Did you know there are well over 500 PropTechs in Australia?  That’s according to Proptech Association Australia, the member-owned peak body. 

PropTech is short for property technology.  It’s underpinning the real estate industry’s digital transformation journey by helping to improve CX, grow the top line and cut costs, advance health & safety outcomes, increase business resilience and manage risk.  

PropTech spans the entire breadth of the real estate life cycle, starting at the beginning when assessing a potential development site, through to the architectural design process, the building & construction phase, the buying & selling transactional part, and that big bit in the middle of buying & selling when you have to own and manage the property. 

Here are some examples of PropTech you may like to try out. 

Listings portals

When seeking to buy or rent property, the go-to is a listings portal.  

Very few people these days would drive to a real estate agent’s office on the local shopping strip to look at photos in the window.  In fact these days it will be a rolling digital display rather than physical photos.  

You’ve surely heard of the OGs of Australian PropTech - Domain and RealEstate.com.au – the two largest listings portals.  Now there are several other PropTechs who are putting a different spin on listings, such as facilitating off-market transactions (Patch) and helping home owners to rent out a room (The Room Xchange). 

Visualisations in 3D and virtual reality

Shining during lockdown, and now here to stay, are interactive 360 degree virtual tours, also known as a 3D walkthrough, so you can view a property anytime, from anywhere.  It’s quite different from simply watching a video because a recording doesn’t give you - as the viewer - control over what you see.  Whereas a 360 degree virtual tour gives you the same choices as walking through the property yourself; so you can look up, you can look down, you can turn right and go into the living room, or turn left and go into the bathroom.  

If you’re buying off-the-plan, instead of an artist’s impression of the finished development, there are photorealistic 3D rendered images.  Instead of a scale model, at the showroom, you may also be offered some VR goggles to experience a virtual walkthrough of the property before a single sod has been turned (DragonVR).

Digital logbooks and AI asset registers

Your car has a logbook … why not your house?  For both owner-occupiers and landlords, it makes total sense to get a digital version of the fixtures and fittings in your valuable real estate assets for easy management of handovers, warranties, maintenance, repairs and tradespersons 24/7 on your phone (inndox).  No more user manuals floating around in the kitchen drawer, forgotten folders or lost USB sticks!  And for property developers selling new build properties with HVAC systems and fitted kitchens, this PropTech makes it really easy at settlement to hand over all the necessary information to the purchaser. 

In a commercial setting, the equivalent is a digital asset register to enable accurate balance sheet values, condition audits and life cycle planning.  Prior to PropTech (AI Assets) this was an incredibly manual, time-consuming task involving gigantic spreadsheets (often with errors).  

Landlord/tenant apps

There’s a lot of work in finding a tenant, creating the documents, collecting the rent and then managing the maintenance, inspections and handovers.  That’s why many landlords employ a real estate agent to act as property manager.  

Property management is fertile ground for PropTech due to the many pain points and frictions. Take, for example, when a tenant needs to report a maintenance problem.  Gone are the days of making a phone call to the agent and then waiting at home for someone to pop in to inspect and diagnose the problem.

With PropTech (Bricks and Agent), the tenant can just upload a photo of the problem to the app, with a short description, and then an AI algorithm can triage it straight through to the right tradesperson who can be granted keyless entry.  

If you are a landlord who prefers to self-manage your investment property, there is PropTech to help with that (Instarent) so you can save the money you would otherwise pay on commission to an agent.  

And to help you keep your accounting records and forecast your portfolio, you can also rely on PropTech (PropertyDirector).

The benefits of technology in a fragmented market 

Property is a fragmented industry.  Think how many landlords, agents, auctioneers, surveyors, architects, solicitors, conveyancers, mortgage brokers and tradespersons are sole traders or family / micro-businesses with a handful of employees.

The reality is that running your own business is risky and competitive.  Failing to embrace technology only increases your risk, yet the natural tendency of SMBs is to be conservative, as a result of limited resources and tech savviness.

With PropTech, adopting technology is achievable for everyone in the real estate industry … and the benefits are huge. 

Jennifer Harrison is a public relations & media professional with a specialist focus on PropTech, FinTech and LegalTech.  She is a Director at communications agency Reputation Edge and is also Vice President of the Proptech Association Australia.