We are nearing the end of 2017, and the world is becoming increasingly reliant on technology for everyday life. What was once science fiction is now turning to reality in increments – sometimes through small but vital innovations and other times through large pivotal discoveries and developments in technology.
The realty industry is no different. The last few years has seen IoT pervade the industry allowing the now global population to view, buy, sell, maintain or invest in real-estate internationally.
Progressive technological break-throughs revamping the realty industry
The term real-estate instantly brings to mind either buying or leasing of properties, but there are a vast number of niche aspects in real-estate that have spurred brilliant developments in recent years.
The multiple facets of real-estate in residential and commercial categories such as property-oriented financial assistance, crowd financing, realty investments, mortgaging, virtual reality for property viewing have improved over the years. Other aspects such as maintenance of interconnected machinery and equipment in property, real-estate construction, shared corporate housing, alternate corporate offices and much more have seen vast improvements in their business processes through advancements in technology.
While high-tech solutions for realty issues have been wide and varied in recent times, we present some key successful start-ups in the last few years specializing in diverse categories of real-estate.
- Category – Marketing and Visualization: With a global community relocating residences and offices often, having off-site viewing options is quite essential.Some successful start-ups in this sphere that offer 3D visualization for properties include IrisVR, Virtual Xperience, Matterport and VR Global. They all use immersive 3D media to showcase properties in precise detail.
Their visual media is interactive 3D and utilizes VR technology that is user-friendly. The sophistication of their platforms enables a walk-through experience that brings the property to life.
They do not, however, compromise on accuracy. The scales of the views are replicated in exacting detail, and viewers get a meticulous sense of even the minutia. It leads to a 100{ed162fdde9fdc472551df9f31f04601345edf7e4eff6ea93114402690d8fa616} satisfying experience.
- Category – Valuation and Analytics: This is a very vital aspect of real estate that is beneficial to international and local customers alike. At the click of a button, key information about potential properties is made available, facilitating informed decision-making.
One startup specializing in property data analytics is Bowery. It is a tech-enabled firm that provides accurate appraisals backed by big-data and advanced technology. The platform focuses mainly on commercial realty appraisals. Each report generated is exhaustive, with data collected through public record integration. Bowery also has the advantage of being efficient and quick in their appraisal reports.
HouseCanary in the US and REalyse in UK offer a similar service of providing comprehensive information on house prices, neighborhood demographics, market activity and more.
- Category – Property rental and leasing: With a floating population, sometimes leasing properties to virtual strangers can be a daunting task. Startups like Rezi cut out the middleman and ensure that owners will be able to rent their properties without any risk of monetary loss. A unique aspect of Rezi that affords property owners 100{ed162fdde9fdc472551df9f31f04601345edf7e4eff6ea93114402690d8fa616} peace of mind is that Rezi pays the owners a year’s rent in advance and then leases out the property to good, long-term tenants. Nestio offers a similar leasing platform for property owners in the residential space.
Flip is another start-up operating predominantly in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. It enables easy property finding and locating legal sublets in these areas. Flip assures property owners of their potential tenant’s reliability by verifying the applicants. Rent payments are also insured and guaranteed to prevent scams and losses.
Yet another start-up in this space is Cozy Services. It offers landlords of residential properties a safe, secure, transparent, and simple way to rent out their properties all over the US and Puerto Rico.
A Chinese start-up that is similarly heavily tech-backed is FangDD. It helps property owners reach out to potential buyers online.
An identical service is provided by PropertyGuru in Singapore. They operate in the same realty category and showcase properties for rent and sale in Singapore.
Another prominent business in the same space of realty is Housing.com. They have extensive reach with properties for rent or sale in both India and abroad. They currently cover over 260 cities and India alone and over 80 countries. The properties are all 100{ed162fdde9fdc472551df9f31f04601345edf7e4eff6ea93114402690d8fa616} verified, and the listings provide authentic, up-to-date images of the properties and comprehensive locality level information.
In the commercial space, VTS [View the Space] provides a cloud-based asset management and leasing platform. They include real-time analytics of portfolios that can be accessed worldwide by top agents and landlords.
- Category – Property Management: Property management includes a lot of aspects such as maintenance of equipment, sourcing facilities for tenants, HVAC monitoring and more. Some start-ups flourishing in this category include –
hOM, a tech-enabled amenity provider that collaborates with residential and commercial property owners to provide on-site fitness programs for its residents. Their services of providing on-site opportunities for Yoga, Pilates, fitness boot camps and more seems to have increased tenant retention rates by 15{ed162fdde9fdc472551df9f31f04601345edf7e4eff6ea93114402690d8fa616}.
