In recent times, the influence of tech in commercial real estate industry has been growing. The latest tech helps companies to offer first-class services to their clients by improving marketing, expanding the exposure of listing, and increasing the efficiency of managing time-consuming back-office processes. It has become essential to rethink real estate with the advent of technology.
Modern Technology Tools for CRE Professionals
1) Marketing Tools
Technology has fundamentally changed how real estate marketers present new properties to prospective clients. With the advent of virtual reality, customers no longer require to go to a place in person to take a look at the property. VR technology can help real estate marketers to capture houses and spaces within in incredible detail. Buyers can tour properties located across the country, anytime from anywhere.
Augmented reality is another great boon for CRE. It can show the clients the maximum potential of a space without having to invest much. A latest report on virtual reality by Goldman Sachs reveals that the real estate market will contribute $2.6 billion of VR/AR use by the year 2025. Some of the industry leaders in VR/AR include Matterport and VR Global.
Some commercial spaces gain better representation through drone photography. This is incredibly true for spaces that require an aerial view of the property’s positioning amongst the surrounding amenities, where it is important to know the marketing potential of retail locations. These video tours are aesthetically pleasing, so they are easily marketable across numerous social platforms as well.
The most critical tool a lot of agents and brokers in the industry rely on is a robust customer relationship management solution (CRM). Nowadays CRM solutions provide stand alone marketing options as well as integrate with other marketing software providers in the industry.
Many agents have started to use CRMs to better understand market properties and sell them to the right buyers, by setting up drip email campaigns, chase leads, and a lot more. Some of the industry specific CRMs include Apto, Clientlook, and REthink CRM.
2) Listing Tools
In a recent survey by theBrokerList, it was revealed that 72% of brokers used listing tools. The success of your listing depends a lot on the exposure it gets from potential buyers or leasing representatives. Service providers are catering to both the ends of the spectrum: the agents who are in need of promotion and the clients who are looking for the right location.
Digsy helps those who are searching for commercial real estate, find the sweet spot. RealMassive is focused on streamlining an agent’s marketing efforts to help them stay in charge of the listing information. Services like Loopnet and Commercial Search are considered as the top providers of commercial real estate sale and leasing information online, with added marketing opportunities.
3) Big Data
By harnessing big data, you can get actionable steps to maximize your efficiency and success rate. More than 72% of commercial firms are using comparative market analysis software based on a recent study of real estate firms. VTS isn’t the top leasing and asset management platform without a reason.
Their real-time access to the latest data and good market intelligence creates simple and analytical reporting that aids informed decision making. Compstak focuses on the power of crowd sourcing, helping researchers, lenders, investors, and other stakeholders in the real estate industry to find and trade the parameters they need. Other important service providers in the field include REIS and Real Capital Analytics (RCA).
4) Improve Efficiency
CRE professionals are no longer required to visit a physical office to conduct everyday business. The advent of smartphone apps has freed us to schedule appointments, sign and send contracts, search listings, and complete various other works for our clients. A good number of marketing and CRM providers have access to mobile apps and online databases. Mobile tools augment the potential of real estate agents to stay productive on the go. Lease Matrix helps with lease analytics in a matter of minutes.
360 Panorama will help you stitch together 360-degree photos of an interior/exterior space by using just your phone. Some famous document signing apps like dotLoop and DocuSign can make it a lot more easier to electronically sign documents on the go.
There are so many other software and hardware tools that exist, that can assist the real estate process.
I hope this article was useful for you to learn more about the tools in CRE. If you have any doubts with regards to this, let us know through the comments and we will be glad to help you out. If you have any suggestions regarding how we can improve the article, let us know them through the comments as well for us to improve.
Real estate technology, tools, and apps should be actually helping you and your business, thanks for sharing with us.