Personal take of the HUSPI CMO, Zee Gimon, on corporate education and AI.

With all the talk about artificial intelligence right now from every faucet, it is more important than ever to keep hold of our humanity.

AI has been around for a while, since the 1980s, but since the launch of ChatGPT in November of 2022, things have exploded, and suddenly everyone has had a chance to try it.

Some have tried it for smart things — work, research, increasing the speed of various processes, and getting rid of mundane stuff.

Some have tried it for silly things — generating images in Miyazaki style (guilty as charged, I fell for that one too.)

And now, if you go to LinkedIn or Google any business conference, chances are there will be a billion posts or speeches about AI. AI here, AI there, everywhere AI (sing it to the tune of Old McDonald.)

Great!

I mean, it’s a really cool instrument. At HUSPI, we use Copilot, ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and many other AI tools for various purposes that help us serve our clients better. However, at the same time, we value the ability to think as a person. AI can only go so far.

That said, the clip below describes one of my biggest worries — that people simply give up their humanity in favor of the “easy life” governed by technology.

And another example — a paperclip game.

It’s incredibly straightforward — your goal is to make paperclips. Can’t hurt anyone, right? It’s just making paperclips.

AI comes along, helps you figure out issues. Finds a solution to cancer for a relatively small price. Becomes your partner…

But in the rush to maximize paperclip production, you end up… transforming all the matter in the universe into paperclips.

Yes, the entire universe is just that: paperclips. Nothing and no one else.

Okay, let’s set the dramatic apocalyptic Matrix-like scenarios aside. Nevertheless, relying on artificial intelligence is something that should be done carefully, weighing the consequences.

In this article, we’ll talk about education, primarily corporate education. Besides being the CMO at HUSPI, I am also the Administrator for the Ukraine/Moldova learning center at the European Nazarene University and its recent alumni. So in my own education as well as dealing with students right now, I keep facing the AI dilemma.

Do we ban the AI completely? Doesn’t make any sense.

Do we embrace it? In a way.

Do we use it as a tool? Yes.

Let’s dive into the way corporate education is built around people — mentors, teams, shared learning experiences, and how technology should support people instead of eclipsing them.

The heart of every organization: people.

I’ve had my share of bosses, and the very first one at the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine — Jorge Zukoski — set quite a high bar for all the rest.

I came to that organization as a rookie, fresh out of university and with no official work experience, and it was in the course of the next six years that I’ve learned what being a true leader means.

We did have corporate trainings, we did have different learning opportunities, but it was the personal experience that mattered. And what’s more, it was the daily reminders of those lessons as I watched my boss treat his equals as well as those who were below him.

Besides the Chamber president, there were other key people who have taught a multitude of lessons and skills as well.

Could AI tell me how to fix the email? Yeah. But how to do it in a way that would elevate everyone involved? I am not so sure, especially when we’re talking about someone who is just starting his/her path in work. In order to benefit from pure AI, you need to understand what kind of questions to ask it, and without experience, you might not even think to ask some of the questions.

Corporate education is more than purely skills. It’s culture shaping, leadership development, and vision alignment. For that, you need relationships with people.

Nurture, don’t replace

Moving on, the goal of corporate education is to strengthen what people already have.

I understand that there are different roles within the organization, different positions, and different tasks. And let’s face it, people have different talents and strengths, so one approach cannot fit everyone.

However, what everyone can benefit from is a chance to grow, a chance to be prepared on how to thrive in uncertainty or in various business situations, taking into account ethics, intuition, and people’s contexts, and for that, you need — say with me — people’s relationships.

So, where does AI fit into all of this? After all, like I’ve said before, we cannot simply say, “We are people and we don’t like AI.” It’s counterproductive and would set us back a few decades.

So what about AI?

I’ve said a lot against the AI, but once again, we cannot deny its impact on every single aspect of our lives — business, personal, and global. So we have to find a place for AI in our lives, without minimizing the personal impact.

And actually, AI is a great backstage assistant; there’s no denying that artificial intelligence can deal with routine, boring things much better than people, leaving the creative tasks for humans.

We have discussed the role of AI and how to correctly embrace it in the educational setting at one of the faculty meetings at our college. After all, the students’ as well as teachers’ temptation to just skip the effort and use AI for everything is high. The primary question, however, lies in the quality.

When it comes to corporate education, there are several things where artificial intelligence can help (and where we’ve used it successfully):

Adapting the content that was created by teachers, HRs, mentors, and professionals. One of the major things that we’ve done for a couple of our projects is empowering microlearning — people upload their materials from the seminars, etc., and AI creates reminders and little exercises from that content.

For example, the NinjaOne onboarding prototype below. For an employee that just joined the company, especially if s/he never worked in this system before, there should be a learning curve so it doesn’t overwhelm the person.

NinjaOne has a whole department for training and corporate education, and they are great with it. However, in order for people to benefit from the training fully, there should be some kind of reminders set up that would be aimed at small bits of knowledge.

While people can do that, this is the very task that can be done by AI.

What else can AI do? It became quite good at research and finding the right resources, or generating practical exercises.

For example, I’ve used ChatGPT to create a workbook designed for VC mentors to use and reflect on privately or review before/after mentoring conversations.

Feel free to download the PDF (or generate your own using ChatGPT).

Finally, saving the best for last — AI is great for handling repetitive admin tasks so that educators and mentors have more time to focus on people. Let technology take care of technology, and people take care of people.

AI doesn’t mentor.

It doesn’t inspire.

That’s still our job as people.

Practical things

Okay, let’s get to a few practical things about corporate education or adult learning.

Every training or educational initiative should start with who you’re helping, not what tools you’re using.

“Duh,” you’d say. “That’s obvious.”

Well, not always. Sometimes people start with a discussion about AI, Moodle, Google Classroom, offline/online…

That’s the wrong way to start. Education should always start with people.

Once you’ve started with who you’re helping, get people involved in designing their own learning paths.

How do you do it? Many people don’t know what they would like to learn, often because they don’t know what’s available. It doesn’t mean they aren’t motivated to learn.

Therefore, here are a few tricks:

Ask questions like this:

• “What do you wish you were better at in your daily work?”
• “Where do you feel stuck or bored right now?”
• “When was the last time you felt proud of something at work?”
• “What task drains you the most?”

Offer short 1-hour trainings on different topics to give employees/mentees to choose from.

Offer a list of short-term goals for people to achieve, for example:

• “I want to lead a meeting confidently.”
• “I want to give better feedback.”
• “I want to understand AI basics.”

Going back to AI — use it to highlight opportunities. It can analyze a whole lot of information and give you a whole list of things that can be helpful. However, leave the decisions to people.

Finally, the main practical tip — internal communication, practice, and mentorship are a whole lot more important than automation. Automation is easy to do, and it should be done — but don’t just run after the automation because everyone says you need to automate.

The culture of education

Every educational program shapes your company culture — whether you’ve meant it intentionally or not.

Even the boring ones. Especially the boring ones.

You’re not just teaching skills.

You’re teaching what kind of company this is.

Whether people matter.

Whether curiosity is welcome.

Whether failure is fatal or just part of learning.

And people feel that long before they write it on a feedback form.

So… ask yourself — what are you really building? What are you aiming to achieve?

A culture of fear and quiet replacement? Where everyone watches their back and tries to outpace the algorithm?

Or a culture of growth and belonging — where people know they’re meant to be here, and they’re allowed to grow?

Tech can’t answer that for you. That’s a leadership decision.

And listen-AI in learning isn’t the villain. But when we use it to track clicks, measure “productivity,” or set up dashboards like they’re confession booths… we lose the point.

Learning is a deeply human thing. AI should serve that.

Quietly. In the background.
Not with a stick in its hand.

The future of learning is relational, purposeful, and deeply human — supported by tools that serve, not replace.

And one last thing: always check information. Always make sure your decisions are made by you, not AI.

Live long and prosper.

Originally published at https://huspi.com on July 2, 2025.

Corporate Education Starts with People | HUSPI was originally published in HUSPI on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The world’s population continues to grow (as of summer 2023, there were 8,045,311,447 people living on the planet). While some rural areas have started to resurrect due to the post-pandemic realization that working in the office is not a critical requirement, still more people would love to move into the cities.

As a result, cities become more crowded and in dire need of updated and more efficient infrastructure and services. However, it’s hard to do some major overhauls in the existing real estate and infrastructure, therefore, there is a need for something more creative.

The Internet of Things (IoT) technologies come in handy in this case because they help to improve sustainability, livability, and efficiency. How? Let’s talk about that in today’s article.

Overall Picture

As we discussed in the previous article about sustainability, environmental concerns are gaining more and more traction and people want solutions that would help reduce the negative impact, while providing the same levels of comfort.

Data analytics and IoT come in handy for this purpose because they give the opportunity to measure everything and identify areas where usage (or excess) can be minimized. For example, this concerns smart energy systems (smart grids increase the reliability and security of the networks as well as protect from security threats) and waste management (monitoring garbage cans for example to optimize the waste collection schedules.)

Numerous countries started to introduce smart city solutions on the government level as a result of the potential improvements for sustainable and economic growth. For example, Germany is to get EUR 1 billion investment from Siemens for urban technologies development and innovation. China also made the “Smart Cities Development Plan” a part of their Made in China 2025, an initiative that is aimed to take the Chinese market to a new level.

However, all these technologies have to take into account the existing infrastructure, and, as a result, not everything is as straightforward as it could’ve been. Let’s take a look at the challenges, restraints, opportunities, and market drivers for smart cities and technology innovations.

Challenges

Not all economies are developed enough to provide appropriate infrastructure for smart cities. This includes legacy telecom connections that cannot provide low-latency and high-capacity connectivity and as a result, it is very difficult to introduce innovations that require high-speed internet for proper work.

Governments in developing and underdeveloped countries also lack appropriate budgets to upgrade the infrastructures required.

Restraints

One of the major concerns in the area of smart city projects is privacy and security. The entire system is highly vulnerable since smart city solutions rely on IoT and central access points for different data. Considering the fact that data can include personal information or video/photo data, the issue of privacy and security of customers while adopting various identification systems has to be addressed holistically.

Drivers

The advancements in machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies both accelerate the development of smart cities because they help to empower people, organizations, as well as systems to be more self-sufficient by acquiring and processing large amounts of data. With the help of insights from that data, people can make informed decisions without spending too much time on them.

For smart cities, AI and ML are vital for managing medical monitoring, industrial control systems, environmental sensors, traffic lights, smart meters, and others. With the help of data incoming from all these sources, it becomes easier to do predictive analysis and forecasts for smart city planning.

Opportunities

The fact that AI and ML are progressing at a geometric speed provides ample ground and opportunities for smart city development. Add to that the possibilities of new IoT sensors and solutions along with comprehensive big data analytics — and you get a really good technical ecosystem.

Smart City Market Statistics

The COVID-19 period gave a boost to smart city development due to the fact that people had to become creative about meetings and managing things online without having physical contact. As a result, the projected revenue for the smart cities market in 2023 is projected to reach US $89.49 billion.

The further growth rate (CAGR) is expected to continue at 13.13%, according to Statista, which would lead to a market volume of US $165.80 billion by 2028.

The US is the global leader in terms of smart city revenues and it’s expected to generate US $11.12 billion in 2023. In the rest of the world, countries like South Korea and Singapore are leaders in implementing smart city solutions and initiatives.

Smart Cities Trends

IoT and Data-Driven Decision-Making

The Internet of Things (IoT) continues to play a central role in smart city development. IoT sensors and devices are used to collect data on various aspects of city life, such as traffic, air quality, energy usage, and waste management. This data is used to make informed decisions and improve city services.

In Europe and the USA, there are numerous initiatives and solutions existing at the moment.

