Real estate is one of the largest and most complex industries in the world and is expected to reach a staggering US $637.80 trillion by the end of 2024. As you might imagine by the size of the market cap, the real estate industry generates huge amounts of data every single day, and everyone from giant corporations to brokers, and property managers needs ways to organize and navigate this data efficiently and intelligently to make data-driven business decisions.  

Real estate analytics tools are essential in the property industry as they provide insights into market trends, customer preferences, property performance, risk factors, and opportunities. However, traditional methods of real estate analysis, such as spreadsheets, databases, and reports, are often inadequate, outdated, and inefficient, as they cannot cope with the volume, variety, and velocity of data generated by the industry. 

In this blog, we will discuss how cloud-based real estate analytics and REIT software are revolutionizing the real estate industry. We will get into detail and discuss the main features that these software for real estate provides and some of the challenges that might hinder the widespread adoption of these analytics software throughout the world. So, without any further ado let’s get started.  

The Evolution of Real Estate Analytics 

Analytics is the process of collecting, organizing, analyzing, and presenting data to the stakeholders so they can make intelligent business decisions. Just like all other industries the real estate analytics solutions weren’t just adopted by the world in one go, but rather it has evolved over a long period of time. Traditionally, real estate analytics relied on manual methods, such as spreadsheets, databases, and reports, to store, process, and present data. These methods had several limitations and challenges, such as: 

Data silos: Data was often stored in isolated and incompatible systems, such as different software applications, departments, or organizations, making it difficult to access, integrate, and share data across the industry.

Data quality: Data was often incomplete, inaccurate, inconsistent, or outdated, affecting the reliability and validity of the analysis and results.

Data complexity: In the past data often came as unstructured, heterogeneous, and high-dimensional, and required specialized skills and tools to handle and analyze data.

Data latency: Data was often updated infrequently, such as monthly or quarterly, resulting in delayed and outdated insights and decisions.

Data security: Security was and is still somewhat one of the major limitations as data is often vulnerable to unauthorized access, modification, or loss, compromising the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data.

Over time property analytics solutions have evolved tremendously and now with the boom in AI, these solutions are becoming more popular and feature-rich than ever before. First analytics software was developed for offline or on-premise use, but now cloud-based data analysis solutions like PropertyARC are taking over the industry.

Cloud-based solutions enable real estate professionals to measure and improve the performance and value of properties or portfolios, such as occupancy, revenue, expenses, cash flow, and return, using performance indicators, benchmarking, and optimization techniques, helping them to enhance and maximize their property value and returns.

Key Features of Real Estate Analytics And REIT Solutions That Make Them Revolutionary

Cloud-based real estate analytics is a broad and diverse field that encompasses various technologies, techniques, and applications. However, some of the key features that distinguish cloud-based real estate analytics from traditional methods are:

Data Centralization And Accessibility

Cloud-based real estate analytics enables real estate professionals to store and access data from a single and secure platform, regardless of the source, format, or location of the data. This eliminates the need for multiple and disparate systems, such as spreadsheets, databases, and reports, that often create data silos and inconsistencies. Data centralization and accessibility also improve data quality, as data can be validated, verified, and cleaned before being stored and accessed. In addition to this, the centralization provided by these real estate solutions also promotes collaboration since all the stakeholders like investors, builders, and property managers can get from a single source without searching for tons of hard files. 

Real-Time Market Analysis

Another important and advanced feature that cloud-based data analytics solutions provide is that they enable real estate professionals to analyze the real estate market in real time, using streaming and event-driven technologies. This allows the users to capture and process data as soon as it is generated, such as property listings, transactions, demographics, social media, sensors, and satellites, providing real-time and up-to-date insights into market trends, customer preferences, property performance, and risk factors.

Predictive Analysis For Property Valuation

The natural progression of technology from real-time data and centralized data accessibility leads to predictive analysis and forecasting models. These types of models are especially unique and most efficient when used on cloud-based real estate data analytics. Predictive analysis allows investors and property managers to forecast property valuations, future sales expectations, and much more. This allows real estate professionals to estimate and forecast the value of properties or portfolios, based on historical and current data, such as property characteristics, market conditions, customer behavior, and financial performance, providing predictive and prescriptive insights for property valuation.

