The internet and mobile telephony have enabled a boom in technology platforms applied to nearly all areas of our lives – jobs, homes, education, health, leisure, finance and even romance. The global shift towards the use of digital technology or the ‘fourth industrial revolution’ has facilitated innovation in three different activities – Information provision, Transactions, and Management & Control.
Real estate as an asset and as an industry is not immune to the innovations made possible by the fourth industrial revolution. What has become widely known as PropTech describes the digital transformation that is currently taking place within the real estate industry.
“PropTech is one small part of the wider digital transformation of the property industry. It describes a movement driving a mentality change within the real estate industry and its consumers regarding technology-driven innovation in data assembly, transactions, and the design of buildings and cities” (Andrew Baum and James Dearsley, reported in Davenport, 2019).
The Research Centres, Initiatives and Networks of Saïd Business School, University of Oxford have launched the Oxford Future of Real Estate Initiative, led by Professor Andrew Baum, to research and predict the changes faced by the industry over the next decade. PropTech2020: the future of real estate is an update to the 2017 report PropTech 3.0: the future of real estate. This initiative brings academics together with industry experts from leading businesses across the global real estate community.
From the analysis, a conclusion has been drawn out that the most important property technologies in the current PropTech market are those which produce digital data and generate value from it. This is where funding should be focussed in 2020.
Read the report at https://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/research/centres-and-initiatives/oxford-future-real-estate-initiative
