TECH BREAKING REAL ESTATE BARRIERS

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INDIA OBSERVES MAY 11 AS THE NATIONAL TECHNOLOGY DAY TO MARK THE ANNIVERSARY OF POKHRAN NUCLEAR TESTS OF 1998 AND INDIA'S TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS. REALTY+ TAKES THIS OPPORTUNITY TO ASSESS HOW INDIAN REAL ESTATE HAS ADOPTED TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENTS IN ITS SPHERE. By: Sapna Srivastava Evidently, nothing has accelerated the adoption of technology in real estate as much as the present pandemic which forced even most conventional of realty firms to change track and bring tech support for its business. Industry experts concur that the current situation has forced the developers to rethink and rework upon the areas where the sector was lacking. TECH FOR PROPERTY CONSUMERS On the real estate consumer’s end, the health scare has prompted digital evolution in aspects that were not even considered relevant earlier. And given their fast track acceptance these changes are here to stay. The employees now averse to touching surfaces for fingerprint-based biometric entry, has brought contactless solution such as facial recognition system in picture in many commercial developments. Likewise, smartphone app and contactless IR sensor lift buttons are replacing traditional systems in both residential and commercial buildings. Similarly, society management apps going beyond visitor and delivery management have integrated services such as health tracking, digital payments and online stores for delivery of goods. TECH FOR REAL ESTATE FIRMS Real estate players capitalising on consumer’s growing inclination towards tech driven methods are using Bots, AR/VR to reach out to potential buyers. And given the success rate, their usage will only continue to increase in coming times. Trained in English and vernacular Indian languages, the bots help real estate brands run crucial CRM operations including service requests, payments, etc., enabling them to engage with home buyers and tenants. AR/VR-led property tours have gained much traction due to social distancing and lockdowns. The virtual site visits via technology and using drones to give live status of the property has made the entire process not only time saving, but also much more convenient for prospective buyers. With ever new advancement being made in this segment, this trend is definitely here to stay. NEW TECHNOLOGIES TAKING CENTRESTAGE Real estate firms till now had been planning strategies based on a combination of intuition and retrospective data. Today, big data and analysis are helping real estate platforms by providing real-time analysis and forecasting fluctuations giving a clearer picture of a location’s future risks and opportunities. Artificial Intelligence (AI) can draw logical conclusions and learn on its own and Machine Learning (ML) with sophisticated algorithms can process huge amounts of inputs to make accurate, near-term predictions. These tech tools are already being used by real estate stakeholders and will become even more sophisticated over time to empower the buying and selling process with much lesser uncertainty. Blockchain on the other hand can be visualized as a chain of records stored in the form of blocks that aren’t managed by a single authority with each transaction protected by a digital signature that verifies its authenticity. In real estate, Blockchain technology offers a solution for effectively monitoring, recording and transacting properties on a secure online platform that connects various buyers and sellers. It enables tokenizing properties in a way that real estate assets can be traded in the same manner as stocks with transparency, cost-efficiency and without intermediaries. Since March 2020, almost 51% homeowners have purchased at least one smart device as per a recent survey. The sign is clear, the consumer is becoming more and more tech-savy and the real estate brands that are tech ready are the ones that will ride this wave of disruption and will grow with time. WHAT THE FUTURE LOOKS LIKE The Covid-19 has been a harbinger of change in many ways. This period for real estate has been of distress as well as learning. The world has changed beyond recognition and our lifestyles and businesses have altered forever. Consumers are already hands-on, on tech platforms from property search and visit to buying, selling and renting via secure payment gateway. According to industry reports, 95 percent of customers globally search for homes through online platforms and almost 51 percent buy homes, which they found using online platforms. Going digital is a way forward for real estate sector. Developers can easily engage with customers through technology, reducing transaction time and cost and by using cloud platforms, the developer can reduce their IT cost as much as 30 percent. Project drone shoots, and AR-VR help customers take informed and timely decisions on real estate investments. With the use of AI/ML/Data Analytics, developers get deep understanding of customer behaviour to help deliver customized offerings and thus increase margins that are critical in the current times.