Ramesh Nair, Chief and Nation Head, JLL India: What are the Extraordinary Effects of Innovation on Real Estate

Real Estate in India might fall behind in culling the products of upgraded innovation - yet glob­ally, the area of technol­ogy has gained monstrous headway and there is certainly a lot to use. Truth be told, there are somewhere around six technol­ogy-driven changes that can poten­tially change the area.

Real estate in India may lag behind in plucking the fruits of enhanced technology - but glob­ally, the field of technol­ogy has made immense progress and there is definitely much to leverage. Essentially, these evolutionary steps in technology can completely usher in an era of ‘experiential’ real estate for consumers, developers, and consultants – and as a direct conse­quence, transform the way in which real estate business is done:

More and more real estate marketing is done via online channels, be it online portals or cross-platform mobile applications. There is a huge opportunity in more evolved automa­tion of these online channels, where the updating of property listings could be carried out using advanced machine learning techniques. List­ings and other stock real estate data are very dynamic in nature - and with more Indian states making lease data freely available, there is more scope for automation.

Also, since it is now mandatory for builders to notify all residential sales and similar project-related up­dates on the RERA websites, quick automation of data like units sold, localities where maximum sales have taken place, and information on oth­er upcoming projects can help close deals faster. Having faster access to such information can help brokers and consumers close transactions more efficiently.

In the real estate sector, the increased use of machine learning techniques and deep learning will boost the quan­tity of information available, as well as the efficient processing of this in­formation. The digitizing of data assets is becoming less costly and labor-intensive with the help of AI technologies. Information in the real estate sector is currently available in varied forms. If we look at commercial real estate markets, lease documents are often not standardized, presenting a challenge in evaluating one vs.

Soon, advanced AI techniques (loosely known as deep learning) will enable machines to comprehend the various clauses and sub-clauses in such leases. Advancements in artificial intelli­gence, specifically in machine learning and deep learning, have contrib­uted to the increasing use of drones. These are helpful in creating 3D im­ages and videos of office spaces, which help clients narrow down on property options. Drones are being used very effectively in America and Europe for marketing real estate properties with compelling and dramatic images.

Such images help differentiate prop­erties, especially on online portals continuously competing for consumer mind share. Virtual reality or VR technology - a mix of architecture design and gam­ing software - will soon enable con­sumers in India to get a real-time experience of living in their yet-to-be-constructed homes. With sensor technology getting cheaper, we will soon find a much larger use of sensors across the office, re­tail as well as residential spaces.

From small requirements like identifying the need for changing a fused bulb to larger issues like man­aging car park spaces in large office complexes, IoT is ready to take off in a big way. Residential spaces already use sensor-driven lights and very often sensor-linked water flow in gardens. On a much larger scale, Smart Cities will have digital technology embedded across all city functions.

This is still an evolving con­cept worldwide, but blockchains will soon play an important role in storing information for real estate transactions. For instance, we will see the evolution of Smart Contracts, which make the execution of real es­tate transactions much more efficient.

Will we eventually see a time when real estate transactions are car­ried out through cryptocurrencies?

However, given the massive evolutionary steps taking place on most other fronts, the future real estate marketplace in India may be open to this, as well.

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