United States:

1. IBM Watson IoT: IBM offers a comprehensive IoT platform that includes device management, data analytics, and integration with AI capabilities through Watson.
2. Microsoft Azure IoT: Microsoft’s Azure IoT suite provides a range of services for connecting and monitoring IoT devices, as well as tools for data analytics and machine learning.
3. AWS IoT: Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers a suite of IoT services, including device management, connectivity, and analytics through AWS IoT Analytics.
4. Google Cloud IoT: Google Cloud provides a platform for connecting, managing, and processing data from IoT devices. It integrates with other Google Cloud services for advanced analytics.
5. Cisco IoT Solutions: Cisco offers a variety of IoT solutions, including networking infrastructure, security, and analytics tools.

Europe:

1. Siemens MindSphere: Siemens provides MindSphere, an open IoT operating system that connects products, plants, systems, and machines.
2. Bosch IoT Suite: Bosch offers an IoT platform that includes device management, data analytics, and connectivity solutions.
3. SAP Leonardo IoT: SAP provides the Leonardo IoT platform, integrating IoT data with business processes and analytics.
4. Tele2 IoT: Tele2 offers IoT solutions for connectivity, device management, and data analytics.
5. Schneider Electric EcoStruxure: Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure platform includes IoT solutions for various industries, focusing on energy management and automation.
6. Vodafone IoT Solutions: Vodafone provides a range of IoT solutions, including connectivity, device management, and analytics services.

Sustainable Urban Planning

Smart cities are increasingly focused on sustainability and environmental considerations. This includes initiatives like renewable energy integration, waste reduction, and the promotion of green transportation options.

Mobility Solutions

Smart cities are exploring innovative transportation solutions, including electric and autonomous vehicles, bike-sharing programs, and improved public transportation systems to reduce traffic congestion and improve mobility.

These solutions aim to enhance urban transportation, reduce congestion, and promote sustainable mobility. Here are a couple of examples from each region:

Europe:

1. Amsterdam, Netherlands — Mobility as a Service (MaaS): Amsterdam has been a pioneer in implementing Mobility as a Service, an integrated approach to urban mobility that combines various modes of transportation into a single, accessible service. The city aims to make it easy for residents to plan and pay for their journeys using a single platform, incorporating public transport, bike-sharing, ride-sharing, and more.
2. Barcelona, Spain — Superblocks: Barcelona has been developing the concept of “superblocks,” which involves transforming regular city blocks into pedestrian-friendly spaces. By restricting vehicle access to certain areas and promoting walking, cycling, and public transportation, Barcelona aims to improve air quality, reduce traffic noise, and create more livable urban spaces.

United States:

1. Los Angeles, California — LA Express Park: LA Express Park is a smart parking management system implemented in downtown Los Angeles. It uses sensor technology to monitor parking space occupancy and adjusts parking meter rates dynamically based on demand. The goal is to optimize parking availability, reduce traffic congestion, and encourage the use of public transportation.
2. Columbus, Ohio — Smart Columbus: Columbus has undertaken the Smart Columbus initiative to improve transportation in the city. The project includes the deployment of electric vehicle charging stations, the implementation of a connected vehicle platform, and the promotion of sustainable transportation options. It aims to enhance mobility, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and improve overall transportation infrastructure.

Digital Inclusion

Digital inclusion refers to the efforts to ensure that all individuals and communities, including those who are traditionally underserved or marginalized, have access to and the skills to use digital technologies. Here are examples of digital inclusion initiatives from various regions:

Digital Literacy Programs:

• USA — EveryoneOn: EveryoneOn is a national nonprofit working to eliminate the digital divide by making high-speed, low-cost internet service and affordable computers accessible to all Americans. They also offer digital literacy training programs.
• UK — Good Things Foundation: This organization works to ensure that everyone benefits from digital technology. They run various digital inclusion programs, including online courses and community-based training, to help people develop digital skills.

Community Wi-Fi Projects:

• India — Google Station: Google Station is an initiative that provides free Wi-Fi hotspots in public places, such as railway stations and bus stops. The project aims to bring affordable internet access to people in areas with limited connectivity.
• Brazil — Digital Social Inclusion Program: The Brazilian government has implemented programs to provide free internet access in public spaces, including schools and community centers, to promote digital inclusion.

Affordable Hardware Initiatives:

• Africa — BRCK Education: BRCK Education is a company that focuses on providing rugged, low-cost hardware solutions designed for challenging environments in Africa. Their Kio Kit, for example, is a digital classroom in a box, aimed at improving education in low-resource settings.
• Global — One Laptop per Child (OLPC): OLPC is a non-profit organization that aims to provide low-cost, durable laptops to children in developing countries. The initiative seeks to bridge the digital divide in education.

Government Initiatives for Inclusive Access:

• Australia — Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) — Digital Inclusion Strategy: The DTA in Australia has a Digital Inclusion Strategy that focuses on improving digital access and skills for all Australians, with a particular emphasis on vulnerable and disadvantaged groups.
• South Korea — Digital Inclusion Initiatives: South Korea has implemented various programs, including digital literacy training for seniors and low-income populations, to ensure that everyone can benefit from the country’s advanced digital infrastructure.

Corporate Initiatives:

• Global — Facebook Connectivity Initiatives: Facebook has launched various initiatives, including the Connectivity Lab, to develop technologies like high-altitude drones and satellites to provide internet access to underserved regions around the world.

These examples showcase a range of strategies and approaches to promote digital inclusion, from providing access to affordable hardware and internet connectivity to offering digital literacy training programs. Digital inclusion is a multifaceted effort that often involves collaboration between governments, non-profit organizations, businesses, and communities.

Cybersecurity

As cities become more connected, the need for robust cybersecurity measures to protect critical infrastructure and citizen data is growing. Smart cities are investing in cybersecurity solutions and best practices.

United States:

1. Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA): Enacted in 2015, CISA encourages the sharing of cybersecurity threat information between the government and private entities. It provides legal protections to companies that voluntarily share cyber threat indicators and defensive measures.
2. Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA): FISMA, initially enacted in 2002 and subsequently updated, establishes a framework for securing federal government information systems. It requires federal agencies to develop, implement, and manage information security programs.
3. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA): While primarily focused on healthcare data privacy, HIPAA includes security provisions that mandate the protection of electronic protected health information (ePHI). Covered entities must implement safeguards to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of ePHI.
4. Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA): GLBA includes provisions related to the security and protection of nonpublic personal information held by financial institutions. It requires these institutions to implement safeguards to protect customer information.

Europe:

1. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR): Enforced in 2018, GDPR is a comprehensive data protection regulation that includes provisions related to the security of personal data. Organizations must implement appropriate technical and organizational measures to ensure the security of personal data.
2. Network and Information Systems Directive (NIS Directive): Implemented in 2018, the NIS Directive aims to enhance the cybersecurity capabilities of European Union member states. It requires operators of essential services and digital service providers to implement security measures and report significant incidents.
3. Directive on Security of Network and Information Systems (NIS Directive 2): Proposed in 2021, this is a revised version of the NIS Directive aimed at strengthening cybersecurity in the EU. It introduces new requirements for cybersecurity incident reporting, cooperation, and security measures.
4. ePrivacy Regulation: Still under discussion as of my last update, the ePrivacy Regulation aims to complement the GDPR by addressing electronic communications, including security aspects. It is intended to ensure the confidentiality and security of electronic communications data.

Smart Governance

The use of digital platforms and data analytics to improve the efficiency and transparency of city governance is becoming increasingly important. This includes e-governance initiatives and citizen engagement platforms.

United States:

1. United States Digital Service (USDS): The USDS was established in 2014 to bring top technology talent into government and improve the delivery of digital services. It works on various projects to enhance the user experience of government websites, streamline processes, and address complex technology challenges.
2. 18F: 18F is a government agency within the General Services Administration (GSA) that provides digital services to federal agencies. It works on projects focused on user-centered design, agile development, and open-source principles to create more efficient and effective government services.
3. City Digital Alliance (CDA): CDA is a collaborative effort between the City of Chicago and technology companies to address urban challenges using technology. It focuses on projects related to transportation, water management, and other aspects of urban living.

Europe:

1. Estonia — e-Government: Estonia is known for its advanced e-Government initiatives. The country has implemented a range of digital services, including e-Residency, which allows people to establish and manage businesses online, and the use of digital IDs for secure access to various services.
2. United Kingdom — Government Digital Service (GDS): The GDS was established to transform the delivery of government services by making them simpler, clearer, and faster. It has led initiatives such as the redesign of government websites, the implementation of the Verify identity assurance system, and the promotion of agile and user-centered design methodologies.
3. Barcelona, Spain — Smart City Initiatives: Barcelona has implemented various smart city initiatives, including the use of sensor networks for efficient waste management, smart street lighting, and the development of a digital platform for citizen engagement. These initiatives aim to enhance urban living and sustainability.
4. Norway — Digitalization of Public Services: Norway has been actively digitalizing public services to improve efficiency and accessibility. This includes the use of digital platforms for citizen engagement, e-government services, and the implementation of technologies such as blockchain for secure and transparent transactions.

HUSPI has experience in developing e-government solutions.

Resilience Planning

Smart cities are preparing for the challenges posed by climate change and natural disasters by implementing resilient infrastructure and emergency response systems.

Smart Buildings

1. Energy Efficiency: Smart building technologies continue to focus on optimizing energy use through systems like smart lighting, HVAC, and building automation. This reduces operational costs and environmental impact.
2. Occupant Experience: Improving the comfort and productivity of building occupants is a key trend. Smart buildings use sensors and data analytics to create personalized and responsive environments, such as adjusting lighting and temperature based on occupancy.
3. Health and Wellness: In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a growing emphasis on air quality monitoring, touchless access controls, and other features that enhance the health and safety of building occupants.
4. Sustainability Certification: Green building certifications, such as LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) and BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method), are increasingly sought after as they reflect a commitment to sustainability.
5. Smart Security: Smart buildings are adopting advanced security measures, including biometric access control, video analytics, and intrusion detection systems, to enhance safety and protect assets.
6. Remote Building Management: With the growth of remote work and property management, smart building systems are becoming more accessible for remote monitoring and control through mobile apps and cloud-based platforms.
7. Integration and Interoperability: Building systems are increasingly designed to be interoperable and integrate seamlessly, allowing for better coordination and data sharing between different systems (e.g., lighting, HVAC, security).

These trends indicate the ongoing evolution of smart cities and smart buildings to create more sustainable, efficient, and user-friendly urban environments. To stay updated on the latest trends, it’s essential to follow industry publications, attend conferences, and engage with experts in the field.

Originally published at https://huspi.com on November 23, 2023.

Smart Cities: Real Estate Trends in the US and EU for 2024 was originally published in HUSPI on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

So, we’re the HUSPI crew, the folks behind the scenes working our magic in the realms of PropTech, FinTech, and all things software.

Recently, we’ve been on a mission to cook up something special for the heroes of the real estate world — that’s you! 🦸‍♂️🏡 After some serious brainstorming sessions (and maybe a few cups of strong coffee), we’ve whipped up not one, not two, but three prototypes tailor-made for the PropTech universe.

Now, here’s where you come in — your opinion is like the secret sauce that makes it all come together! We’re itching to know which of our brainchildren you think would be the perfect sidekick for your business.

Ready to dive into the adventure? Click here to join our exclusive survey and cast your vote!

We’re not just asking for feedback; we’re asking you to be a part of the story. Your insights will be the plot twists that shape the future of PropTech, and we can’t wait to see how this tale unfolds.

Your opinion means the world to us. Click here to embark on this adventure with us.

Cheers to shaping the future together!

