Enhancing Transparency and Trust in Real Estate Through Technology
In today's article, we're thrilled to share key takeaways from our groundbreaking YouTube Live event, "Leveraging on Property Technology to Enhance Real Estate Sustainability: Enhancing Transparency and Trust in Real Estate Through Technology".
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Q1: Comparing the Real Estate landscape of the 90s and today, what significant transformation has occurred?
The real estate landscape in the 90s was purely manual in the way things were done, for example, the mode of transaction between ’91 and now has changed, the introduction of technology in Nigerian real estate changed a lot as companies like Property Pro who started doing property listing, marketing has been greatly improved by technology. Let’s not fail to also talk about the things that have not improved like the paper-based land registry which has not been updated and is inefficient in taking care of land verifications.
As technology increases the rate of property fraud also increases because of how lucrative the market is and this is because of land registry weakness.
Q2: What are the biggest challenges Real Estate stakeholders face today?
For this, Let’s focus on the three main categories of people involved which are the clients, the agents or realtors and the real estate developers. The core challenges of these persons are trust and transparency. The real estate developer needs to be fully transparent with their agents and buyers and this will help the agents to confidently bring buyers that will make quick buy decisions comfortably. From this perspective, we realize that trust and transparency are very big challenges and this is why developers go the extra mile to show social proofs like land allocations and also having clients talk about their experience to improve social credibility, they also try to keep their words in anything they do; even this is not enough because it is manual and manual leaves room for human error and this has greatly affected the sector as many who buy properties are mostly friends of the developers or agents and the solution we need is such that can help anyone anywhere buy land and not even know who the developer is.
Q3: In what way do you see property technology enhancing traditional processes and promoting sustainability in the real estate sector?
Property technology is not here to disrupt but to enhance the real estate sector, a typical example is the finance sector. It took a lot of convincing before fintech was accepted and the shift from analogue to digital banking was made and that is exactly what is happening in the real estate industry. Just like the finance sector evolved by allowing technology into the system and now you can be at home, make an order, pay and have it delivered to you with real-time tracking that’s exactly what the real estate sector needs so that clients can be at the comfort of their homes check a property, pay and have all his documents sent to him, all this needs is for the people in the ecosystem to embrace the technology and this means that the technology must the able to work exactly as the manual system works only to make it faster and easier.
Q4: What role does SyteMap play in all this?
SyteMap can be best described as a private land registry for real estate developers and government agencies to help them digitize their own land records and properly manage allocations for buyers in order to remove human errors to Improve revenue and sales. SyteMap leverages geospatial and blockchain technology to make this happen.
SyteMap helps to tackle duplicate plotting and allocation, oversubscription and it indicates if a particular land has been bought. Geospatial technology helps to take care of all this as it brings real-time details of real estate properties. SyteMap uses the layout of the estate to place on the exact position of that map and it helps to track the plots that have been sold, and which are available.
Developers that build in mass can also use sitemap because it is a land and property registry, it also manages the floor system of property development and gives you real-time imaging of the properties indicating which floors have been bought and which are available.
Q5: How do stakeholders in the real estate sector benefit from the integration of property technology?
SyteMap was specifically built with real estate developers in mind to make their work easy. Developers are looking for agents and buyers, this brings a seamless transaction process as it even helps to pay agents their commission once the client has paid for the property. The issue of agents commission sometimes is not because the developers are evil; when a developer is starting out, their payout to agents can be as quick as 24hrs but when they get larger, the payout becomes very cumbersome and makes them waste a lot of time, sitemap bridges this gap by doing it automatically.
SyteMap is also helping realtors by creating a community called SyteMap Tribe where realtors can keep an eye on developer’s properties via sitemap tech as a way of due diligence. They are also trained on how to sell and use sitemap technology to access the developers using their solutions giving them a backdoor to sell at will for any developer of their choice.
Q6: As a CEO in the Prop Tech industry, what would you say to stakeholders who haven’t integrated technology?
Property technology is a huge innovation and it’s well known that those who don’t innovate die eventually. For companies with a road map of 5 years or more, this is the best time to integrate technology to have the best platform for your data.
Q7: As the real estate sector becomes increasingly digital, what advice do you have for professionals in the ever-evolving landscape?
The advice is collaboration and this is very important because they can share information and reduce a lot of unnecessary competition.
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