Implications for COVID 19 and How it has led to the growth of Technology

The implication of COVID 19 has been felt by every sector, real estate has been the most affected sector with its income streams completely disrupted.

With health protocols intended to offer safety measures to the tenant and owners of the properties.

i) Reduction of the labor market and supply disruption because of lockdowns and curfews has greatly impacted negatively. This disruption has prolonged the duration of the projects to completion.

ii) Slowdown in approval for rezoning and construction approval, this is because the government suspended operations in places that were receiving a high number of people per day to curb the spread of the virus.

iii) Reduce construction activities as it was often characterized by overcrowding which was against government protocols. This as well delayed projects completed on time.

iv) Reduce funding as a result of general risk-averse due to pandemic. Most real estate developers that often sell properties before they start building, had a significant drop in the sale of new projects.

Technology development has impacted many sectors positively, however, the real estate sector has been the most reluctant in terms of adopting technology development.

a) Virtual reality

Virtual reality has made search and buyers’ experience better by showcasing the property without buyers necessarily visiting the property.

Buyers have preferred this style of visiting the property virtually as it minimizes the time spent in searching for property.

To property sellers, serious buyers only engaged further because they are serious investors and have liked the property.

b) AI-driven Marketing and data gathering

Data in real estate is everything. Having sufficient data and being able to process them so that you can make a better decision is a special ingredient to making a sound decision in digital marketing.

Artificial intelligence is taking control of massive data. Even though this process is more reliable and more efficient, you should do verification of the output of this data.

c) 3D Videos showing properties

3d Video tours have been on the rise in the recent past among real estate companies. This has helped in reducing the transaction period of the deal and help in safety measures put in place.

Before investors book site visits, video tours often act as a filter for serious investors.

d) Adoption of Live Videos

Generally, videos are most engaging and customers love real estate developers that users this technique to seller their properties. With live videos, it is more trustable as it is impossible to Photoshop.

With this development serious real estate developers have adopted high-resolution videos to showcase their products.

e) Chat-bot engagement

Unlike before, where most of the engagement between real estate agents and buyers was physical. Today buyers love engaging sellers through their sites in a very interactive manner.

They expected sellers to be on standby to answer their questions regarding properties they have listed on their websites.

This has necessitated having a very robust and responsive messenger on their website if they want to collect more leads.