Yours,
HUSPI

P.S. Your feedback? It’s like the magical sword that slays the dragons of mediocrity. Let’s conquer this PropTech realm! 🚀

What product can change the real estate business? // YOUR opinion wanted. was originally published in HUSPI on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

On average, a person spends from 3 hours 15 minutes to 4.5 hours on their phone each day, with most of the time spent in various messengers or apps that allow for endless scrolling like TikTok or YouTube Shorts.

Well, when you’re in real estate sales & PropTech, this knowledge can be used for the benefit of your business, providing the information in a familiar fashion to the users while promoting your products and services.

In this article, we’ll talk about OurDimDeal — a mobile app prototype that can simplify real estate property searches and make this process more enjoyable for everyone.

The main features of the prototype are the following:

• Endless scroll for listings, which helps to stay focused on the search without any interruptions.
• Easy listing creation, which simplifies the routine work for the sellers and brokers by offering predefined options and an integrated property description generator option.
• Built-in messenger, which facilitates effective communication between sellers, buyers, and/or brokers.
• Augmented reality feature, which enhances the user experience. The app incorporates an AR feature that allows users to generate live photos by scanning QR codes found on property listings. By pointing their device’s camera at the QR code, users can instantly visualize the property in real-time (Available for an additional fee.)
• Role-based user profiles, which can be used by brokers, sellers, or buyers. Each role has its own flow for the property sale process.
• Convenient search and filter options, which help to refine the criteria for the properties they see (location, price range, property type, number of bedrooms or bathrooms, etc.)
• Saved searches and favorites, which provide the opportunity to take the time to make the decision without losing the properties you liked from sight.

The PropTech Revolution

The proptech industry is real estate technology and software tools that empower all the players to do their job more efficiently and help overcome the challenges of the traditionally-offline real estate market.

What are the challenges that each of the players experience? We’ll stop on three major groups: brokers, sellers, and buyers.

Sellers

Pricing: Determining the right listing price can be challenging for sellers. Setting it too high can discourage potential buyers, while setting it too low may result in financial losses.

Time and carrying costs: Selling a property often takes time, and during this period, sellers continue to bear expenses such as mortgage payments, property taxes, and maintenance costs.

Negotiations: Negotiating with potential buyers can be challenging, as sellers may have emotional attachments to the property and struggle to find a balance between their desired price and market realities.

Property condition: Preparing the property for sale and ensuring it is in good condition can be time-consuming and costly for sellers. They may need to invest in repairs, staging, or renovations to make the property more appealing to buyers.

Marketing and visibility: Attracting the attention of qualified buyers requires effective marketing strategies. Traditional advertising methods may not always reach the target audience effectively.

Buyers

Financing: One of the main challenges for buyers is obtaining financing for the purchase. Meeting the strict requirements of lenders and securing favorable interest rates can be a hurdle, particularly for first-time buyers.

Limited inventory: Buyers may face difficulties finding a property that meets their needs and budget due to limited inventory in certain markets. This can lead to increased competition and potential bidding wars.

Property inspections: Conducting thorough property inspections can be challenging, especially for buyers with limited knowledge of construction and building codes. Identifying potential issues and assessing the overall condition of the property is crucial but can be time-consuming and costly.

Closing process: The closing process involves numerous paperwork, legalities, and coordination among various parties. Buyers may encounter challenges related to obtaining necessary documents, coordinating with lenders, and ensuring a smooth closing.

Brokers

Market fluctuations: Real estate markets are subject to fluctuations, which can affect brokers’ income and commission rates. In a slow market, it may be more challenging to find qualified buyers and close deals.

Competition: The real estate industry is highly competitive, and brokers need to constantly differentiate themselves and their services to attract clients and win listings.

Legal and regulatory complexities: Brokers must stay up to date with changing regulations, licensing requirements, and legal obligations to ensure compliance and protect their clients’ interests.

Technology adoption: Embracing technology and adapting to digital platforms can be a challenge for brokers who are accustomed to traditional methods. Incorporating online marketing, virtual tours, and other tech tools can enhance their competitiveness but may require a learning curve.

Client expectations and satisfaction: Meeting the expectations of both sellers and buyers while maintaining professional relationships can be demanding. Brokers must effectively communicate, provide accurate information, and manage negotiations to ensure client satisfaction.

OurDimDeals app targets several of these challenges, namely:

1. Marketing & visibility options for the sellers. While OurDimDeals might not be the only platform to sell one’s real estate property, it is aimed to be easy to use and therefore adds more value and sense to marketing efforts.
2. Limited inventory for buyers. Given filters and search options, it’s easier to navigate various properties all over the country (or specific locations.) Often, the case for limited inventory isn’t the physical lack of housing, but the inability to find any information online. OurDimDeals focuses on simplifying the seller journey in order to make it easier to add properties.
3. Technology adoption for brokers. OurDimDeals is a PropTech mobile application, which means it’s technological at the core, but we pay additional attention to the user-friendliness of the app to ensure that even new users know how to navigate the app and use all the available features to their advantage.

Property Listings: What is essential?

When you’re looking for a perfect place to live, you want to know as much about it as possible. If you’re looking for a buyer, it’s also nice to know what information they might need, so here is a checklist of things to cover in your property listing:

Basic property details go first because they create the foundation for the rest of the listing:

• Property type: Indicate whether it’s a house, apartment, condominium, townhouse, etc.
• Location: Provide the address or general location of the property, including the neighborhood or district.
• Size and dimensions: Specify the total area of the property, including the number of bedrooms, bathrooms, and other rooms.
• Floor plan: Include a floor plan or layout to give buyers an idea of the property’s configuration.
• Age and condition: Mention the age of the property and any notable updates or renovations made.
• Amenities: Highlight any special features or amenities such as a swimming pool, garden, garage, or security systems.
• Accessibility: Describe the accessibility features of the property, such as wheelchair ramps or elevator access.
• Views: If the property offers scenic views, mention them, such as ocean views, city skyline, or nearby parks.

The next thing, after the basic details, is the pricing and financial details.

• Listing price: Clearly state the asking price for the property.
• Financing options: Provide information about financing options available or if the property is eligible for certain loan programs.
• Property taxes: Mention the approximate annual property tax amount.
• Homeowners’ association (HOA) fees: If applicable, include details about any HOA fees or special assessments.
• Additional costs: Specify any other costs associated with the property, such as utility fees or maintenance fees.

Describe your property next. Paint that mental picture for your buyers so that the pricing information is sandwiched by the features they would love. Here are a few things to think about:

• Description: Craft a compelling and accurate description of the property, highlighting its key features, architectural style, unique characteristics, and selling points.
• Interior Features: Mention specific interior features like flooring types, kitchen appliances, heating and cooling systems, and any noteworthy design elements.
• Exterior Features: Describe the property’s outdoor spaces, such as a patio, balcony, garden, or landscaping features.
• Recent upgrades or renovations: If there have been recent upgrades or renovations, highlight them to showcase the property’s modernization or added value.

After you’ve painted a word picture, supplicate it with visual information and photos or videos, so that once again, the reader falls in love with this property. This can include:

• High-quality photos: Include a variety of high-resolution photos that capture the property’s exterior, interior, rooms, and any notable features. Showcase the property from multiple angles and perspectives.
• Videos or virtual tours: Provide videos or virtual tours that allow potential buyers to virtually explore the property, offering a more immersive experience.
• Drone footage: If available, aerial footage or drone images can help provide a comprehensive view of the property and its surroundings.

And last but not least, make sure you provide your contact information so that buyers can contact you. If you are selling directly, it can be your info, or you can provide your listing agent or broker that is handling the sale of your property for you. Contact details may include:

• Phone
• Email
• Social media (in case you’d like to be contacted there)

In the case of OurDimDeals, the app has a built-in chat function so your contact details aren’t shared publicly (unless you want that.)

As we mentioned above, OurDimDeals also provides an endless scroll feature for the property listings which helps potential buyers to navigate through the properties easily and yet get a wealth of information if they go deeper into a particular property.

Another reason why so much information is necessary upfront is that this simplifies and enhances the property search process. Each of these detail categories can be a filter option and as a result, users can find properties that meet their specific needs and wants quicker.

Enhanced Communication Channels

Effective communication plays a crucial role in the real estate industry, benefiting all parties involved, including sellers, buyers, brokers, and other professionals. OurDimDeals mobile app prototype has a built-in messaging platform so that the conversations about the properties are right there with the property listings. This facilitates seamless communication between everyone involved.

Communication is key to a successful sale of the property. Your property might be fantastic, but if communication isn’t convenient or thought-through, this may break the deal.

In the OurDimDeal app prototype, we took care of this by providing:

• Real-time conversations within the app and connected to the listing. In case you’re chatting with different people about different properties, this information is all tied up to the listing. Users can easily inquire about properties, schedule viewings, negotiate offers, and receive instant notifications for any updates or new messages.
• Instant notifications make sure you don’t miss an update or a message from your contacts about the real estate property.
• Centralized message management helps to ensure that if you want to find a specific conversation about a listing, that’s simple to do. You can either go to the saved properties to view the discussions or go to your profile to see all people you’ve contacted.

Extended Reality for Property Viewing

PropTech is all about technologies and it’s necessary to embrace them and use their benefits for your business or your life. Augmented Reality is one of these trends that can provide interactive property viewing. People live in a 3D world and seeing something in 3D is always better than just a flat photo.

• Augmented Reality can be used for virtual property tours that help users make informed decisions. You can take photos of your property from all sides and generate a virtual mockup.
• AR feature can also be used to scan QR codes in your marketing materials, for example, to show a video or live photos. We did this for one of our clients who does interactive exhibitions.

Conclusion

User-friendliness and easy navigation are a must for a mobile app. That is one of the primary things we paid attention to when we were thinking about our OurDimDeals mobile app prototype and its features.

We wanted to make something that would streamline the conversations and conversions and simplify the process of looking at real estate listings, making it a pleasant (and slightly addicting, haha) experience.

At this stage, OurDimDeals is just a prototype but if you’re interested in developing this product further for your needs, please contact us.

Originally published at https://huspi.com on June 27, 2023.

How to increase property sales with a listing mobile app? [HUSPI Prototype Included] was originally published in HUSPI on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been around for years but such tools as ChatGPT or MidJourney have made AI more approachable for “mere mortal users.” AI technology caused as much excitement (because this simplifies a lot of tasks) as fear (because it might take away or dramatically change a lot of jobs people did.)

But, fear or no fear, this technology will change our digital world. The annual growth of AI is expected to have a rate of 37.3% from 2023 to 2030, according to Grand View Research. As a result, it’s important to start adapting the business models and processes for the upcoming AI features to stay in business. It’s always easier to do something gradually than to have to completely revamp one’s business.

In this article, we’ll focus on the real estate industry and how it can benefit from AI implementation. According to research, 48% of business owners in real estate say AI helps them to cut operational costs and 63% said artificial intelligence solutions helped to increase revenue.

How can you do that for your business? Well, we’ve got 6 possible solutions.

Virtual Property Tours

Photos don’t always give a sense of the space and it’s an important factor when it comes to purchasing real estate. It’s always best to physically visit the location and see the property with your own eyes.

But what to do when the physical visit isn’t an option? Stitching and scene reconstruction technologies become helpful, especially when empowered with artificial intelligence.

• Stitching: get a 360-degree video or photo of the property (can be done with any camera, including smartphones) and AI can help to stitch them together to create a seamless panoramic view that enables an immersive and realistic virtual tour.
• Scene Reconstruction: this technology uses floor plans and images to generate a 3D model of the property by mapping the images onto the blueprints. As a result, you get the virtual environment of the property as if you were there.

Predictive Analytics for Market Analysis

Market analysis is incredibly important in every industry and usually, it involves digging through a ton of data. AI algorithms can analyze large volumes of structured and unstructured data, including property sales data, demographic information, economic indicators, and online listings. By processing and analyzing this data, AI can identify patterns and correlations that might not be apparent to humans, providing insights into market trends, demand patterns, and pricing dynamics.

