The real estate segment has been acknowledged as the most "behind in development" in multiple Forbes and TechCrunch reports. Mainly because of the fact that real estate investments, management and everything in between aren't very appealing to younger generations, a lot of companies and brokers still rely on a very traditional approach, made of direct marketing, face-to-face meetings and similar. With this in mind, though, there are several ones who refused to remain in an "old" era and embraced new pieces of technology. Let's analyse why IoT should be the pivotal one.
The Usage Of Data
Let's state the obvious: every real estate-related process is bulky and slow. From finance to paperwork, every small individual process could take ages to be finalised and this, for many, was the starting opening point for technology to proliferate within this sector. The usage of data, in the real estate sector, applies to IoT because it revolves around risk management for long term financial procedures: if someone is looking to invest £2 million in a property, for example, a long credit score check will be required, as well as cross-references to evaluate if the request isn't masked as what's known in the segment as a "ghost contractor". Big data, especially if coming from bank accounts and credit card companies, could speed up these processes massively, effectively connecting an extremely slow business segment to the IoT. The UK is very ahead in regards to this very matter, especially within the commercial property auctions segment, where companies are heavily relying on data to speed up the buying process.
Architecture-Ready Applications
Has anyone of you ever used a dedicated software for any real estate task? From development to buying and investments, every piece of software has been designed and planned for professionals who know technical terms, therefore actually blocking "casual" users or junior professionals from approaching them. Having a data-driven, IoT-oriented architecture could heavily help in setting up budgeting for real estate management (having 12 properties and calculating individual fees isn't an easy job) or just to deal with clients, by letting it focus on the taxes/admin part whilst you do the "physical" management part.
Once again, the usage of big data and data points is quintessential for this very purpose, given the fact that it could simplify the way many different tasks are executed, effectively reducing their timescales.
To Conclude
Should the real estate sector approach IoT, data and data science? Definitely. Not only because of the above-mentioned reasons but also because of the fact that data-driven strategies are ahead of time: from 2020, in fact, we will definitely witness a massive growth of data and its applications in business (not just IoT).
