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Real estate property management: what does digital real estate need?
The digital revolution that is sweeping through all areas of production also closely affects the world of real estate: starting from the initial decision to invest into the building of a property, through to the construction, maintenance and management of buildings, the use of advanced technologies is becoming increasingly widespread, enabling the investment evaluation, asset monitoring, intervention planning and, in general, managing all phases of the real estate cycle.
Property management, in particular, is the managerial field that deals with managing companies’ real estate assets with the aim of increasing their competitiveness and profitability.
The complexity of corporate organisational models and regulations makes property management a highly specialised discipline. In fact, the property manager is responsible for ensuring that all company-owned real estate complies with current regulations, manages all relevant maintenance, modernisation work and the whole administrative side, which includes lease contracts as well as the relationship between the owners and the tenants. The aim is to make the company’s real estate an important source of income.
Like all areas of management, property management can also be made efficient, modernised, and innovative with technology, which in this case takes the form of management platforms capable of interfacing with innovative technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, chatbots or 3D models.
What are the new technologies for real estate property management
Chatbots
In the first instance, Digital Real Estate embodies a new approach to both the brokerage process and the property itself. It starts with the use of chatbots – 24-hour active programmes that interface with the user during the very first steps of the transaction, answering their initial questions and providing all profiling information – and goes into augmented reality.
Virtual Tours
Even though this is an area that is still very much tied to the physical experience, thanks to the support of technology, it has now become possible to visit a property without necessarily having to travel in person to the site. Online virtual tours, in fact, have expanded the possibilities and stretched the boundaries of the real estate ecosystem, allowing anyone to have an immersive experience even in buildings located hundreds of kilometres away.
Similarly, all marketing activities have been disrupted – for the better – by digital technologies. Thanks to the collection of large amounts of data, customer profiling is increasingly accurate and advertising campaigns can be tailored to each target audience.
Building Information Modeling (BIM)
At a more complex level, digital transformation also deeply involves real estate facility and property management. Among the driving technologies of the digital transformation of real estate, the most mature appears to be Building Information Modeling (BIM), i.e. the modelling of building information that enables a digital, three-dimensional representation of building works and related services.
This makes it possible to better manage the enormous amount of data, information and documents available. This data, in fact, only acquires real value when it is transformed into information to support decisions on the management and operation of a building.
Digital Twin
A BIM software, in essence, is the tool that makes it possible to obtain a Digital Twin of the project under construction or of the existing building. This exact digital copy becomes fundamental in predictive maintenance and useful for radically changing the paradigm of design, sales and production.
Artificial Intelligence
Thanks to Artificial Intelligence (AI), it is now possible to develop predictive models of what the state of the building and facilities (and related costs) will be like in the future, adjusting maintenance, operational management or investment choices accordingly.
The 3 key benefits of Digital Real Estate
The use of BIM, Digital Twin and Artificial Intelligence in Facility and Property management brings numerous advantages. The three most significant are:
- Building staff and service providers activities are further discernible and transparent as they are shared in real time;
- Feasibility analyses of interventions make cost control more timely and reduce the need for on-site inspections;
- Data analysis makes it possible to balance maintenance, predict its impact and prevent system and plant failures more effectively.
Thus, it is evident how Digital Real Estate solutions can support Property and Facility Managers in solving the typical problems of day-to-day property management, which can be identified and solved with a higher degree of precision and accuracy.