The realm of real estate is undergoing a rapid and continuous transformation within the commercial and industrial sectors, highlighting the growing importance of automation. While real estate trends may ebb and flow, a prevailing consensus within the industry acknowledges the presence of impending challenges.
Deloitte’s 2023 report on the outlook for commercial real estate reveals a sense of unease among global real estate leaders regarding the economic landscape. Projections for revenue in 2023 and the subsequent years appear to be a blend of uncertainty and variability.
Within the report, it is observed that 40% of real estate leaders anticipate an upswing in revenues. In contrast, 48% anticipate a decline, while an additional 12% foresee minimal alterations to revenue in the foreseeable future. These figures starkly contrast with the statistics from 2022, where a significant 80% of commercial real estate leaders held optimistic expectations of revenue growth over the following year.
Deloitte emphasizes that this shifting perspective has led to a notable change in behavior. In 2023, 33% of respondents are actively exploring strategies to curtail expenses—a substantial increase from the mere 6% seen in 2022. Respondents identify formidable factors like soaring inflation, scarcity of labor, complexities in workforce management, and the imposition of climate regulations as pivotal influencers shaping revenue dynamics over the subsequent 12 to 18 months.
On a broader scale, a recent UiPath survey divulges that labor scarcities have left a significant imprint on two-thirds of the surveyed companies. In response, a resounding 80% of executives from these affected companies intend to channel their efforts into automation as a countermeasure against the dearth of skilled personnel.
Can Automation be the Answer?
In recent years, there has been a notable and significant upheaval in the worldwide workforce, leading to substantial impacts. In 2021, a staggering 47 million Americans opted to depart from their employment positions, a trend that has left a marked imprint. A substantial portion of these seasoned professionals has opted for a permanent exit from the job market, either to embrace retirement or to embark on independent entrepreneurial pursuits. This transformative shift has given rise to a scarcity of adept real estate agents, posing challenges to the sustained profitability of the commercial real estate sector. Yet, amid these challenges emerges a viable remedy: automation.
Automation emerges as the principal antidote to this prevailing concern. Renowned experts within the industry envision a notable surge in the integration of robotic technologies within the real estate domain, a strategic response to cater to the sector’s constantly evolving requisites.
Investigating Real Estate Automation
AI and automation technologies exhibit a wide array of applications within the sphere of industrial real estate. They excel at executing uncomplicated yet time-intensive assignments, like dispatching emails or amassing data. However, they are equally adept at assuming more intricate responsibilities, including appraising candidates and managing accounting procedures. Automation technology yields remarkably precise outcomes and can access real-time data, thereby enabling real estate agencies to proficiently handle extensive datasets while mitigating the potential for human errors.
The integration of automation in this sector serves to directly tackle labor scarcities. It has the capacity to refine the recruitment process for fresh talent and optimize the efficiency of current staff members by eradicating wearisome and time-extensive manual tasks.
Despite the prevalent apprehensions surrounding the possibility of automation supplanting human staff in the future, this notion remains far from reality. Instead, AI has the potential to elevate the roles of human professionals, affording them the opportunity to utilize their time in a more productive manner. Furthermore, this empowerment enables them to concentrate on high-level processes demanding creativity, innovation, and astute judgment.
Implementing AI in the Real Estate Industry
According to a study conducted in 2021, professionals in the real estate sector dedicate approximately 219 hours each year to repetitive tasks, which could be readily automated either partially or completely.
The integration of automation has the potential to simplify and enhance various facets of real estate operations, encompassing:
Project Planning: Automation in project planning guarantees a seamless and efficient workflow from initiation to conclusion, involving team members in critical decision-making phases.
Enhanced Reporting: Reporting is an essential aspect of every real estate agency’s operations. Stakeholders such as investors and managers frequently require reports on a monthly, weekly, and even daily basis. Automation can facilitate the generation of precise and comprehensive reports using up-to-the-minute industry data. This empowers upper management to make well-informed and efficient decisions within condensed timeframes.
Investment Planning: Additionally, AI tools can construct comprehensive investment business plans based on data-driven projections and extensive datasets. These tools manage numerous stages of the reporting process, from data transformation to disseminating reports to users and investors.
Property Management: The management of industrial real estate often involves demanding and time-intensive processes. Automation can support property managers by providing instant access to property performance data, obviating the need to sift through numerous reports. It can also automate the scheduling of property tours and inspections, and seamlessly integrate with access control systems to automatically update tenant directories.
Customer Relationship Management: Developers have designed CRM software tailored to assist estate agencies in addressing all aspects of their customer relationship responsibilities. Automating these tasks ensures consistent and professional handling of each client, negating the need for a dedicated customer support team.
Hiring Processes: The prevailing scarcity of skilled labor in the real estate sector necessitates innovative solutions. AI can identify, filter, evaluate, and even interview suitable candidates for open positions in a fraction of the time required by traditional HR departments. Furthermore, once a new hire is onboarded, the automation of training procedures ensures their preparedness for their new role.
Data Analysis: Automation tools can extract and transform information from reports and interactions with clients. This affords agencies access to accurate and easily interpretable data presented visually. Appropriate tools can analyze metrics like NOI, net asset values, cap rates, returns, and other key investment indicators for properties. They can also facilitate the tracking of migration patterns and evolving client preferences. This contributes to the development of more profitable and sustainable agencies and workflows.
Lead Generation: Considerable time and effort are invested in lead generation activities. Whether involving email campaigns, developing buyer profiles, tailoring messages to hot leads, or segmenting markets, these tasks consume significant realtor resources. The automation of processes leading to targeted real estate leads reduces labor demands and saves time, while ensuring precision in targeting the right audiences and demographics. Automation avenues encompass automated email campaigns and the utilization of chatbots for lead generation purposes.
Addressing Workforce Shortages through Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence possesses the capability to streamline a wide array of processes within the realm of industrial real estate. Through this, it diminishes the necessity for human personnel, enabling current staff members to optimize their productivity.
Platforms like Qobrix provide a comprehensive solution tailored explicitly for the real estate sector. This encompasses realtors, property developers, and asset managers, furnishing them with innovative systems to facilitate property and data acquisition, lead cultivation and follow-up, sales finalization, and more.
The wave of automation is poised to transform nearly every sector in the contemporary world, and the sphere of real estate is certainly no exclusion. While the initial integration might present challenges—such as persuading employees to adopt novel technologies and the advantages they bring—once these systems are in place, effectively navigating the progressively unstable labor market without compromising your agency’s objectives or future expansion will become notably more achievable.