Forecasting is a very powerful tool for real estate because it helps to evaluate the land and the neighborhood in a much more efficient way. Predictive analytics are also used for other real-estate-related things, such as:

1. Risk assessment
2. Site selection
3. Targeted marketing
4. Project optimization

There are already startups that operate in predictive analytics, including for the real estate industry. Here are 6 most popular ones:

AlphaSense: AlphaSense is an AI-powered market intelligence platform that leverages natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning algorithms to analyze vast amounts of financial data and provide market insights and predictions.

DataRobot: DataRobot is a machine learning platform that automates the end-to-end process of building and deploying predictive models. It can be used for market predictions by analyzing historical data, identifying patterns, and generating accurate forecasts.

EidoSearch: EidoSearch is a financial analytics platform that employs AI and machine learning algorithms to analyze historical market data and identify patterns. It helps users make informed investment decisions and predict future market movements.

Kensho: Kensho, now owned by S&P Global, is an analytics platform that combines NLP, machine learning, and data visualization to generate market predictions and insights. It can analyze large datasets and provide actionable intelligence to investors and financial professionals.

Sentieo: Sentieo is a financial research platform that uses AI and machine learning algorithms to analyze financial data, news, and corporate filings. It provides market predictions, and investment insights, and helps users discover trends and opportunities in the market.

Thinknum: Thinknum is a data analytics platform that uses AI and machine learning algorithms to extract and analyze alternative data from various sources, including social media, web scraping, and financial data. It provides predictive analytics and market insights for investors and analysts.

Personalized Property Recommendations

We’re used to personalized recommendations all around us — Google’s and Meta’s AI tools are just the tip of the iceberg yet they teach us to get used to all kinds of information to be related to our likes and dislikes — so much that it’s sometimes scary. Yet, we all like to be known.

When it comes to real estate and property, personalized recommendations can make all the difference. Gone are the days of sifting through countless listings, hoping to stumble upon your dream home. Thanks to AI technology, personalized recommendations have become a game-changer in the industry.

With AI, individuals can receive tailored suggestions to streamline their property search process. Whether it’s finding the perfect rental or the ideal home for purchase, AI’s ability to provide customized recommendations proves invaluable. By leveraging AI technology, individuals can make more informed decisions about their real estate needs and find the property that best suits their preferences.

Imagine having an AI-powered assistant that understands your unique preferences and requirements. It can analyze your previous searches, location preferences, budget constraints, and even your lifestyle choices to deliver tailored recommendations that match your needs perfectly.

These AI-driven recommendation systems take into account various factors such as property type, location, amenities, price range, and more. They save you time and effort by presenting you with a curated list of properties that are most likely to align with your preferences.

Whether you’re a first-time buyer or an experienced investor, personalized recommendations powered by AI can help you find the ideal property without the hassle. So say goodbye to endless scrolling and hello to a more efficient and effective way of discovering your dream real estate.

The best thing is that AI algorithms can analyze your preferences as a customer and match them with suitable properties based on your data and machine learning techniques.

Automated Lead Generation

Being a property developer in the real estate industry can be quite challenging, especially when it comes to lead generation. Generating high-quality leads is crucial for the success of any property development project. However, there are several obstacles that property developers often face in this process.

One of the main challenges is identifying and targeting the right audience. With so many potential buyers or investors out there, it can be difficult to narrow down your focus and reach those who are genuinely interested in your properties. This is where AI technology can come into play.

AI-powered tools can help property developers streamline their lead generation efforts by analyzing vast amounts of data and identifying potential buyers or investors who match specific criteria. These tools can also provide valuable insights into consumer behavior and preferences, allowing developers to tailor their marketing strategies accordingly.

This automation reduces the operational costs associated with lead generation because less human time is spent performing routine procedures. Granted, it’s always better to double-check and use a personalized approach to each lead once they are in your “net”, but it’s much easier to do when you don’t spend half of the time looking for the “fish.”

Also, natural language processing (NLP) and AI help with lead qualification because you can train your AI to answer basic questions about the properties and the conversation doesn’t have to feel like talking to a robot, but instead provide a pleasant experience.

Another challenge in lead generation for property developers is staying ahead of the competition. The real estate market is highly competitive, and standing out from the crowd requires innovative approaches. AI technology can assist in this aspect as well.

AI algorithms can analyze market trends, competitor strategies, and customer feedback to provide valuable recommendations on how to differentiate your properties from others in the market. By leveraging AI insights, property developers can make more informed decisions about pricing, amenities, and marketing tactics that will attract potential leads.

Intelligent Pricing Strategies

Money.

This is the main challenge for everyone involved in real estate.

Sellers want to make more. Buyers want to spend less. Everyone wants a fair price.

How to combine those two wishes in such a way that satisfies both buyers and sellers? AI algorithms come in handy here as well.

When it comes to real estate, AI algorithms can consider various factors such as

• Location
• Property size
• Amenities
• Recent sales data
• Market trends
• Economic indicators

They can identify correlations between these factors and property prices to determine an optimal pricing strategy. For example, the algorithm may identify that properties with certain amenities or located in specific neighborhoods tend to sell at higher prices. It can also consider market conditions, such as supply and demand dynamics, to assess whether it’s a buyer’s or seller’s market and adjust pricing recommendations accordingly.

Furthermore, AI algorithms can continuously learn and adapt based on new data and market trends, allowing them to refine pricing strategies over time. They can take into account both historical and real-time data to provide up-to-date and accurate pricing recommendations.

There are several AI tools and platforms available that offer intelligent pricing recommendations based on historical data and market trends. These tools leverage machine learning and advanced analytics techniques to analyze vast amounts of data and provide pricing insights. Here are a few examples:

• PriceIntelligence: PriceIntelligence is an AI-powered pricing optimization platform that helps businesses set optimal prices for their products or services. It uses machine learning algorithms to analyze historical sales data, market trends, competitor pricing, and other relevant factors to recommend pricing strategies that maximize revenue and profit.
• PROS Pricing Solutions: PROS is a software company that offers pricing solutions powered by AI and machine learning. Their pricing software uses historical and real-time data to identify demand patterns, customer preferences, market trends, and competitor behavior. It provides dynamic pricing recommendations to help businesses optimize their pricing strategies.
• BlackCurve: BlackCurve is an AI-powered pricing optimization platform designed for e-commerce and retail businesses. It uses historical sales data, customer behavior analysis, competitor pricing data, and other variables to generate pricing recommendations. The platform also allows businesses to perform “what-if” scenarios and simulate the impact of price changes.
• Vistaar: Vistaar is a pricing and revenue management software provider that utilizes AI and analytics to optimize pricing strategies. Their solutions analyze historical data, market trends, customer segmentation, and other variables to generate pricing recommendations. The platform also provides tools for price optimization, deal management, and price guidance.
• Revionics: Revionics, now part of Aptos, offers AI-powered pricing solutions for retail businesses. Their software analyzes historical sales data, market conditions, competitive dynamics, and other factors to deliver intelligent pricing recommendations. The platform also provides capabilities for promotional pricing optimization and markdown optimization.

Enhanced Customer Support and Communication

Finally, one of the most spoken-about AI tools lately: chatbots.

Effective customer support and communication are extremely important in real estate sales processes. People usually have a lot of questions about the properties they are interested in and if you can optimize that process in such a way that would be a win-win situation for all — why not?

AI-powered customer support solutions are revolutionizing the way real estate professionals communicate with their clients. These intelligent systems are designed to understand and respond to inquiries related to properties, pricing, availability, and more. They can provide instant responses, 24/7 availability, and accurate information to potential buyers or tenants.

By leveraging AI technology, real estate companies can streamline their customer support processes and enhance communication efficiency. Whether it’s answering frequently asked questions or providing personalized property recommendations based on user preferences, AI-powered customer support is changing the game.

Moreover, these AI systems can also analyze data from previous interactions to improve future responses and provide valuable insights for real estate businesses. This helps them better understand their customers’ needs and preferences, ultimately leading to more successful sales transactions.

AI in Real Estate: Conclusion

As you can see, artificial intelligence is a great tool that can give you a vast competitive advantage over other players in the real estate market while reducing your operating costs (i.e. increasing your profit margin.)

If you’re interested in any of the abovementioned solutions, feel free to talk to us about implementing, integrating, or developing such for your business. As a recap, here are the 6 areas we’re covered briefly:

1. Virtual property tours
2. Personalized property recommendations
3. Predictive analytics
4. Automated lead generation
5. Intelligent pricing strategies
6. Enhanced customer support.

Are you ready to leverage AI technologies for more effective real estate sales?

Originally published at https://huspi.com on July 18, 2023.

Revolutionizing Property Development: The Power of AI Tools— HUSPI was originally published in HUSPI on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The property markets have been stabilizing and normalizing after the COVID-19 outbreak. However, it’s the proverbial “new normal” because the real estate industry has experienced a major structural shift due to the disruptions of the last three years. One of the reasons it was so impactful was because of the sheer globality of the pandemic — it wasn’t localized to one country or even one continent, it was truly global.

As a result, the post-COVID world we live in now is an interesting place to live in, where the forecasts of even a couple of years ago don’t make any sense anymore. The sectors that were trending and rising before the pandemic are no longer experiencing such growth and vice versa. As one of the investment management firm directors put it:

“People are looking to achieve their lifestyle choices more quickly. They’re less focused on their employer and more focused on their personal lifestyle. And that is changing how apartments are being viewed, how single-family residential is being viewed, how the office is being utilized, and where corporations are heading.”

PwC Report

While this quote relates to the US real estate market, it applies to global trends as well. Whether we want it or not, globalization is happening and the world is smaller than it ever was in terms of travel, business, industries, and life. Real estate is literally the physical world we live in — our homes, our workplaces, our stores, etc. Its state affects our daily lives, our economy, our environment, and everything around us and we need to, whether we want to or not, think about its sustainability, technological advances, and mixed-use developments.

So let’s take a closer look at the trends of the real estate industry in the USA and Europe — differences, similarities, and challenges. This article will be devoted to sustainability trends.

Real Estate & Sustainable Construction

Sustainability and environmentally friendly building practices are very popular both in the US and Europe. While in many countries, it’s more of a “nice to have” type of thing and the weight of the decisions lies on the shoulders of separate companies, in the US and EU, there are a lot of government regulations that aim at reducing the carbon footprint in the real estate industry.

This includes the development of green buildings built with eco-friendly materials, energy-efficient homes, and sustainable urban planning. Various green building certifications, for example, LEED, have gained popularity as well.

Sustainability building codes and standards vary between the United States and Europe due to differences in regulations, climate, building practices, and cultural priorities. Let’s take a closer look at distinctions and similarities.

Energy Efficiency & PropTech

Europe tends to have more stringent energy efficiency standards for buildings compared to the United States. European countries often use the Passive House standard, which emphasizes extremely low energy consumption and high insulation levels.

In the U.S., energy codes vary by state and locality. For example,

• California is known for having some of the most stringent energy codes in the country. The California Energy Code (Title 24) sets high standards for energy efficiency in buildings and covers a wide range of requirements, including lighting, HVAC systems, and insulation.
• New York State has implemented the New York Energy Conservation Construction Code, which aims to increase energy efficiency in buildings. This code includes provisions for building insulation, lighting, and the use of renewable energy sources.
• Washington State has its energy code, which is designed to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in buildings. The code addresses insulation, lighting, and HVAC systems, among other things.
• Massachusetts has adopted the Massachusetts Stretch Energy Code, which goes beyond the base energy code to encourage even greater energy efficiency in new construction and major renovations.
• Vermont has implemented the Vermont Residential and Commercial Building Energy Standards, which set requirements for building insulation, lighting, and heating systems to improve energy efficiency.
• Oregon’s building codes include energy efficiency standards, such as the Oregon Residential Specialty Code and the Oregon Structural Specialty Code, which address various aspects of energy performance in buildings.
• Colorado has adopted the Colorado Commercial Energy Code and the Colorado Residential Energy Code, both of which aim to increase energy efficiency in commercial and residential buildings, respectively.

