Digitalisation:
The Key to the Castle in the Air

Digi­tal­i­sa­tion: the Key to the Castle in the Air

Digi­tal­i­sa­tion has long made its way into the build­ing and real estate sector. Be it apps that switch on lights or neigh­bour­hood smart-grids: topics are plen­ty. And inno­v­a­tive solu­tions are also avail­able for real estate market­ing. For this Valdivia Expert Tip, we have select­ed a few that go beyond your clas­si­cal website sales page .

More than a Service Tool: Prop­er­ty Soft­ware Application

Current­ly, there is very little usage of so called renter / tenant apps. And yet, they are flex­i­ble multi-purpose tools and a basis for many useful enhance­ments. German provider Telekom, for instance, provides a modu­lar soft­ware combin­ing admin­is­tra­tion with an SAP inter­face, services, commu­ni­ca­tion as well as smart home control and mobil­i­ty manage­ment. There is also Easysquare who clus­ter a vari­ety of func­tion­al­i­ties, such as docu­ment manage­ment, noti­fi­ca­tions of damage , news and neigh­bour­hood contacts.

It goes with the low level of prolif­er­a­tion: services are still play­ing a minor role in real estate digi­tal­iza­tion, and commu­ni­ca­tion is not play­ing any role at all. This is the result of a Lünen­donk^® study, which was conduct­ed in the previ­ous year¹. Howev­er, such an app can play a vital role in market­ing for commer­cial as well as resi­den­tial buildings:

•  For owners: as a direct commu­ni­ca­tion chan­nel with their resi­dents and users
•  For resi­dents and users, such as employ­ees of rent­ing corpo­ra­tions: as a service centre and neigh­bour­hood forum
•  For poten­tial renters / tenants: as an element of adver­tis­ing and an active wait­ing list
•  For visi­tors and guests: as a help with orien­ta­tion in the build­ing, park­ing manage­ment tool and infor­ma­tion on the surroundings

Experts with a tech­ni­cal focus tend to slight­ly under­es­ti­mate the image effect, even though, for most people, the smart­phone has become the key to many parts of life. So find­ing their resi­den­tial or work place in this fami­lar digi­tal envi­ron­ment will be a defi­nite bene­fit in market­ing the prop­er­ty in question.

Virtu­al Real­i­ty: Change of Scene in the ’Air Castle’

3D visu­al­i­sa­tions of future build­ings have become a stan­dard. But how about a real­is­tic round tour? We have seen such ‘immer­sive’ expe­ri­ences most­ly in comput­er games. Archi­tec­ture, too, makes use of  virtu­al or augment­ed real­i­ty tools (VR/AR²)³ – so why not use them for mark­t­ing purposes?

VR/AR tech­nol­o­gy opens up fasci­nat­ing possi­bil­i­ties in real estate market­ing. There is no reason to stop at round tours: build­ing owners or first tenants can play around with differ­ent floor plans, mate­ri­als and colours, and try out indi­vid­ual wish­es in their virtu­al ‘air castle’. Exist­ing build­ings, too, will gain as yet unknown attrac­tive­ness with AR: in what seems like magic, new walls, new room decor or stag­ing elements appear in the empty room or ‘above’ exist­ing structures.

So far, we have been think­ing of digi­tal­iza­tion as a build­ing, a tech­ni­cal and a hard­ware thing. For real estate market­ing, howev­er, it will become increas­ing­ly impor­tant to ‘build up’ virtu­al rooms – mate­r­i­al air castles, as it were.

¹ „Digi­tal­isierung in der Immo­bilien­wirtschaft“, Lünen­donk^® 360-Grad-Studie, 2021 (English title: Digi­tal­iza­tion in the Real Estate Indus­try)

²  VR für „Virtu­al Real­i­ty“, AR für „Augment­ed Reality“

³ „Augment­ed und Virtu­al Real­i­ty — Poten­ziale und prak­tis­che Anwen­dung immer­siv­er Tech­nolo­gien“, bitkom-Studie, 2021 (English title: Augment­ed and Virtu­al Real­i­ty – Poten­tial and Appli­ca­tion of Immer­sive Technologies