Real estate represents the world’s largest asset class: $326 trillion. Three times the total of all publicly traded companies.
Despite this, the built environment has been historically slow to adopt new technologies. Now, this is changing. The pandemic has accelerated a second digital revolution: unparalleled since the dot-com boom of the early 2000s.
Prop-tech is the integration of technology and software to assist in real estate needs. A recent report by Deloitte indicates that 92% of CRE executives plan to maintain or increase prop-tech investments in the next 18 months.
Prop-tech provides smart solutions to daily property problems. With the digital transformation of brick-and-mortar, buildings become smart buildings.
Because buildings are not just bricks – they are data too. And once this data is harvested, connected, and utilised, buildings get better.
Prop-Tech perks
IoT and sensor technology provide buildings with real-time data and analytics. Multiple granular data points are generated to better monitor and understand how a space is used. Property portfolios can then be optimised, and cost savings pocketed.
Prop-tech also enhances safety and security – through access control, occupancy management, smart lockers, temperature sensing, room ventilation and much more. Big data becomes thick data. IoT and cloud migration across a prop-tech stack ensures all data is reliably accessible, anywhere.
Moreover, prop-tech drives sustainability. Buildings are inefficient: 30% of energy consumed in workplaces is currently being wasted. By understanding where we’re being wasteful – through sensors and data streams – there are serious gains to be made.
Smart solutions take the burden off building managers and occupants in creating a healthy, flexible, and secure environment. By improving a building’s physical security posture, managing information flow, enhancing sustainability and occupant experience – these technologies will make buildings more efficient and profitable. Win-win-win.
Here’s some of our top prop-tech picks:
- Density – the world’s most accurate people counting platform is anonymous by design and provides real-time occupancy data
- Kaiterra – award-winning air-quality monitors with unique modular design
- Proxy – provides mobile-first, touchless access
- Vpod – automates the routine through smart lockers and digital visitor management
- Alcatraz AI – frictionless access control powered by AI
Future-proofing
Today, the most connected and future-proofed buildings offer more than a managed fibre backbone. Prop-tech is entering the mainstream.
Occupants want technology that makes them more productive and helps to build a healthy, engaged workforce. Landlords want to optimise space usage and sustainability, while understanding what their people enjoy in the workplace.
Increasingly, we will see CRE developers asking how they build a building around technology, rather than the other way round. The smartest of spaces will fuse the best of digital and physical: building a “phygital” ecosystem.
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