In many cases, energy efficiency and property technology (PropTech) are closely connected, as PropTech solutions often leverage technology to improve the energy performance of buildings and properties. These technologies aim to make real estate more sustainable, cost-effective, and environmentally friendly.

Here are some examples of how property technology and energy efficiency are interconnected:

1. Smart Building Management Systems: Proptech encompasses a range of smart building management systems that use sensors, automation, and data analytics to optimize energy use. For instance, building automation systems can control heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) based on real-time occupancy and environmental data, thereby reducing energy waste.
2. Energy Monitoring and Analytics: Proptech platforms can provide detailed insights into a property’s energy consumption. By collecting and analyzing data on energy usage, building operators can identify areas where energy efficiency improvements are needed and track the effectiveness of energy-saving measures.
3. Predictive Maintenance: Predictive maintenance technologies within Proptech can help prevent equipment failures and optimize energy consumption. For example, sensors can monitor the performance of HVAC systems and provide alerts when maintenance is needed, ensuring that equipment operates efficiently.
4. Energy-efficient Lighting: Smart lighting systems, often considered a part of Proptech, can automatically adjust lighting levels based on occupancy and daylight, leading to energy savings. LED lighting technology, which is highly energy-efficient, is commonly integrated into these systems.
5. Renewable Energy Integration: Proptech solutions may facilitate the integration of renewable energy sources such as solar panels and wind turbines into properties. These systems generate clean energy, reducing reliance on grid electricity and lowering carbon emissions.
6. Tenant Engagement Platforms: Proptech platforms may include tenant engagement and communication tools that educate and engage building occupants in energy-saving practices. These platforms can provide real-time energy consumption feedback and offer tips for reducing energy usage.
7. Energy-efficient HVAC Systems: Proptech often involves the implementation of energy-efficient HVAC systems, including geothermal heating and cooling, heat pumps, and advanced insulation materials. These technologies reduce energy consumption and improve indoor comfort.
8. Building Energy Certification and Compliance: Proptech can assist in ensuring that buildings meet energy efficiency certifications and comply with regulations. It may include tools for energy performance modeling and compliance tracking, simplifying the process for building developers and owners.
9. Energy-efficient Materials and Construction Methods: Proptech innovations may include materials and construction methods that enhance the energy efficiency of new buildings. For example, high-performance insulation, advanced glazing, and green building materials can reduce heating and cooling demands.
10. Demand Response and Energy Storage: Proptech solutions can enable properties to participate in demand response programs and incorporate energy storage systems. These technologies help manage energy usage during peak periods and provide backup power during outages.

Overall, PropTech and energy efficiency are interconnected through the use of technology to monitor, control, and optimize energy consumption in real estate properties. These advancements contribute to reducing energy costs, and environmental impact, and enhancing the sustainability and resilience of buildings and real estate portfolios.

Renewable Energy

Europe has been more proactive in adopting renewable energy sources in building codes than the rest of the world. Many European countries have indeed implemented policies and incentives to promote the use of solar panels and other renewable energy systems. Germany and Spain are just a couple of examples.

Germany has been a leader in promoting solar energy through its feed-in tariff (FIT) program. The FIT program guarantees fixed, premium rates for electricity generated from solar panels over a set period (typically 20 years), providing a strong incentive for homeowners and businesses to install solar panels.

For several years, Germany has consistently ranked as one of the leading countries in terms of photovoltaic (PV) installations. In 2022, German solar PV expansion jumped by 28%, adding 7.2 gigawatts (GW.) As of the end of 2022, Germany had a cumulative installed PV capacity of 67.3 GW. With 807 watts of solar PV capacity per capita in 2022, Germany holds the third-highest position globally, surpassed only by Australia and the Netherlands.

Spain has introduced various policies and incentives to encourage the adoption of renewable energy systems, including solar power. One notable initiative is the “sun tax” reform, which abolished the controversial “sun tax” that was previously imposed on solar power self-consumption. This change removed barriers for homeowners and businesses to install solar panels and generate their own electricity.

In the United States, the promotion of renewable energy in building codes indeed varies significantly from one state to another. Here are a couple of examples to illustrate this variability:

1. California is a leader in promoting renewable energy in building codes. The state has implemented strict energy efficiency standards, such as Title 24, which mandate the use of renewable energy systems like solar panels on new residential and commercial buildings. These standards are designed to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. California also offers various incentives and rebate programs to encourage the installation of solar panels and other renewable energy technologies.
2. Texas, on the other hand, has a more decentralized approach to building codes and renewable energy promotion. While there are some local initiatives and building codes that promote energy efficiency and renewables, the state does not have comprehensive mandates at the statewide level. Texas is known for its vast wind energy resources but doesn’t have as many statewide policies specifically focused on promoting renewable energy in building codes compared to states like California.

These examples showcase the diversity in approaches to promoting renewable energy in building codes across the United States, with some states taking more proactive measures than others. The specific incentives and regulations can vary widely, reflecting local priorities and resources.

Building Materials

Europe and the US place a great emphasis on sustainable building materials and often have stricter regulations on the use of certain materials, like asbestos or lead.

• Asbestos Regulations: Asbestos is a naturally occurring mineral that is commonly used in construction materials such as insulation, roofing, and flooring. However, it is now known to pose serious health risks when its fibers become airborne. The federal government, through the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), has regulations governing the handling and removal of asbestos-containing materials to protect workers and the public. States may have additional regulations related to asbestos handling and abatement.
• Lead-Based Paint Regulations: The use of lead-based paint in residential properties was banned in 1978 due to its known health hazards, particularly to children. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the EPA have regulations regarding lead-based paint disclosure, inspection, and remediation in pre-1978 residential properties. These regulations are intended to protect occupants, particularly children, from lead exposure. Some states may have stricter regulations and additional requirements.

While there are no uniform regulations across all U.S. states specifically focused on sustainable materials in construction, there is an increasing interest in sustainable building practices. Organizations like the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) have developed voluntary rating systems like LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) that encourage the use of sustainable construction materials and practices.

Many states and localities may also adopt or adapt these voluntary standards to promote sustainability in construction projects. For example,

The city of Austin, Texas, is known for its commitment to sustainability in construction. The Austin Energy Green Building program promotes energy efficiency, water conservation, and sustainable design practices. Builders in Austin can voluntarily participate in this program to receive recognition and incentives for constructing environmentally friendly buildings.

Portland, OR, has a strong focus on sustainable construction and green building practices. The city has adopted its own set of green building standards, which are part of the Portland Green Home Certification program. These standards encourage builders and developers to incorporate energy-efficient technologies, renewable energy sources, and sustainable materials into their projects.

Additionally, some states have energy codes and building standards that address aspects of construction materials to improve energy efficiency, such as insulation and windows.

Water Conservation

Water conservation is critical in helping the environment and nature. It helps protect aquatic ecosystems, as well as the plants and animals that rely on those ecosystems. Reducing water usage can mitigate the environmental impact of water extraction from rivers, lakes, and aquifers.

It also helps to be more energy efficient, since many water treatment and supply processes consume a significant amount of energy. Reducing water consumption also leads to energy savings, which, in turn, reduces greenhouse gas emissions and contributes to climate change mitigation.

Europe indeed has more consistent and widespread water-saving measures in building codes compared to many other regions. Here are a couple of examples of such measures in European countries:

Germany has stringent water-saving measures incorporated into its building codes. Many German cities and regions require the installation of rainwater harvesting systems in new construction projects. These systems collect rainwater from rooftops, which can then be used for purposes like flushing toilets and irrigating gardens, reducing the demand for municipal water supplies. Additionally, low-flow fixtures, such as low-flow toilets and faucets, are mandated in most parts of the country to minimize water consumption in residential and commercial buildings.

Denmark is another European country that emphasizes water conservation in its building regulations. For example, here are a few things that are paid special attention to:

1. Low-Flow Fixtures: Danish building codes often require the installation of low-flow fixtures, such as low-flow toilets, water-efficient faucets, and water-saving showerheads. These fixtures are designed to use significantly less water than their traditional counterparts while still providing effective performance. Low-flow fixtures help reduce water consumption in both residential and commercial buildings.
2. Rainwater Harvesting: In Denmark, rainwater harvesting systems are encouraged, especially for larger buildings and industrial facilities. These systems collect rainwater from rooftops and store it for various non-potable uses, including flushing toilets, irrigation, and outdoor cleaning. By using rainwater for such purposes, buildings can reduce their reliance on treated, potable water, leading to significant water savings.
3. Greywater Recycling: Some Danish building codes also promote the recycling of greywater, which is wastewater generated from sources like showers, sinks, and laundry. This treated greywater can be reused for purposes like flushing toilets and irrigating green spaces. Greywater recycling systems contribute to water conservation by reducing the demand for fresh, potable water for non-drinking applications.
4. Leak Detection and Prevention: Denmark places an emphasis on leak detection and prevention in building codes. Buildings may be required to have monitoring systems that can detect water leaks and notify residents or building management promptly. This helps prevent water wastage and damage from undetected leaks.
5. Water Metering: Many Danish building codes mandate the installation of individual water meters for each housing unit in multi-family residential buildings. This allows residents to monitor their water consumption and encourages responsible water use.

Water conservation regulations in the United States vary widely by state and locality, and they often focus on water-efficient fixtures, landscaping, and irrigation practices. Just like Denmark, many states and localities have adopted such practices as low-flow fixtures, rainwater harvesting, water metering, and leak detection. Here are a few examples of water conservation regulations commonly found in the U.S.:

1. Drought-Resistant Landscaping: In regions prone to drought, such as California, certain municipalities have implemented regulations that promote drought-resistant landscaping. These rules often restrict the use of water-intensive lawns and encourage the use of native plants and xeriscaping, which are landscaping practices designed to minimize water usage.
2. Water-Efficient Appliances: Regulations may require the installation of water-efficient appliances, such as dishwashers and washing machines, in new construction and renovations. These appliances are designed to use less water during their operation.
3. Landscape Irrigation Restrictions: During periods of drought or water scarcity, many states and localities impose restrictions on landscape irrigation. These restrictions may limit the days and times when outdoor watering is allowed and encourage the use of efficient irrigation systems.
4. Water-Efficient Building Standards: Some states, like California, have adopted water-efficient building standards as part of their energy and environmental regulations. These standards may require a certain level of water efficiency in plumbing fixtures, landscaping, and irrigation systems for all new construction.

It’s important to note that water conservation regulations can vary significantly by location and are often influenced by regional climate conditions and water availability. As a result, the specific rules and requirements may differ from one state or municipality to another.

Waste Management

Waste management regulations in the United States and Europe share several similarities, as both regions have established various measures to address environmental concerns and promote responsible waste management practices.

