Real estate constitutes over 50% of the world's assets. Housing is a vital human need and the commercial property sector delivers and manages the infrastructure needed for businesses to flourish. The real estate industry of Bangladesh is also expanding steadily.
The industry is on the rise due to the growing demands for housing, expanding middle-class and increasing per capita income. In this situation, recent years have witnessed a surge in the development of digital real estate technologies.
Real estate technology encompasses all dedicated software used by different participants in the industry, including agents, investors, real estate-focused lenders, property owners, tenants and buyers. The category also includes online real estate rental and buying guides.
The number of technology and internet users is rapidly growing across the world, including in Bangladesh. The Internet World Stats has recently ranked Bangladesh as the fifth largest internet using country in Asia.
According to Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC), internet has reached 91.421 million people of the country at the end of January 2019. People now want to do everything, including real estate activities, by using technology to save some time in their busy lives.
Advances in technology are breaking the traditional processes of, both companies and individuals, making real estate-related decisions - how to discover, review, buy, sell and rent properties. In the United Kingdom and Australia, real estate technology is sometimes referred to as property technology or PropTech.
Now property technology is expected to reshape and redefine the real estate industry, from how we buy, sell or rent properties to how we manage them. In the first six months of 2019, 12.9 billion dollar was poured into real estate technology startups globally by venture investors, which surpassed the 12.7 billion dollar record for all of 2017.
In 2015, real estate or property technology reached record funding and deal levels, with more than 1.7 billion dollars deployed in more than 190 deals globally.Online marketplaces for real estate are the most common representatives of the Property Technology business, which will soon have two important implications.
The first thing is the organic expectation of the modern consumer to be able to find relevant real-time listings online with a friendly interface and the second one is the necessity for businesses to go the extra mile, which means integrating predictive analytics for estate pricing, virtual tours, incorporating financial instruments and much more.Most people are now involved with different kinds of financial activities. Trying to find a tenant or a home in this busy life can be very stressful.
It takes a lot of time. If they find an online-based website, who can provide them with details of different real estate products, it would be great help for them. To make these busy people's lives easier, Bproperty, a one-stop real estate marketplace, introduced themselves in 2016 by transforming real estate with technology in Bangladesh. In the "clicks" vs. "bricks" battle, the clicks seem to be winning.
When searching for property, users can filter changes according to price range, location and size of the property. Selecting a listing from the search results, viewers can now look at and walk through the property of their choice from the comforts of their own home through the website's 360 degree virtual tours of properties. They can control the camera for the visual tour in all directions and zoom in and out of the room, allowing them to visualize living in the property.
Additional rooms and areas of the property can be selected through the menu on the screen. Technology has made all these activities possible.There is also a demand for transparency, accountability and honesty in all operations and business dealings of real estate activities such as contracts, paperwork and other relevant work due to the size of financial transactions.
The service can be provided to buyers and sellers (primary and secondary), tenants and landlords allowing transactions to be done efficiently as well as securely, by offering all parties access to independent advice on properties, legal issues and routes to financing your home. Landlords just need to enlist their properties on the website.Although many people of Bangladesh are now well-known to technology, most of these technology users do not trust online services.
To change their minds and gain their trust, online service providers should upload accurate information to their website. The companies should not rely on any third party data for their site - all data, images and content should be personally verified for every property in the website. If the data is accurate and up to date, the company, as well as the customer, will be benefited.
The services should also maintain online blogs, which serve to generate content related to housing challenges and advice for residence. We know that buying or renting a property in Bangladesh is more than just buying or renting - this is the start of someone building a home for their families, providing security and somewhere they can enjoy the future.
Blogs help companies promote relevant messages and help people. The companies should help people understand as much as possible ahead of making their real estate decision. They should choose the right areas for their customers as well as provide ideas to make their houses more homely.
However at the moment, the industry is still in the early stages of filling out the value chain of the real estate business. Services are yet to consolidating into mega-platforms. It is apparent that opportunities are vast with advancements in machine learning, sensory technology and a pivot towards smart nations by the most advanced authorities.
More importantly, the real estate technology feeds on the increased mobility of a modern global citizen. The technology sector is bound to address accelerating changes in the way individuals and businesses discover, buy or sell and manage property.
The writer is a CEO of Bproperty.com
Latest News