Real estate is one of the more traditional businesses set in its ways. However, Covid brought many changes, one of them being the need to shift towards technology. Fortunately, the real estate industry is open to technological disruption. There are numerous processes you could automate to streamline business operations, increase revenue and boost your productivity. Without further ado, let’s look into some ways you could automate your real estate business.
User experience
Due to the rapid technological advancements, modern customers prefer to do extensive research on the Internet before they start shopping. You need to understand that having a good website is key to excelling in the crowded and competitive market. However, clients are looking for brands that go above and beyond to give their clients a pleasant customer experience. The best way to gain a competitive edge would be to provide engaging and seamless interactions that leave your clients longing for more. You could automate the user experience by using high-resolution photos, allowing clients to submit rental applications online, create an interactive property map, design virtual tours, and ensure real-time messaging between clients and managers.
Accounting, invoicing, and finance
We left the Stone Age long ago, so there is no need to burden yourself with heaps of financial paperwork or unnecessary trips to the post office. Manual processing of payments and invoices is also a waste of precious time your staff could redirect elsewhere. Automation helps you go paperless by creating a centralised system where you can streamline, review and manage the entire payment process from the comfort of your desk. Financial management automation also helps you monitor, approve, track orders, and pay the vendors accordingly. We can’t forget how easy it is to get invoices mixed up, especially when dealing with multiple people. Automation of invoicing helps reduce confusion, ensuring every person gets tagged to their respective invoice.
Sales and marketing
Real estate agents have a lot on their plate, including managing client databases and dealing with long sales cycles. Real estate businesses also have to put themselves out there, if they want to increase conversion rates. Though the agents need to interact with clients one-on-one to close a deal, there are plenty of sales and marketing processes they could automate to make their work easier. Automation could help them centralise information about their leads, segment clients into appropriate categories, store each client’s interaction history to provide a more personalised approach, and send targeted marketing emails and messages. Research reveals that automation of marketing processes could increase your conversion rates by about 53%.
Property Management
Property management is a high-stress task that entails checking on the progress of various properties, staying on top of maintenance, constant communication with clients, and coordinating with other project managers. We can’t imagine a world where a real estate business would manage all these tasks without automation. It would be wise to invest in property management software such as landlord software, an all-inclusive app with key features such as listings and marketing, tenant screening, maintenance requests, and rent collection.
Business processes and internal team workflows
Your internal workflow is the backbone of your real estate business. Unfortunately, most real estate agents spend a significant chunk of their day drowning in real estate documents that need completion, signing, and filing. In addition to the overwhelming pile of paperwork, these agents have emails, client databases, and showings to attend to. Humans have limited capabilities and are prone to buckling under pressure. Fortunately, most of the tasks listed above are repetitive, making them great candidates for automation.
Field inspection and real estate appraisals
Realtors must conduct quality inspections to confirm the home is in tip-top shape and that the correct systems are in place. On the other hand, real estate appraisals help the agents get the best price for the property. If the client suspects the quality inspection is not up to the required standards, they might cancel the deal and check someplace else. You could make things easier for you and your clients by automating tasks such as generating reports, creating online templates and checklists, and scheduling appraisal requests and inspections ahead of time. Clients could also book appointments online instead of coming to your offices in person.
We understand that digitising a business is not a one-and-done deal. It takes lots of research and introspection to determine whether automation is the right move for your business. We hope this article has shed some light on some of the benefits of automating your real estate business.
