A more productive, efficient future for commercial real estate is being created with the help of a number of different yet interconnected technologies.
Central to many of these modern solutions is artificial intelligence (AI), with experts anticipating that this will become more instrumental as businesses in this industry seek to cut costs and cope with challenges such as worker shortages and stricter environmental regulations. So what are the key areas of AI impact you need to know about?
Accelerating market analysis
From a commercial real estate investment perspective, extensive market analysis is needed to ensure that investors are putting their money in the right projects, with good fundamentals underpinning them.
All of the data involved in making good decisions is incredibly tricky to cope with manually, but AI-powered market analysis is already here, and eliminates the time-consuming and tedious aspects of older techniques.
Streamlining development
The data-related benefits of AI tools continue when it comes to the development process used in modern commercial real estate.
Companies like Northspyre have created entire platforms which are capable of organizing information, analyzing it in-depth, and pulling out insights which can then be acted upon when important decisions can be made.
This is especially useful for things like budgeting, because it allows developers to pinpoint potentially wasteful spending practices and deal with them at the planning phase.
It’s not just data from current projects that’s brought to bear on decision-making, but also historic info which gives developers as much detail as possible to fall back on when choosing a path forwards.
Improving the sales process
Commercial real estate is just as reliant on the sales process as domestic property; it’s just that the scale of the transactions is typically much greater, and thus there’s more at stake.
Part of the problem is connecting with the right prospects in the first place, and working out what it is that will appeal to them about a location, or the features of a proposed development project.
AI sales tools are able to extrapolate the answers to these questions and many more, all in an automated fashion.
Thus members of the sales team can complete essential tasks more efficiently, while having more time in the day to use for other aspects of their role. This bolsters productivity without significantly increasing costs for businesses.
Simplifying building management
Aside from the big-picture applications of AI in commercial real estate, there’s one other extremely potent use of this tech, and that’s in terms of how business-focused buildings themselves are managed.
So-called smart buildings are now a reality the world over, with interconnected hardware and software enabling the minutiae of large, multi-occupancy structures to be centrally managed and predominantly automated.
This leads to efficiency in many areas, with lower energy consumption being the most obvious and desirable example of this.
Even workplace safety can be augmented through AI-backed building management solutions, making for happier, healthier employees as well.
What the future holds
The last thing to note about AI tech is that wherever it is applied, it has the ability to get better at its assigned duties over time, learning from mistakes and becoming more efficient by the day.
This doesn’t have to come at the expense of human workers, since in reality, the relationship between employees and AI is a positive one, bolstering productivity across the board.
We’re really only at the beginning of the AI journey, and the shape of commercial real estate in years to come will be determined more by this technology than any other factor.