(Newswire.net — October 3, 2019) — The real estate industry has to deal with multiple operations on a daily basis. From tracking locations, publishing and updating listings, and making sales to following new developments and assessing prospects, there’s always something on a real estate agent’s plate. You’d think that real estate firms would use digital solutions to ease all that burden – but this is not always the case.
According to a recent survey, 48% of real estate firms believe that keeping up with new technology is one of the biggest challenges they have to face in the immediate future. But that doesn’t have to be that way. Real estate businesses can greatly benefit from software development services to create tools that can automate tasks, improve communication with clients, and gather insightful data, among other things.
That belief (that tech adoption will be a challenge) might be due to the lack of knowledge on behalf of real estate firms about what software development companies can do for them – and what they are already doing. The following list should enlighten them and provide them with some ideas as to what modern digital tools can do for the real estate industry.
Digital tools for all kinds of tasks
As with any other industry, the increasing digitalization of real estate is constantly growing and adapting to the changing demands of its businesses. That’s why software development providers are always coming up with new platforms and tools to help realtors in their everyday activities. Here are some of the tool types available today – and how they can help the real estate agent.
-
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software: CRM tools aren’t exclusive to real estate firms since they can work for any industry out there. However, they can prove very useful to realtors as they can centralize the data of prospects and existing customers. That way, all the members of a real estate firm can access personal data, client history, customer requests, and potential opportunities. Besides, some CRM platforms have communication modules from where it’s possible to create marketing campaigns based on customized segments and measure their results.
-
Lead generation apps: as anyone working in the real estate industry knows, agents can’t stop looking for new leads and prospects. That’s a full-time job in and by itself, so automating it through an AI-based tool seems like a no brainer. There are solutions like kvCORE, that automatically connect with buyers and sellers on social media to feed them information about real estate firms and listings. But there are also chatbots that can capture visitors coming to the real estate firm’s website and gather their information to trigger automatic actions that can turn them into qualified leads.
-
Virtual Tour tools: certain tech trends seem like a perfect fit for real estate firms with Virtual Reality as the prime example. With it, companies can create digital replicas of the properties they are offering to easily show them to potential customers. Additionally, and through the use of software development services, these tools can be expanded by adding data layers that can show useful information to leads, such as electric and plumbing installations, room dimensions, possible furniture organization, and more.
-
Home Valuation software: one of the best news for real estate agents is that we’re living in the age of big data. That means that they can benefit from large public and private datasets about housing trends to make accurate valuations of properties. Gathering historical data about price fluctuations, beneficial factors (such as access to public transport, proximity to schools, land value, etc.), can help agents in setting up prices to make more realistic sales. Besides, software that can analyze that data can identify certain patterns (like seasonal variations or up-and-coming neighborhoods) that can lead to more informed and strategic decisions.
-
Mapping tools: this kind of tools are intimately tied to home valuation, as they can let realtors gather information about the area on which they are offering properties. Thus, there is software like LandVision, which shows data related to zoning information, parcel boundaries, demographic info, and natural hazards. This kind of application gives real estate firms a lot of valuable information they can use to establish themselves as authorities in their prospects’ eyes while also gaining their trust.
-
Property Management software: though a CRM can manage all the personal details about prospects and clients, it can be greatly complemented with property management software. With this platform, realtors can track owner communications and renovations, maintenance requests, and leasing details, among other valuable information about all the listings offered by a real estate firm. Besides, it’s possible to share all that data with different teams created in the software itself.
There are other kinds of tools that can help real estate firms, even if they aren’t exclusively developed with them in mind. Applications for online marketing are perfect to create email campaigns and generate leads through ads in social media. Video editing tools are great to create video presentations of the listings being offered. There are even platforms to support the back office, like accounting software that can manage expenses, track revenues, monitor cash flow, and deal with invoices, among many other things.
Some final thoughts
The market for real estate software is booming with alternatives. Using new tech trends like artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science, and virtual reality, software development services are providing new and exciting ways to help realtors and provide buyers and sellers with new tools to help them get a better deal.
Of course, not all of these solutions will be a perfect fit for all companies. It’s up to every company to find the right combination that works for the firm’s culture and for its team members. And in case that said combination doesn’t appear, real estate firms have to consider the possibility of hiring freelancers or software development outsourcing teams to create custom-made solutions that can work exactly how they need them to.