Follow Us on Google
By Maduka Nweke, [email protected]
Stakeholders in the built environment have said that real estate is an industry undergoing significant digital transformation today.
The stakeholders agreed that use of technology is playing important part in the process of real estate development. They believe that innovations in real estate make property management more convenient for clients, agents, and everybody else involved in it.
They agreed that for better or worse, technology has changed the way most business is transacted, and there is no doubt that real estate has benefited from improved efficiencies. According to Paul Udo Nweke, a Property Manager, if you remember the days prior to online listings, virtual tours, and e-signing, you understand just how much things have changed. “But with the move towards mobile, emphasis has shifted from efficiency to another dimension. Not only are paperless transactions the norm, but mobile-centric technology has essentially transformed the landscape. Access to information, customer expectations, and client service are very different than they were even five years ago. And there are more changes coming.
“Although there is little resistance to this change, there are many lessons to be learned. Even self-described tech enthusiasts who have embraced technology for a couple of decades agree that technology is sometimes a double-edged sword. According to one thoughtful broker associate I spoke with, reliance on technology can lead to problems in a “people-oriented” business, and “losing touch with customers” is a real fear,” he said.
For David Obodoeze, an interior decorator, countless businesses and models have been disrupted by technology and the speed of these disruptions is growing exponentially. “The current pandemic has exacerbated this phenomenon as each disruption usually happens slowly over time as people get more comfortable with the tech.
New realities are forcing the workforce to utilise and quickly iterate and adapt to new technology in order to have any semblance of productivity. Technology is quickly emerging and shaping the future of real estate, and our coping with the pandemic is fueling the mass adoption of many new technologies.
“Awareness and forward-thinking will be vital in strategy and the approach to certain aspects of the ever-evolving real estate environment. This is very clear in the disruption of the taxi industry. The “Uber effect” shows how quickly an industry can be changed by technology that is quickly adopted.
The taxi industry was upended by ride-sharing platforms as they could not compete due to the cost of taxi medallions. It was easy at first for taxi executives to ignore these ride-sharing apps as they strongly held the market share of this industry. But once ride-sharing took hold and was widely adopted, holding a taxi medallion had lost an immense amount of value,”he said.