Here are some key similarities:

1. Waste Hierarchy: Both the United States and Europe follow a waste hierarchy that prioritizes waste management strategies in a specific order: waste prevention, reuse, recycling, energy recovery (waste-to-energy), and disposal. This hierarchy emphasizes reducing waste generation and maximizing resource recovery before resorting to landfilling or incineration.
2. Landfill Regulations: Both regions have regulations governing the operation and closure of landfills. These regulations include measures to prevent groundwater contamination, control methane emissions, and ensure the safe disposal of waste.
3. Recycling Programs: Both the United States and Europe have implemented recycling programs and regulations to encourage the separation and collection of recyclable materials, such as paper, cardboard, glass, plastic, and metal. These programs aim to reduce the amount of waste sent to landfills and promote resource recovery.
4. Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR): Both regions have adopted EPR policies and regulations for certain products and packaging materials. EPR shifts the responsibility for waste management and recycling from consumers and municipalities to manufacturers and producers, encouraging them to design products with recycling and environmental considerations in mind.
5. Hazardous Waste Regulations: Regulations regarding the management of hazardous waste are similar in both regions. They define hazardous waste, require proper labeling and handling, and establish rules for its safe storage, transportation, and disposal.
6. Waste-to-Energy Facilities: The United States and Europe both have waste-to-energy facilities that burn non-recyclable waste to generate energy. These facilities are subject to air quality regulations and emission control measures to minimize environmental impact.
7. Bans on Certain Waste Types: Both regions have implemented bans on the disposal of specific waste types in landfills, such as certain electronic waste (e-waste), tires, and hazardous materials. These bans encourage responsible disposal or recycling of these materials.
8. Waste Reporting and Data Collection: Both the United States and Europe have established systems for waste reporting and data collection to monitor waste generation, recycling rates, and the overall effectiveness of waste management programs.
9. Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA): Both regions often require environmental impact assessments for waste management projects, particularly those involving landfills or incineration facilities. These assessments help ensure that environmental and public health concerns are addressed during project planning.

While there are many similarities in waste management regulations, it’s important to note that specific regulations and practices can vary widely within both the United States and Europe due to differences in state and country-level regulations, local priorities, and resources. Additionally, the European Union has harmonized waste management policies to a greater extent than the United States, leading to some common standards and goals across EU member states.

Building Design

European cities have adopted building codes and urban planning policies that promote compact, mixed-use developments. By integrating residential, commercial, and recreational spaces and emphasizing public transportation, cycling, and walking, these cities aim to reduce transportation-related emissions, improve air quality, and create more livable urban environments. These practices align with broader sustainability goals and contribute to a more eco-friendly and efficient use of urban spaces.

Copenhagen, Denmark: Copenhagen is well-known for its urban planning that emphasizes cycling, walking, and public transportation over car use. The city’s zoning and development regulations promote mixed-use neighborhoods, where residential, commercial, and recreational spaces coexist. This design minimizes the need for long commutes and reduces transportation emissions. The city’s commitment to bicycle infrastructure and pedestrian-friendly urban planning is a model for other European cities.

Amsterdam, Netherlands: Amsterdam has implemented policies that encourage mixed-use development, particularly in its historic city center. Regulations promote the integration of shops, offices, and residential spaces in a way that supports local businesses and minimizes the necessity for car travel. The city’s extensive network of canals, pedestrian-friendly streets, and cycling infrastructure also contribute to reducing emissions.

The city of Freiburg, Germany is known for its commitment to sustainability and green urban planning. Building codes and zoning regulations in Freiburg prioritize compact and mixed-use developments. The city’s Vauban district is a prime example of sustainable urban planning, with energy-efficient buildings, a focus on public transportation, and restrictions on car use to minimize emissions. Freiburg is widely considered the single best city for sustainable urban development. Starting early, in the 1970s, Freiburg has tackled energy and climate change, transport and land use, urban liveability and safety, and democratic issues — all using a highly integrated approach.

Stockholm, Sweden promotes mixed-use developments through its comprehensive urban planning and zoning policies. The city encourages a variety of land uses within neighborhoods, which can include residential, commercial, and recreational spaces. This approach minimizes the need for long commutes and supports public transit and active transportation options.

Barcelona, Spain has implemented a “superblock” concept, where clusters of city blocks are reimagined to reduce traffic and prioritize pedestrian and cyclist-friendly environments. These superblocks aim to create mixed-use neighborhoods where residents can access essential services within walking distance, reducing the need for private vehicle use.

In the U.S., zoning and building codes are generally less prescriptive about land use and urban planning. Here are a few examples that illustrate this flexibility in U.S. zoning and building codes:

1. Single-Use Zoning: While mixed-use zoning exists in many U.S. cities, single-use zoning is still prevalent. In some areas, zoning codes can be relatively permissive, allowing for large swaths of land to be designated for a single use, such as residential, commercial, or industrial. This can lead to more car-dependent communities and less walkable neighborhoods.
2. Variances and Special Permits: U.S. zoning codes often include mechanisms for granting variances and special permits. These provisions allow property owners or developers to request exceptions to zoning rules, often resulting in unique or non-standard land uses. This flexibility can accommodate a wide range of development types and can vary significantly from one jurisdiction to another.
3. Conditional Use Permits: Some U.S. jurisdictions use conditional use permits, which grant specific land uses in certain zoning districts as long as specific conditions or criteria are met. This approach can lead to a mix of uses within a district but is subject to local decision-making and can vary widely.
4. Form-Based Codes: While traditional zoning typically regulates land use, some U.S. municipalities have adopted form-based codes that focus on the physical form and characteristics of buildings and neighborhoods. These codes often provide more flexibility in terms of land use, as long as certain design and architectural standards are met.
5. Planned Unit Developments (PUDs): PUDs are a zoning tool that allows for flexibility in land use and design within a defined development area. Developers can negotiate with local authorities to create customized zoning regulations for their specific projects, provided they meet certain community benefits or goals.
6. Local Control: Land use and zoning regulations in the United States are typically under local control, meaning that cities and municipalities have a significant say in determining their own zoning codes. This can result in variations in land use regulations from one jurisdiction to another, even within the same state.
7. Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs): Some U.S. cities have adopted more permissive zoning codes to encourage the construction of ADUs, often known as “granny flats” or “in-law units.” These codes may allow property owners to build additional small housing units on their lots, increasing housing density and rental opportunities. In California, before SB 897, if there were any unpermitted zones, the homeowners were required to bring them to the current codes. Due to this California’s ADU development was slow and costly. With the 2023 update, SB 897 has removed the restrictions for non-confirming zoning conditions, building code violations, or any unpermitted structures. These conditions are removed from the unpermitted structure only if it is safe and healthy.

Adaptation to Climate Change

Due to regional climate differences, European building codes may include provisions for climate change adaptation and resiliency, such as addressing heat waves and flooding. For example, in Europe, depending on area, there are such construction codes as:

• To mitigate the impact of heavy rainfall and urban flooding, some European building codes promote the use of sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) or green infrastructure. These measures can include permeable pavements, green roofs, and rain gardens to manage stormwater effectively.
• In regions prone to heavy snowfall, building codes may specify roof designs and materials that can withstand the weight of accumulated snow. Roofs with a steep pitch and snow guards may be required to prevent dangerous snow slides. Coastal regions may have codes that require reinforced building envelopes and facade materials to withstand high winds, saltwater exposure, and other coastal weather challenges.
• Many European countries have stringent building codes that include requirements for thermal insulation to enhance energy efficiency. These codes may stipulate minimum insulation levels for walls, roofs, and windows to reduce energy consumption and improve the thermal performance of buildings.

In the United States, building codes may incorporate climate adaptation measures to address the unique environmental challenges faced by different regions. The level of detail and stringency of these measures can indeed vary. Here are a couple of examples of climate adaptation measures that may be included in building codes:

• Hurricane and High-Wind Zones: In hurricane-prone regions, such as Florida and the Gulf Coast, building codes often include requirements for structures to withstand high winds. This can involve specifications for the design and installation of hurricane straps, impact-resistant windows, and reinforced roofing systems to protect against wind damage. Elevation requirements for homes in coastal areas susceptible to storm surges may be enforced to reduce the risk of flooding and structural damage.
• Wildfire-Prone Areas: In regions prone to wildfires, such as California and other western states, building codes may include measures to reduce the risk of fire damage. This can involve requirements for fire-resistant roofing materials, ember-resistant vents, and setbacks from wooded areas. Additionally, some codes may require the installation of defensible space zones around buildings, where vegetation is managed to reduce fire hazards.
• Flood Zones: In flood-prone areas, codes may specify that structures be built to a certain elevation above the base flood level. This is particularly important in areas subject to periodic or severe flooding. Flood-resistant construction materials and techniques may be mandated to limit damage from water infiltration.
• Heat-Resilient Design: Some codes in regions with extreme heat, such as the Southwestern United States, may include requirements for cool roofs, which reflect more sunlight and absorb less heat, reducing the energy needed for cooling. Ventilation and insulation standards can be adjusted to improve energy efficiency and thermal comfort in hot climates.

Cultural and Historical Preservation

The preservation of historical and cultural heritage is not just about safeguarding the physical structures but also about nurturing a sense of identity, continuity, and connection with the past. It contributes to the enrichment of societies, economies, and the global cultural heritage. Considering that Europe historically had a much longer history of construction, European building codes may place a stronger emphasis on preserving historical and cultural heritage during construction or renovation.

Venice, Italy is renowned for its historic architecture and canals. The city has strict building codes and regulations aimed at preserving its unique cultural heritage. Any construction or renovation in Venice, especially within its historic core, must adhere to rigorous guidelines to ensure the architectural and cultural integrity of the city is maintained.

Paris, France is home to numerous historic landmarks, and its building codes reflect a commitment to preserving its architectural heritage. Regulations in the city often require that new buildings blend harmoniously with the historic context and architectural style of their surroundings. Additionally, incentives may be provided to encourage the restoration and preservation of historic buildings.

Edinburgh, Scotland is known for its historic and medieval architecture. The city’s building codes emphasize the importance of preserving and maintaining these historic structures. Renovations and construction projects in the city center are subject to strict guidelines to ensure that they do not compromise the character of the historic buildings or the overall cityscape.

The historic city of Dubrovnik, Croatia is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and its building codes are designed to protect and preserve its architectural and cultural heritage. Any construction or renovation within the city walls must adhere to specific guidelines to maintain the authenticity and historic significance of the structures.

Rome, Italy, with its wealth of historic and archaeological sites, has building codes that prioritize the preservation of its cultural heritage. Construction projects in Rome are subject to strict regulations and archaeological assessments to ensure that new developments do not compromise the city’s historical and cultural significance.

Barcelona, Spain has building codes that often incorporate preservation measures for its historic neighborhoods, such as the Gothic Quarter. These regulations aim to maintain the architectural and cultural heritage of the city, including the preservation of historical facades and the integration of new construction with the existing urban fabric.

The city of Bath, England is famous for its Georgian architecture and Roman baths. Building codes in Bath are designed to protect the historic character of the city. New construction and renovations are closely monitored to ensure they respect the architectural and cultural heritage of the area.

The U.S. has a mix of federal, state, and local regulations governing historic preservation, which can vary significantly. Building codes in the United States often include provisions and considerations for cultural preservation, particularly when new construction or renovations occur in areas with significant cultural or historical heritage. These codes aim to protect and preserve the cultural and architectural character of such areas. Here are a few examples and aspects of building codes focused on cultural preservation in the U.S.:

1. Historic District Regulations: Many cities and towns have historic districts with specific building codes and design guidelines that ensure new construction and renovations are in keeping with the historical character of the area. These codes often require that architectural styles, materials, and other elements are consistent with the historic context.
2. Facade and Exterior Preservation: Building codes may require the preservation of historic facades, particularly in commercial or mixed-use districts. When a historic building is renovated, its exterior appearance, including facades, windows, and architectural details, is often protected to maintain the building’s historical integrity.
3. Adaptive Reuse: Some building codes encourage adaptive reuse of historic structures. This means that older buildings can be repurposed for new uses, helping to ensure that they remain viable and occupied while preserving their historical significance.
4. Design Review Boards: In many cities, design review boards or commissions oversee development projects in historic or culturally significant areas. These boards review building plans and designs to ensure they meet established criteria for preserving the cultural heritage of the area.
5. Archaeological and Cultural Resource Protection: In regions with archaeological significance, building codes may require archaeological assessments or surveys before construction can proceed. This helps protect cultural resources that may be buried underground.
6. Materials and Techniques: Building codes may specify certain materials and construction techniques that are in keeping with the historical character of a region. This can include the use of specific building materials, methods, or craftsmanship.
7. Signage and Lighting: Building codes may regulate signage, lighting, and other elements that can affect the visual character of culturally significant areas. This helps maintain the area’s historical appearance.
8. Preservation Easements: Some historic preservation projects involve preservation easements, which are legal agreements that protect the historical and architectural features of a building or site in perpetuity. These easements may be held by nonprofit organizations or government agencies.
9. Tax Credits and Incentives: Federal and state governments often provide tax incentives and credits to encourage historic preservation. These financial incentives can offset the costs of preserving and rehabilitating historic structures.
10. Section 106 Review: Federal agencies are required to consider the effects of their projects on historic properties as part of the Section 106 review process, which is part of the National Historic Preservation Act. This ensures that federal projects consider and mitigate impacts on cultural and historical resources.

