Real estate technology has faced some growing pains of late, but these challenges also highlight the sector’s potential for continued evolution and innovation. While the struggles of a few high-profile startups have sparked questions, many sub-categories of real estate tech remain strong, and are helping reshape the industry in meaningful ways. These include:
Resident Self-service
- What it is: Tech that empowers residents. Self-service technologies eliminate friction points associated with leasing, WiFi setup, utility setup, etc., by bypassing middlemen and putting residents in the driver’s seat.
- Why it’s hot: Self-service helps both owners and residents, especially in a post-COVID world where flexibility is king.
- Case Study: Tour24 allows owners to create a curated self-guided tour experience. This lets residents conduct tours at their convenience – including after hours and on weekends and holidays.
- It gives owners insights into how tours are performing, enhancing the leasing process while centralizing operations.
- Tour24’s software revenue has grown 75% YoY.
Sustainability
- What it is: Technology that helps monitor and optimize building resource efficiency, which can often lower electricity, heating, water, and waste bills.
- Why it’s hot: Operators are pursuing efficiencies in every aspect of their operations. That extends to resource efficiency. Many ESG technologies present major cost-saving opportunities, yielding a strong ROI.
- Case Study: Parity is a remote HVAC optimization and service company for multifamily and hospitality. It manages the daily performance of HVAC systems by automatically optimizing control adjustments in real-time.
- By limiting energy waste across properties, Parity improves building efficiency and guarantees savings back to owners with payback as little as 2 years.
- Parity successfully closed a $20M Series B this past July to support market expansion efforts.
Artificial Intelligence
- What it is: Tech that utilizes generative AI and machine learning across a wide range of different applications
- Why it’s hot: The AI trend is here to stay, and these tools are poised to make a tremendous impact on operations — from resident communications to market analysis to back-office work.
- Case Study: PredictAP, a machine-learning-enabled invoice ingestion and coding solution for real estate accounts payable, leverages AI and historical invoice data to code new invoices more accurately and efficiently.
- The platform reduces the time needed to process each invoice by 80-90%.
- PredictAP has grown recognized revenue 250% YoY.