Risk Management And Mitigation Strategies

Cloud-based real estate analytics enables real estate professionals to implement risk management and mitigation strategies. With the help of real estate analytics and REIT dashboards users can identify and quantify the risk factors and uncertainties associated with the real estate industry, such as market volatility, credit risk, liquidity risk, and operational risk, providing descriptive and diagnostic insights for risk assessment. 

Areas Where Property Analytics Software Are Transforming The Landscape

Although analytics software like PropertyARC is changing the dynamics of every sector of the real estate market, one of the areas that have seen the most significant impact is REIT. REIT software is a specialized software solution that is designed and developed for Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs). REITs are companies that own, operate, and finance income-producing real estate properties, such as office buildings, shopping malls, hotels, and apartments. REITs allow investors to invest in real estate without having to buy, manage, or finance the properties themselves.

However, large REIT firms face a significant challenge in managing their business operations, like regulatory compliance, financial management, asset management, and performance measurement. Now, let’s take a look at PropertyARC, which is one of the world’s leading REIT and stacking plans solutions, and see how it solves the key business issues.

PropertyARC is a very diverse solution and includes three main sections or portals i.e., REIT Dashboards, Stacking Plans, and C-level dashboards. Let’s break down each of these and look at their main features and the benefits they provide to the real estate and property markets.

REIT Dashboards

REIT is a complex domain and it can be quite challenging to maintain a large property portfolio. To help organizations, PropertyARC provides the following important analytics dashboards:

• • Expiring Leases: Provides a complete summary of coming lease expirations. It emphasizes critical data such as lease expiration dates, rental income, and square footage for expiring leases.

     

  • Building Lists: This dashboard allows you to view and manage a list of buildings owned, operated, or financed by your company.

     

  • Capex (Capital): It enables users to analyze and compare projected budgets to actual spending, providing valuable insights into project performance and cost management.

     

  • Tenants Listing: It delivers insights into tenant statistics, such as square footage occupied and rental income, using interactive visualizations. This enables property managers to discover high-value tenants, track occupancy rates, and analyze tenant-related financial indicators.

     

  • Finance (EBITDA): It offers interactive visualizations that enable users to monitor financial performance, examine income and spending trends, and evaluate profitability across properties, geographies, and other dimensions. This dashboard allows users to analyze performance over time, uncover opportunities for savings, and make informed financial decisions.

     

  • Executive OPS BI: This provides a complete summary of the rent roll data.  Users can see data at the portfolio level or drill down to individual properties or tenant information.

     

  • Delinquency: It displays late payments by property, tenant, and time period, giving an overview of unpaid balances, dying categories, and delinquency rates.

     

  • Tenant Portfolio: You may look at and analyze your tenant portfolio, which depicts the distribution and composition of your tenants across your properties.

Now that you have drilled down into the details of some REIT dashboards, you might now acknowledge how just a single platform can help property owners manage their operations from a single platform. The analyzed data when provided to the users in appealing and informative graphs and visualizations help stakeholders make informed and intelligent business decisions. 

Some Challenges In Employing Real Estate Dashboard Solutions

Although cloud-based real estate data analytics software is revolutionary and is changing traditional business operations, there are still some challenges that need to be overcome for widespread and easy adoption. Let’s take a look at two of the most common issues:

Implementation challenges and potential roadblocks: 

Implementing cloud-based solutions and REIT software requires significant time, effort, and resources, such as hardware, software, network, personnel, and training, to ensure their compatibility, functionality, and usability. Therefore, real estate professionals need to plan and execute their implementation strategies carefully and systematically, to avoid potential roadblocks and pitfalls, such as technical glitches, operational disruptions, and user resistance, and to ensure a smooth and successful transition and adoption of these technologies.

Addressing the learning curve for industry professionals:

Another major challenge faced by the organization is the learning curve. Adopting cloud-based solutions and REIT software requires a change in the mindset and skillset of real estate professionals, as they need to learn and adapt to new technologies, techniques, and applications, that are different from their traditional methods and practices.

Get Real Estate Analytics Help

Al Rafay Consulting has been serving as one of the leading global suppliers and consultants for real estate and REIT analytics solutions for over a decade. Partner with our expert developers and Microsoft-certified BI consultants to develop your customized cloud-based real estate solutions.