Real estate is one of the biggest industries in the world.
There are millions of homeowners in America, and millions more that are soon to be homeowners.
The entire real estate industry, and the construction industry for that matter, has kept its same traditions for the most part, but how’s this upcoming wave of home-buyers going to shake things up?
Future of Real Estate
The future of real estate is digital.
We’re seeing advancements in technology in all fields including real estate. There are new software packages that speed up the analysis of real estate deals, transactions, and marketing.
Great Realtors build a team of mortgage brokers, contractors, attorneys, and marketing professionals that help them with getting new clients and provide value to their prospective clients. Technology is advancing in each of these fields. For example, many clients plan to do some sort of remodel or construction and realtors are adding contractors and estimating companies as part of their team. With the rise of technology, it’s getting easier and faster for contractors to budget costs for projects.
We are also seeing advancements in blockchain, speed of transactions, and using machine learning to advance certain marketing and real estate technology. In other words, they make our lives easier and gets things done faster and more efficiently.
So we can expect tons of companies and software to start popping up in the new decade to accomplish that mission, make every home-buyer’s life easier.
How Technology Will Impact Real Estate Agents
With more information available on the Internet, people are more well-informed than ever before, and that includes information about houses in their area.
It’s not uncommon to see the sellers of a home know more about its prices and the neighborhood than the real estate agent they hire.
And plus, with the trends pointing to more software around the real estate transaction process, things are going to be done online and if real estate agents are a part of the process it’ll most likely be through search marketing or through a service that finds it for you.
And since millennials are generally much more loyal, once they find the agent they like online, that’s their go-to agent. So there will be a fierce competition between real estate agents to see who has the best personal brand and who can conquer more market share.
Blockchain
No, we’re not talking about bitcoin here, we’re talking about blockchain.
It’s a mission to find a simple explanation of blockchain online, but it’s basically a means of keeping a recording of transactions. A digital ledger.
This technology would change the game for the real estate industry. Real estate transactions, leasing histories, would all be recorded with the most privacy possible.
This eliminates the middleman of title companies, who’s entire reason of existing is to keep recordings of transactions.
It also eliminates the middleman of brokers, lawyers, and banks and let’s the people involved in the actual transaction save more money by not paying as many commissions and whatnot. That’s the entire theme with blockchain, it removes the institutions in the middle of financial transactions and makes it faster, more automatic, and easier.
So even if bitcoin flops, the blockchain technology is here to stay.
Increase Transaction Speed
How can transactions happen faster? Software.
We already see Zillow, and Redfin taking over huge spaces in the industry. People can easily go on their phone and see prices for houses around their dream neighborhood whenever they want.
What does this mean for real estate agents?
It means they will not be as needed as in the past when neither party had any idea about market details and of the transaction process in general.
Now, buyers can more easily find the house of their dreams, and sellers can more easily sell the house and make the money of their dreams. Everyone is happy.
And it’s all due to new technology speeding everything up and making it more and more like any other “ecommerce” purchase, which of course, is the goal with any transaction process right now. People want speed and automation, and that is what they will get.
Decisions Made via Smartphone
As mentioned above, most home-buyers in the near future will have access to home prices around their community, and it’s only getting more mobilized from here.
We’re on the way to seeing entire real estate transactions made from the phone.
You can already call anyone you need and set up Zoom calls for meetings, and in the future there can even be a mainstream software allowing people to get quality, in-depth house tours without ever leaving their bed.
No doubt companies will spring up in the next decade to make that reality come true and give millennials even more incentive to be on their phones.
Machine Learning and ROI Calculation
This is a huge boost for real estate agents, as machine learning algorithms incorporated into software can give agents intel on the ROI of their investor clients purchase.
It helps a lot to have technology tell you the exact price a property should sell for, as opposed to butting heads with another agent for days trying to get your way.
Machine learning and ROI calculation can let people make smarter real estate investments and help real estate agents determine what their commissions should be.
Overall, it’s an aspect of future software that lets all sides be more informed and less in the dark on what’s going on, which is very useful in an industry like real estate.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
If you go online and look for jobs with the biggest outlook in the future, the bulk of them will be computer-related ones.
Why is that? For the simple reason that technology is going to take over, and it’s no longer a question of if, it’s a question of when.
People in developed countries get lazier every day, people are growing tired of completing repetitive tasks, this is where AI comes in the picture.
The beauty of AI is that it solves everyday problems for everyone, especially for real estate professionals.
This can be in the form of automatic chatbots for people to reach agents, or as calculators for the value of houses around the world.
The main goal is for tedious tasks to become replaced by technology, tasks such as finding the perfect home, filling out paperwork, or organizing documents. For this reason AI should grow in popularity in not just real estate, but many other industries around the world.
CRM Software
This is game-changing for real estate professionals in the business of buying/selling of homes.
In the past, people would always have to write down phone numbers, or keep them on their phone, and call them periodically whenever they felt like it.
Even some of the people with CRM software would still have trouble managing their leads and contact info, not to mention entire real estate transaction lists.
But not anymore, because with CRM software getting more advanced by the day, real estate professionals have all they need to help real estate transactions go as smoothly as possible. From automatic emails sent out, to a list of prospects to follow up on, there’s a lot of benefits to deploying a good CRM software for any business dealing with real estate transactions.
Having more data to go along with your work history let’s your business suddenly become data-driven, and begin to head in the right direction, but it all starts with quality CRM software.
Green Homes
With the vast majority of the world being more and more inclined to move to more urban areas, and with nonrenewable resources slowly depleting every day, we could see a massive transition to greener homes.
This is not to mention the explosion of population that’s sure to happen in the future, which only reinforces that point.
Many homes will be built with solar powered roofs, built-in gardens, and so on. There could also be a lot more laws regarding the transaction process of homes and if the house passes enough environmental inspections to be sold.
This could be another potential factor that comes into the process of buying/selling a home that real estate agents and property investors have to deal with.
Conclusion
Overall the theme throughout this piece is how technology can make everything faster and more automated in the real estate transaction process.
But I don’t think people really grasp this concept to the fullest.
The Internet is still a relatively new idea for humanity as a whole, so there’s still much left to discover.
Entire industries have changed and will continue to change, and real estate is no different. It’s important to read the trends and get ahead of them so you can ensure the most possible success for yourself.