Another start-up in the property management space is Ravti. Ravti is a realty start-up that affords owners and property managers the ability to appraise Heating and Ventilation systems [HVAC systems] in their properties. Backed by Y-Combinator, Ravti’s software platform allows property managers to view images, specs and histories of the equipment, thereby enabling timely maintenance and saving thousands.
- Category – Tech-enabled realty brokerage: Startups in this category specialize in platforms that connect property sellers and buyers online and in some cases facilitate complete online transactions.
One such start-up in this realty space is Haozu.com. They operate in China and are one of the key players in this sphere of realty wherein all transactions can be completed online.
Across the world in New York, Triplemint, a technology-enabled brokerage connects potential tenants and property owners directly to broker databases. Their data-driven focus is completely customer-centric. Their platform uses a map-based search facility and enables complete online transactions.
A special mention needs to be made of Housing.com as the business covers a lot of the above-listed categories. The property listings on Housing.com are all 100{ed162fdde9fdc472551df9f31f04601345edf7e4eff6ea93114402690d8fa616} verified to prevent scams and fraudulent listings. They are backed with valuation & analytics information and as an added bonus their innovative “MakaanView” App offers users a unique functionality. The augmented reality app launched by Elara Technologies enables the user to search for properties to rent or buy by simply pointing the mobile in the preferred direction. The App is configured to cover a 5Km radius and is highly intuitive, adding to the user experience.
While there are quite a few visionary start-ups listed above, this list is hardly exhaustive. As research and analytics from CB Insights indicate, technological developments in the realty sphere are just beginning. The environment for investments in this industry is currently very healthy and key players all around the world are leveraging developments in this sphere.
To motivate innovations in this field are accelerator programs such as URBAN-X, MetaProp and AREA that aid forward-thinking entrepreneurs in the realty space. Their primary purpose is to help startups that wish to apply new-technological approaches to solving real estate problems.
It is quite clear that the near future will see amazing growth in technology-backed realty that will revolutionize the way we perceive the industry and our investment strategies in it.
References:
- “6 Real Estate Startups Poised To Disrupt The Industry” –Nav Athwal [Forbes]
- “CBRE Acquires Floored: Real Estate Tech Poised For A Big 2017” – Nav Athwal [Forbes]
- “Everything You Need To Know About Real Estate Crowdfunding”– RealtyShares
- “planetRE – Born and Raised in Silicon Valley” – planetRE
- “SmarterAgent is the most widely used mobile SaaS platform in the real estate space” – SmarterAgent
- “HouseCanary raises $31 million to value residential real estate” – Katie Roof [TechCrunch]
- “Citiesense: New York City Neighbourhood Data Platform” – Jack FitzGerald [Dsrupt Property]
- “The world’s first truly tech-enabled appraisal firm” – Bowery
- “Subletting, taken care of.” –Flip
- “Be the best at HVAC – Know where your buildings stack up and empower more intelligence for your team.” –ravti
- “Plan Better. Build Faster. Together. – World’s Leading Data Driven Scheduling and BIM collaboration platform” – onTarget
- “Transform Building Data into Asset Value” – Enertiv
- “Amenities, Anywhere.” – hOM
- “Find The Right Real Estate Solution For You” –HouseCanary
- “This Startup Wants to Be the Amazon of Real Estate” – Zoe Henry [Inc]
- “More than a property investment data company” –REalyse
- “Instant Virtual Reality for the Building Industry” –IrisVR
- “Virtual Reality For Real Estate” – Vitual Xperience
- “Next-generation immersive media” – Matterport
- “REAL ESTATE – Be There – Anytime. Anywhere. Anyplace.” – VR Global
- “Rent it today” –Rezi
- “We’re making renting simple for everyone.” –Cozy Services
- “Data standardisation: the future for real estate reporting” – Ryan Masiello [Property Week]
- “Welcome to The Future of Residential Marketing and Leasing” – Nestio
- “Platform for leasing and asset management” – VTS
- “Real Estate Platform Fangdd Announces Fu8nding as China Eases Real Estate Bans” –Eva Yoo [TechNode]
- “Singapore Property Search” – Property Guru
- com –CB Insights
