Every Real Estate Company Should Have a Tech Team

Technology may have come late to the commercial real estate market, but it is coming fate. Technology is quickly penetrating the industry, and it is promising disruption. This includes everything from robots inside warehouses to driverless cars, which will change development and parking requirements, AI and machine learning tools, which can change the way the industry handles and analyzes data. At the Burnham-Moores Center for Real Estate’s 23rd Annual Real Estate Conference, Taylor Mammen, senior managing director at RCLCO led the breakout session “New Technologies and Their Real Estate Impacts.” According to Mammen, technology is becoming pervasive in this industry, and companies should have a tech team on site to keep up.

“Every real estate organization should have a team or even just one relatively senior person who is responsible for paying attention to the technological innovations that have the potential to impact their segment of the industry and their business,” Mammen tells GlobeSt.com. “This means regularly reading technology press, attending tech conferences, meeting with vendors, and alerting their colleagues of trends or innovations that may be actionable. For most technology innovations, you usually don’t have to be a first adopter, but someone needs to be constantly aware of new ideas so that you’re not left behind.”

New technologies are already disrupting the real estate market, but Mammen said the extent of the disruption is still unknown. “Technological innovations are and will have dramatic implications on how we use, finance, and build real estate. None of us has a “crystal ball” that lets us know precisely how these innovations will impact real estate and our businesses, but we need to have a researched perspective,” he says.

Automation is chief among the new technologies reshaping the real estate market. These tools run the gamut from automated manual labor, where machines and robots replace human labor; automated thinking, where computers analyze data to make complex decisions; and automated cars, which will impact building and development. :We’re definitely seeing more robots in industrial buildings and doing things like vacuuming and mowing lawns, and we think that buildings of all types will be adapted to accommodate automation, but the most impactful way in which automation is currently impacting real estate is by impacting jobs,” adds Mammen. “Some types of jobs, and therefore certain markets, cities, and regions, are faring better in an age of automation than others, and that is having a big impact on performance of all types of real estate.”

Real estate has historically been a slow adopter of technology, but that is changing. Companies are adjusting to new technologies and preparing for future technologies, like AI and machine learning tools, which are already being implemented in some form today. “Real estate companies have historically been slower relative to other industries to embrace new technologies, but I the rate of technology adoption is now accelerating rapidly,” says Mammen. “I know of few companies that don’t have some type of business intelligence (BI) initiative at this point, and many are going further by adopting predictive analytics technologies to better understand and serve their customers.”

Burnham-Moores Center for Real Estate’s 23rd Annual Real Estate Conference included several discussions about emerging trends in real estate, including opportunity zones, innovation and technology and the future of land use. It was held last week at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront in San Diego.