These building codes and preservation measures play a critical role in protecting the cultural and historical heritage of the United States by balancing the need for development with the imperative to maintain the nation’s rich cultural and architectural legacy.

Cars & Urban Planning

Due to various cultural attitudes and history, Europe and the USA differ in their approaches and abilities in terms of construction (which is often reconstruction). For example, the influence of cars and urban planning:

• USA: In many U.S. cities, urban planning has historically favored automobile-dependent development. While some cities are making efforts to improve public transportation and promote sustainable urban development, the car-centric infrastructure remains a significant challenge. Public transit options can be limited, and walkability and bike-friendly infrastructure may not be prioritized in all areas.
• Europe: European cities often have well-established public transportation systems, extensive networks of bike lanes, and pedestrian-friendly infrastructure. European urban planning places a stronger emphasis on mixed land use and higher population density, reducing the need for long commutes and the reliance on personal vehicles.

Building Certification Programs

Building certification programs also vary and in the US, their adoption is voluntary as opposed to more strict Europe:

While the United States has various building certification programs like LEED and ENERGY STAR, their adoption is voluntary, and not all projects pursue certification. This can result in a patchwork of sustainable building practices. Additionally, the use of specific green building rating systems may vary from one region to another.

Europe has widely adopted certification programs like BREEAM and DGNB, which are often integrated into national building regulations. In some European countries, achieving a certain level of certification may be mandatory for new construction projects, encouraging a more consistent approach to sustainable building practices.

While sustainability initiatives are growing in both regions, variations in government policies, building codes, and cultural norms can result in contrasting approaches to sustainable real estate development.

Originally published at https://huspi.com on October 30, 2023.

Sustainability: Significant Real Estate Development Trends in the US and EU for 2024 and Beyond |… was originally published in HUSPI on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

When we’re talking about the sale of residential properties, people buy real estate based on feelings and emotional connection. Usually, this was done during personal visits, but that has its limits:

• The potential buyer is located in another area physically.
• Properties might not be built yet but you need the investments already.
• During the pandemic, personal visits were restricted and at times, this limitation still makes sense.

This is where 3D visualizations help real estate developers, brokers, and potential buyers.

3D visualizations of real estate properties are immersive and realistic representations of architectural designs, exteriors, and interiors created with the help of CGI technologies.

This technology offers a great opportunity to transform conceptual designs and blueprints into visually appealing and detailed renderings that helps to sell the properties, even at the stage of the construction.

In this article, we’ll focus on how 3D visualization software can help increase sales in the real estate industry.

Significance of 3D visualization platforms in the real estate industry

3D visualizers bring the designs to life by creating high-quality renderings that accurately depict the planned structures. Simply said, people who are interested in the property (potential buyers, stakeholders, or investors) can take a “virtual” walk around it and see what it can look like in terms of the aesthetics, the layouts, and the spatial arrangements. And this is available even before the construction begins, making the decision-making process easier and more informed.

For real estate developers, agents, and brokers, 3D visualization technology also offer powerful marketing & sales tools. These visually captivating representations can be used in brochures, websites, advertisements, and sales presentations to showcase the property’s features, highlight its unique selling points, and create an emotional connection with potential buyers.

The ability to present a property in its best light through 3D visualizations can significantly impact marketing and sales efforts, attracting more interest and increasing the likelihood of successful transactions.

Compared to traditional methods such as building physical models or mock-ups, 3D visualizations offer a cost-effective and time-efficient solution.

Creating virtual representations:

• eliminates the need for physical materials,
• reduces construction expenses, and
• allows for faster iterations and modifications.

Developers can experiment with various design options, test different materials and finishes, and make necessary changes without incurring significant costs or delays. This agility in the design process helps expedite project timelines and improves overall efficiency.

HUSPI has experience with creating such 3D visualization projects: one for real estate properties in general and another specifically for bathroom equipment (toilets, bathtubs, etc.)

3D visualization also helps with communication with stakeholders. Many people are involved in real estate projects: architects, engineers, designers, investors, clients, etc. 3D visualization technology serves as a common language that bridges the communication gap between these diverse parties.

By presenting a realistic and easily understandable visual representation, 3D renderings facilitate effective collaboration, aid in decision-making, and ensure that all stakeholders share a common vision and understanding of the project.

This technology also is helpful to allow everyone involved to check out the place and

• identify the possible design flaws (for example, it looked good in the picture, but in reality, the landing is not convenient for people with limited mobility)
• evaluate lighting conditions (for example, the windows are facing south and due to the layout of the building, there’s too much sun for a comfortable living)
• assess spatial relationships (for example, the bedroom isn’t large enough for two kids)
• suggest improvements without too much investment needed

This iterative process enables architects and developers to make informed design decisions, enhancing the functionality, aesthetics, and overall appeal of the property.

What 3D real estate visualization platforms are available at the moment?

There are ready-made 3D visualization platforms on the market. Here are a few options available for the users:

SketchUp [Website]

SketchUp is a user-friendly 3D modeling software popular among architects, interior designers, and urban planners. It provides intuitive tools for creating 3D models and offers a library of pre-built models and textures.

SketchUp is often considered one of the easiest options for beginners. It has a user-friendly interface and intuitive tools that make it relatively easy to learn and use. SketchUp’s emphasis on simplicity and its large user community make it a popular choice for beginners in the field of 3D visualization.

Autodesk 3ds Max [Website]

3ds Max is a comprehensive 3D modeling, animation, and rendering software widely used in industries like architecture, gaming, and film production. It offers a robust set of tools for creating realistic visualizations and supports various rendering techniques.

The learning curve is quite high and is usually used by professional visualization specialists and architects.

Blender [Website]

Blender is a free and open-source 3D creation suite that supports modeling, animation, rendering, and simulation. It is widely used by artists, designers, and developers and offers a powerful and versatile set of tools for 3D visualization.

Blender, while a powerful and versatile software, has a steeper learning curve compared to SketchUp. It offers extensive features and capabilities, but it may require more time and effort to master for beginners.

Lumion [Website]

Lumion is a real-time 3D visualization software designed specifically for architectural visualization. It allows users to create immersive visualizations with realistic lighting, materials, and landscaping. Lumion focuses on ease of use and provides quick rendering capabilities.

Lumion, Unreal Engine, and Unity are generally more geared toward advanced users and professionals. They offer powerful real-time rendering capabilities and more complex features, which can be overwhelming for beginners without prior experience in 3D visualization or game development.

Unreal Engine [Website]

Unreal Engine is a popular game engine that is also widely used for architectural visualization. It provides a real-time rendering environment with advanced lighting and material options. Unreal Engine allows for interactive experiences and can create high-fidelity 3D visualizations.

Unity [Website]

Unity is another powerful game engine that is used for both gaming and architectural visualization. It offers real-time rendering capabilities, advanced lighting and shading options, and the ability to create interactive experiences.

Babylon.js [Website]

In HUSPI projects, we rely on JavaScript frameworks whenever possible. For the 3D platforms that we’ve developed, we use Babylon.js.

Babylon.js is a powerful and popular JavaScript framework for creating 3D graphics and interactive experiences in web browsers. It provides a comprehensive set of tools and features for rendering 3D scenes, handling animations, managing assets, and implementing interactivity.

Babylon.js is well-suited for various applications, including 3D visualization in fields such as architecture, product design, virtual reality, and gaming. It supports features like lighting and shadows, materials and textures, physics simulation, and particle effects, enabling the creation of realistic and immersive visualizations.

The framework also offers support for multiple rendering techniques, including WebGL for hardware-accelerated 3D graphics in modern browsers. It has a robust API and extensive documentation, making it accessible to developers and providing resources to help beginners get started.

Babylon.js is highly flexible and customizable, allowing developers to build tailored 3D visualization solutions according to their specific requirements. It also has an active community that shares resources, tutorials, and examples, which can be beneficial for beginners and experienced developers alike.

How 3D technology helps potential buyers visualize properties before making a purchase

3D visualizers create immersive and realistic representations of properties by utilizing advanced computer-generated imagery (CGI) techniques.

Here’s an overview of the process they typically follow:

3D Modeling: The visualizer starts by creating a 3D digital model of the property based on architectural plans, blueprints, or design specifications. Using specialized software, they build a virtual framework that accurately represents the structure, including walls, floors, windows, doors, and other architectural elements.

Texturing and Materials: The visualizer applies textures and materials to the 3D model to mimic real-world surfaces. This involves adding realistic materials such as wood, concrete, glass, metal, or fabrics to different components of the property. They also consider details such as color, reflectivity, transparency, and texture mapping to ensure a lifelike appearance.

Lighting and Shadows: Creating realistic lighting is crucial to achieving an immersive effect. The visualizer strategically places virtual light sources within the 3D environment and adjusts their intensity, color, and direction. This process involves simulating natural and artificial lighting conditions to accurately depict the play of light and shadows throughout the property.

Camera Placement and Composition: The visualizer determines the optimal camera angle, height, and perspective to showcase the property’s best features. They carefully position virtual cameras to capture the desired viewpoints and create compelling compositions that highlight the property’s unique selling points, architectural details, and interior design elements.

Rendering and Post-Processing: Once the 3D scene is set up, the visualizer initiates the rendering process. This involves using specialized software to calculate the interaction between light and materials within the 3D environment. The result is a high-resolution, photorealistic image or animation that captures the property’s appearance, ambiance, and atmosphere. Post-processing techniques, such as color correction, depth of field, and image enhancement, may be applied to refine the final output further.

Additional Elements: To enhance realism and immersion, the visualizer may add additional elements to the 3D representation. These include landscaping, furniture, decorations, people, and contextual surroundings, such as trees, roads, or neighboring buildings. These elements help provide a sense of scale, context, and liveliness to the visualizations.

By combining these techniques and paying attention to the smallest details, 3D visualization platforms can be used to create visually stunning and immersive representations of properties that closely resemble the final product. The aim is to evoke an emotional response from viewers and allow them to envision themselves within the space, thus aiding in decision-making and marketing efforts in the real estate industry.

As a result, potential buyers can explore real estate properties virtually from the comfort of their homes or offices, even if they are physically distanced from the location — or, like in the times of COVID-19, when offline visits were simply not available. This, in turn, increases the impact on buyer engagement and creates an emotional connection with the property — the most powerful tool when you are selling the property.

