Can your real estate tech stack keep up in 2022?
Although rising interest rates will dampen home buying activity slightly, 2022 is still expected to see high home buying activity and rising prices. While increasing inventory will help somewhat, your clients will still be competing in an overheated market.
Just like you need to know market trends for 2022, it’s important to know what real estate tech trends will be shaping 2022. That way, you can adopt the right tech to get ahead.
Let’s take a look at the first trend – consolidation.
One real estate tech trend that will shape 2022 is the continued consolidation of technology.
Real estate is one of the last industries to be digitized. For the last decade, this lack of digitization has provided opportunity for real estate tech start-ups to fill a void. However, as real estate tech matures, successful established companies are adding functionality through both innovation and acquisition.
Brokermint, for example, innovated and consolidated the functions of transaction management, commission automation, accounting, agent management, and reporting. BoomTown innovated and consolidated CRM, websites, lead generation, and lead outreach.
With BoomTown's 2021 acquisition of Brokermint, 2022 will see a true unified end to end product! A single unified platform that truly takes your brokerage from end to end.
But buyer beware... In the Brokermint / BoomTown example, the unified platform will be an option, not a requirement. You will still have the option to just use Brokermint or just use BoomTown. Make sure the tech you evaluate is flexible if you don't actually want to consolidate all the way down to a single platform.
Either way, you'll want to reduce your platform count to what makes sense for your brokerage.
Another trend for real estate tech in 2022 is accelerated adoption. Real estate technology is no longer a nice-to-have but a must-have.
The pandemic disrupted both commercial and residential real estate. While the pandemic hurt the CRE market (especially with office and retail), it had the opposite impact on residential real estate. 2020 and 2021 have both been characterized by an overheated and fast-moving housing market.
While the challenges for CRE and residential real estate are different, these struggles have accelerated real estate tech adoption across the board. For residential real estate in particular, manually managing client info, transaction data, commission calculation, and more is no longer the norm. Instead, top brokerages are turning to automation to reduce manual work.
In 2022, tech adoption will further accelerate. To get ahead of your competition, you need best-in-class tech to manage every aspect of your brokerage operations – from the front office to the back office. Without the best tech, you’ll fall behind in 2022.
Along with tech consolidation and adoption acceleration, big data and predictive insights will also be top trends that shape 2022.
As real estate tech becomes more widespread, the data these tech tools collect increases. The top tech tools can collect big data (high volume, real-time, and varied data). With accelerated tech adoption, the prevalence of big data will increase in 2022.
However, big data doesn’t do much without analysis. Tech tools that generate big data produce too much information for a person to comb through. Instead, these tech tools allow for robust reporting, analysis, and insights. For 2022, the ability to generate predictive insights from big data will become increasingly important.
So, in 2022, you need tech tools that not only generate big data but analyze and provide insights. These insights can help you grow your brokerage faster than your competition.
In addition to big data and insights, virtual and augmented reality will be real estate tech trends that shape 2022.
Spurred in part by pandemic restrictions, virtual tours have become increasingly popular among home buyers and even renters. With the latest technology, these virtual tours provide a similar level of information for buyers as in person tours – while saving time for both buyers and sellers.
In 2022, the prevalence of virtual tours and other virtual/augmented reality tools to enhance the property search will increase. It will no longer be enough to simply provide listing photos for a property. Instead, top brokerages will incorporate virtual/augmented reality into the property search in inventive ways (like virtual staging in virtual tours).
To stay competitive in 2022, you need top virtual reality tech to take your property listings and client experience to the next level.
Personalized digital client experiences are one last trend that will shape 2022.
As Millennial and Gen Z home buyers enter the market, the digital experience is becoming increasingly important. These digitally native home buyers and sellers expect a completely digital experience – from searching for properties, to communicating with realtors, to applying for a mortgage, eSigning documents, and more.
While younger buyers and sellers want a seamless digital experience, they also want a personalized experience. Millennial and Gen Z buyers and sellers want their experience to be tailored to their specific needs, instead of a cookie-cutter experience. These buyers/sellers also expect real estate agents to be always available by text or call.
This tech trend means in 2022 your brokerage needs to invest in tech tools that provide both a great digital and personalized experience. Along with automation, eSignature, and other efficiency-boosting tools, your brokerage tech should enable your agents to create a personalized experience for home buyers and sellers.
Technology is reshaping the real estate industry. To get ahead, you not only need best-in-class tech. You also need to adopt cutting-edge technology before your competitors. Knowing 2022’s tech trends before the year even starts can help with that.
In 2022, some of the top tech trends will be consolidation, accelerated adoption, big data/predictive analytics, virtual/augmented reality, and personalized client experiences.
If you’re looking for the right tech to help you create a high-tech but personalized experience for your clients, BoomTown and Brokermint are the way to go. Both BoomTown and Brokermint can help you increase efficiency and decrease costs through automation – while helping you provide an outstanding client experience.
Learn more about how BoomTown and Brokermint can help you get ahead of 2022 tech trends.
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