate industry, from brokers to buyers to sellers to investors to loan officers to property managers to startup founders, benefits from technological advancements. As a result, many professionals in the field may be wondering what technology can further do for the real estate industry.
The Metaverse
When you listen to the likes of Mark Zuckerberg and Satya Nadella, CEOs of major digital companies, you might get the impression that the metaverse is where things are headed for the internet.
Or maybe it’s just a game.
Perhaps it’s just as awkward and unpleasant as Zoom, if not more so? This is a difficult question to answer.
Here’s a little exercise to show you just how broad and intricate a concept “the metaverse” may be: Imagine substituting “cyberspace” for “the metaverse” in any given statement. Nearly always, the intended meaning remains the same.
When businesses talk about “the metaverse,” they often mean technology like virtual reality, which features persistent virtual worlds that continue to exist even when you’re not playing, and augmented reality, which merges elements from the digital and physical worlds.
So what does it have to do with real estate? Can you buy digital real estate, such as an RFO house and lot in the metaverse?
The term “real estate” in the metaverse is used to describe virtual structures and plots of land. Metaverse real estate is purely digital and devoid of any material properties. Metaverse plots are just pixels that serve as programmable places in virtual reality systems. Spaces like offices, parks, and community centers can be built on these lots.
Many different metaverse platforms offer vacant land for sale to real estate investor who is looking to create their own immersive digital worlds in their personal property. Since each of these platforms serves a unique purpose, it would be inaccurate to say that any single one of them encapsulates the entire metaverse. Some of the most well-liked metaverse platforms for real estate development are The Sandbox, Decentraland, Metahero, Horizon Worlds, and Celebrity Atlas.
All of these may be difficult to imagine, but according to Vantage Market Research, the value of the worldwide metaverse digital real estate market was estimated at $821.9 million in 2021, and by 2028, that number is expected to rise to $5.95 billion.
Metaverse real estate’s main appeal is making up for the shortage of physical space.
If a company’s office doesn’t have enough room for meetings, for instance, that company can set up virtual conference rooms and event halls in the metaverse. In addition, the metaverse facilitates effortless collaboration amongst people from different regions of the world.
One of the most important ways in which the metaverse may help the real estate industry is through project promotion and property display. In order to sell more homes, developers are making “dream homes” available in virtual reality through the metaverse. With a virtual reality (VR) headset and a smartphone that is compatible with it, consumers may experience virtual tours of locations all over the world.
The likes of Germany, Croatia, Hungary, Norway, Mauritius, Iceland, Spain, and Costa Rica have all made investments in metaverse-enabled virtual tourism. Weaving VR headsets allow visitors to see and experience the region’s most famous public structures and participate in local events.
Recent advances in virtual reality, augmented reality, and the implementation of blockchain technology inside the real estate industry have all contributed to this expansion. However, investing in virtual assets is still a novel idea, so investors are likely to move cautiously — while the metaverse provides a novel approach to diversifying your portfolios, some may think it unwise to switch all of their real estate holdings to virtual ones.
Automation Equals Efficiency
By using automated software, real estate professionals may delegate more tasks to their machines and spend less time on administrative tasks. Some tasks in your real estate company can be automated by implementing the following strategies.
Marketing and Lead Generation. Success in real estate can be attributed to open lines of communication with customers. Most successful real estate professionals are natural communicators and public relations experts, which is why the sale of your RFO house and lot may rely heavily on how good your real estate agent is.
However, there is a catch.
Due to time constraints, it is impossible for a single agent to monitor every inquiry and opportunity. Apartments are in high demand, and the competition is fierce. That’s why if a consumer doesn’t get an immediate response to their inquiry, they’ll quickly move on to the next available agent. As a result, most leads are never followed up on. A sad yet common tale of hardship.
In order to focus on relationship building and transaction closing, CRM software for marketing automation helps streamline administrative tasks.
You can accomplish the following with the aid of marketing automation:
- Consolidate the data you’ve collected on your prospects.
- Separate your leads into subsets.
- Create an individual connection with each customer and record your interactions with them.
- Get more leads by having your messages automatically answered by interested customers.
A customer relationship management system’s primary strength is the speed with which it gathers contact information for customers. There aren’t any lengthy forms for the customer to fill out. It is sufficient to collect only a phone number or an email address for a follow-up automated email campaign.
Automating Property Management. The administration of properties or property management is another area that can benefit from automation.
It goes without saying that if your real estate company employs more than five agents, the paperwork and communication involved in managing properties will be a major headache. Using a centralized property database designed for new builds and renovations can help reduce the amount of time spent on this process.
The ability to quickly and easily locate a certain property is only one advantage of automating property management. One more would be that if there is no RFO house and lot available that fits the client’s requirements, your agents can always refer them to the listings of their colleagues. Finally, the system will distribute fresh offers to the agents based on its own data analysis.
Keep tabs on where active deals now stand at any time.
Accounting and Financial Management. Financial operations in real estate agencies often include keeping track of real estate transactions, filing out financial statements, and maintaining accounting records.
Maintaining command of these processes manually is a herculean task. The last thing real estate professionals want to do is fill out paper forms and sort through stacks of bills.
A centralized system for monitoring, reviewing, and managing payments is what you can do here. Requests for payments can be followed simply once they have been submitted and sent off for approval.
Internal Workflow. Assigning work becomes more complicated when there are more than five employees involved.
Fortunately, this may be simplified by using dedicated software to track assignments, establish due dates, and facilitate collaboration among team members.
Automation in the administration of tasks has many advantages, including:
- There are trackers, key performance indicators, and planners specific to each agent’s dashboard.
- Integrations with popular calendaring tools like Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook make it easy for staff to schedule meetings within the available times.
- Easy access and sharing of documents from any location.
Apps for the real estate industry provide a safe and convenient way to save and organize all of your important contracts, licenses, and other legal documents.
Fractional Ownership
According to Forbes, fractional ownership will continue to grow in 2023.
Fractional ownership involves shares of ownership in the asset being sold to individuals, who in turn partake in the asset’s benefits, including the ability to use the asset, any profits earned from its operation, and any discounts or preferential treatment afforded to shareholders.
Fractional ownership provides its members with similar usage benefits to those enjoyed by timeshare owners.
Investments in luxury items like planes, vehicles, and holiday homes are sometimes structured as fractional ownership. In fractional ownership, the investor holds a legal interest in a portion of the property, as opposed to a share of the time. In the case of fractional ownership, an increase in the asset’s value will result in a corresponding increase in the value of the investor’s stake in the investment.
Collaborative consumption takes the form of fractional ownership when the whole cost of a property is divided among several owners or consumers. Those who purchase a share of a vacation home have the opportunity to use the property for their own needs and profit from its rental. Investment property is created when a fractional owner rents out their share of the property for a profit. In most cases, the upkeep and provisioning of a vacation home with fractional ownership are handled by a property management firm.
As for properties, all personal usage of the property by fractional owners must be arranged through the management firm. Time limits on vacation home use are typically imposed by the property or management firm. In other words, fractional owners need not use all of their allowed time.
They may make themselves available to members of their immediate family, their social circle, their colleagues, and even their staff. It’s possible for fractional owners to rent out their unused fractions to other owners or even non-owners.
Fractional ownership vacation home property managers may be responsible for a portfolio of properties spread across multiple nations and regions. The fractional owners may be given the opportunity to trade stays at their own properties. The fractional owner of a Caribbean property may want to spend her vacation time at a French seaside resort. Their regular property manager also has a home for rent in the area they want to visit. The fractional owner could plan a week in France at the second property while their own vacation home is rented out.
One can leave a portion of their vacation property to their heirs as part of their estate if they are fractional property owners.
Artificial Intelligence
Once reserved for the realm of science fiction, AI and ML are finding new applications in fields as diverse as medicine, fitness, and even property investment. To what extent will artificial intelligence (AI) modify the property market in the future years?
Using data to your advantage is crucial to the prosperity of real estate operations and investments. Better decisions can be made with the help of AI applications in the real estate industry, and surprising conclusions may be drawn from the patterns in the data collected by AI and machine learning techniques.
AI in Rentals. Predicting future rent increases is a key data point that can be enhanced with AI.
Using artificial intelligence tools for real estate investing might help you figure out how much you can charge in rent without losing tenants. Also, it can aid in the investment decision process by letting you know which commercial property or RFO house and lot would provide the most return on investment.
Attempts to predict future rental rates are doomed to fail due to the vast number of factors at play. If you use AI to create more trustworthy complicated data, you may be assured that your decision is grounded on all relevant information.
Artificial intelligence can help with commercial real estate and residential real estate investments.
AI in Property Prices. What should a buyer pay for a home today so that they can make a profit when they resell it tomorrow? Any real estate firm with an emphasis on investments will have this same question in mind. Predicting the future market worth of an existing property and conducting a valuation is a difficult task.
The cost is volatile and subject to sudden shifts because it depends on so many different things. Therefore, it’s possible that a real estate agent will miss something crucial. This is when real estate AI proves helpful.
Real estate brokers have a better probability of making sales when they provide more information to interested buyers. With the use of AI technologies, real estate agencies can give buyers and sellers accurate and comprehensive descriptions of properties.
Related Blog: Home Automation Technology: A New Era for Residential Real Estate