How 3D Visualization Platforms Depict the Property Dimensions, Features & Layout

Besides the emotional connection and engagement, the 3D visualizations accurately depict the dimensions, layout, and features of the property. To do that, several techniques are used:

• Architectural Plans and Blueprints: 3D visualizers start by studying the architectural plans and blueprints of the property. These documents provide precise measurements, dimensions, and layout information. By closely following these technical drawings, visualizers can ensure that the 3D representation accurately reflects the property’s structure and spatial arrangement.
• Scale and Proportions: Visualizers adhere to accurate scaling techniques to maintain the correct proportions of the property. They use reference points, measurements, and scale ratios from the architectural plans to ensure that the virtual representation is proportionate to the real-world dimensions. This attention to scale helps in accurately depicting room sizes, ceiling heights, door widths, and overall spatial relationships.
• CAD Software and BIM Integration: 3D visualizers often work with Computer-Aided Design (CAD) software that allows them to import and integrate architectural models directly. These software tools enable precise measurements, alignment, and scaling of objects within the 3D environment. Additionally, Building Information Modeling (BIM) data can be utilized to extract accurate measurements and construction details, ensuring a high level of accuracy in the visualizations.
• Reference Photography and Site Visits: Visualizers may gather reference photography and conduct site visits to capture real-world details. This helps them accurately depict the existing surroundings, architectural features, and contextual elements in their visualizations. Reference photographs assist in reproducing textures, colors, and architectural details, ensuring a faithful representation of the property.
• Collaboration with Architects and Designers: Close collaboration with architects and designers is essential for visualizers to accurately depict the property. Regular communication and feedback loops allow for clarification of design intent, identification of important features, and confirmation of specific details. Visualizers can rely on the expertise and guidance of professionals in the field to ensure that their 3D renderings align with the intended design.
• Iterative Process and Feedback: The visualizers follow an iterative process where they create multiple versions of the 3D renderings. They share these iterations with clients, architects, and other stakeholders to receive feedback and make necessary adjustments. This iterative feedback loop helps in refining the visualizations, ensuring that they accurately represent the layout, dimensions, and features of the property according to the stakeholders’ requirements.

When you showcase the interior and exterior spaces in detail, you allow your buyers to understand the potential of the property. It’s much easier to “play around” with various furniture and its location when it’s done online instead of actually moving around couches, tables, and chairs.

3D Visualization Role in Reducing Costs & Using Time Efficiently

Physical property visits require time and a lot of coordination. On one hand, seeing something for yourself is great because you get to see everything for yourself and photos don’t always do justice. On the other hand, you have to account for travel time and calendar coordination and everything. 3D visualization can help your imagination and save time and resources by reducing the need for physical property visits.

How? Here are 6 ways:

Remote Accessibility: With 3D visualizations, potential buyers, investors, and stakeholders can remotely access and explore the property without the need for physical visits. They can view the virtual representation from anywhere using computers, smartphones, or virtual reality (VR) devices. This eliminates the need for travel, saving time and transportation costs.

Faster Decision-Making: By providing detailed and immersive 3D visualizations, potential buyers can make more informed decisions without the necessity of physically visiting the property. They can assess the layout, dimensions, and features of the property from the comfort of their location. This expedites the decision-making process, reducing the time required for evaluating multiple properties.

Iterative Design Process: During the design phase, 3D visualizations allow for iterative modifications and refinements without the need for physical mock-ups or prototypes. Changes can be made virtually, and new versions of the visualizations can be generated quickly. This agility in the design process saves time, as designers and clients can visualize and evaluate different design options efficiently.

Design Validation and Feedback: 3D visualizations facilitate remote design validation and feedback. Clients and stakeholders can review the virtual representation and provide feedback remotely, reducing the need for in-person meetings. This eliminates scheduling conflicts and travel time, streamlining the communication process and enabling faster decision-making.

Cost Savings: Physical property visits incur costs related to travel, accommodation, and time. By minimizing or eliminating the need for such visits, 3D visualizations save on these expenses. Real estate professionals and clients can allocate their resources more efficiently by focusing on properties of genuine interest, reducing the need for unnecessary site visits.

Increased Reach and Marketing Efficiency: 3D visualizations can be easily shared online through websites, social media platforms, and email, reaching a broader audience quickly. Potential buyers and investors can virtually explore multiple properties within a short period, allowing them to narrow down their choices efficiently. This streamlined approach saves time and resources for both the buyers and the real estate professionals.

How 3D visualization platforms can help real estate developers and agents to gain a competitive advantage?

Marketing eats up a large portion of your budget when you need to gain an edge over your competitors, but thankfully some tools can optimize this process. Besides, you cannot meet with a thousand people physically at some property in a short period, but you CAN show a visualization of your real estate to several thousand at the same time.

As a result, your visually appealing and interactive 3D representation can attract potential buyers and generate greater interest.

Enhanced Marketing Materials

3D visualizations create visually stunning and realistic representations of properties, which significantly enhance marketing materials.

Real estate agents and developers can showcase their properties with high-quality images, virtual tours, and interactive 3D presentations. These captivating visuals attract more attention, engage potential buyers, and set properties apart from competitors relying on traditional marketing methods.

You can use them as

• social media materials
• online & printable ads
• property listings

At HUSPI, one of the product features we’ve developed for our real estate clients was the automatic brochure creation for their leads. A person can select the elements of the property, change its decoration or choose a different set of tiles for the floor and then download the brochure with detailed information about the materials they’ve used.

Improved Pre-Sale Experience

By offering immersive and detailed 3D visualizations, agents and developers can provide potential buyers with an enhanced pre-sale experience.

Prospective clients can virtually explore properties, examine floor plans, visualize layouts, and understand spatial relationships.

This comprehensive understanding of the property before making a physical visit not only saves time but also increases buyer confidence, leading to more informed purchase decisions.

Faster Sales Cycles

3D visualizations help accelerate sales cycles by enabling potential buyers to make quicker decisions. With realistic representations that showcase the property’s features, design elements, and potential, buyers can visualize themselves in the space more easily.

This emotional connection and sense of ownership facilitate faster purchase decisions, reducing the time between property listing and closing the sale.

Design Flexibility and Customization

Visualizations allow agents and developers to offer design flexibility and customization options to buyers. Through 3D renderings, buyers can visualize different design schemes, color palettes, furniture arrangements, and upgrade options.

The flexibility in the visualization process:

• caters to individual preferences
• enables buyers to customize their future homes in terms of interior design, finishes, or furniture
• increases their buyer satisfaction and willingness to invest

Improved Collaboration and Communication

3D visualizations foster better collaboration and communication between agents, developers, architects, and buyers. Visual representations serve as a common language that facilitates understanding and aligns expectations. Stakeholders can easily share feedback, make design adjustments, and collectively refine the vision for the property. This collaborative approach enhances customer satisfaction and builds stronger relationships.

Competitive Differentiation

In a crowded real estate market, 3D visualizations provide a competitive edge by differentiating properties and marketing strategies. The ability to showcase a property in a visually appealing and immersive manner sets it apart from competitors relying solely on traditional marketing materials.

Agents and developers who embrace 3D visualizations demonstrate innovation, professionalism, and a commitment to providing an exceptional experience for their clients.

3D Visualizations plus AR / VR Trends

Seeing a 2D picture is good. Navigating a 3D picture is better. Finding yourself surrounded by customizable reality is best. With emerging technologies such as virtual reality (VR) or augmented reality (AR), their potential impact on 3D visualization in real estate is tremendous, and yet, so far not widely used. As a result, you can jump into this train early.

How can AR/VR technology enhance real estate sales?

Immersive Virtual Tours: Virtual reality allows users to experience 3D visualizations in a fully immersive way. Potential buyers can virtually “walk through” properties and explore every corner using VR headsets. This technology provides a sense of presence and scale, allowing buyers to visualize themselves in the space more realistically. It enhances engagement, increases emotional connection, and helps buyers make more confident purchase decisions without physical visits.

HUSPI created AR-empowered mobile apps for Chornobyl tours and for art museum tours.

Design Visualization and Customization: VR and AR technologies enable real-time design visualization and customization options. Architects, developers, and buyers can use these technologies to virtually place and manipulate furniture, experiment with different finishes, and visualize design changes instantly. This facilitates better decision-making, speeds up design iterations, and improves stakeholder communication.

Remote Collaboration and Presentations: VR and AR enable remote collaboration and presentations. Multiple stakeholders, regardless of their physical location, can virtually meet within a 3D visualization, review designs, and provide feedback in real-time. This eliminates the need for physical meetings, reduces travel costs, and expedites the decision-making process.

Interactive Property Showcasing: AR technology enhances real estate marketing by overlaying virtual elements onto the physical world. With AR-enabled mobile applications, potential buyers can use their smartphones or tablets to view properties and see virtual enhancements, such as 3D furniture, decor, or even renovation possibilities, within their real environment. This interactive and personalized experience increases engagement and assists buyers in visualizing the potential of a property.

Off-Plan Sales and Investor Presentations: VR and AR technologies are particularly advantageous for off-plan sales and investor presentations. Developers can create immersive 3D visualizations of properties that have yet to be constructed and provide potential buyers or investors with virtual tours of future developments. This helps buyers make confident pre-construction purchases and allows investors to assess the project’s potential without physical prototypes.

Virtual Staging and Redesigning: VR and AR technologies can be used for virtual staging and redesigning properties. By digitally furnishing and decorating vacant spaces, real estate agents and developers can showcase the potential of a property, attract more buyers, and increase perceived value. Similarly, buyers can use AR applications to visualize different interior design styles and see how their preferred furnishings would look in a space before making purchase decisions.

3D Visualization Platforms for Real Estate Sales: Conclusion

Real estate might be an offline industry, but much can be digitalized to reach new heights. It’s critically important to be where people are and when you can illustrate your idea using the latest advancements in technologies, it helps a lot to convey the ideas you had in mind.

3D visualizations are one of such software tools and while there are many solutions for it, it’s convenient to have your own that is tailored for your particular needs and wants so you can use it for marketing, sales, and general promotion of your properties.

Interested in a solution like that? We’ve done it already. Let’s talk.

Originally published at https://huspi.com on June 9, 2023.

How to increase real estate sales & improve property marketing with 3D visualizations was originally published in HUSPI on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If you have ever sent a request to an outsourcing company, chances are you received a list of questions about your idea from the company’s project managers or sales representatives.

In this article, we’ll talk about the questions we ask our clients prior to creating the rough estimation. We’ll also touch upon the reasons why we ask each question (hint: it’s not because we are just being nosy. Neither they are the hoops we want you to jump through just for us to see you do it.)

What Kind of Project Do You Want?

Even if you don’t answer any of the following questions, this question — “What kind of project do you want?” is the main one you need to answer if you want us to calculate the This is a general question about the project.

• Is it an app? (Native or cross-platform? Do you have a preference?)
• Is it a website? (Does it need an admin dashboard or is it a landing page?)
• Is it an integrated web and mobile system?

If you want a mobile app, think of these questions:

We’ll stop at some questions more specifically later in the article, but here are the things you should be able to answer (even just to yourself):

1. What is the purpose of your mobile app?
2. Who is your target audience or user base?
3. Which platforms do you want your app to be developed for (e.g., iOS, Android, both)?
4. What specific features and functionalities do you envision for your app?
5. Are there any existing apps or websites that inspire you or are similar to your concept?
6. Do you have any design preferences or branding guidelines?
7. Do you require any backend infrastructure or API integrations?
8. What is your desired timeline for app development and launch?
9. What is your estimated budget for the project?
10. Are there any specific security or privacy considerations for your app?
11. Do you have any preference for the development methodology or project management approach?
12. Will you require ongoing app maintenance and support after the initial development?
13. Do you have any in-house development resources or technical expertise?
14. Are there any specific legal or regulatory requirements you need to consider?
15. Do you have a monetization strategy or plans for generating revenue from your app?

If you want a web-based app, think of these questions:

Some questions are general for all kinds of software — web or mobile-based, but you need to be able to answer these questions in order for us to know what to expect and how to better tailor the solution to your particular business requirements and expectations.

1. What is the purpose of your web-based software?
2. Who will be the primary users or target audience?
3. What specific features and functionalities do you require in the software?
4. Are there any existing software or websites that serve as a reference or inspiration for your project?
5. Do you have any design preferences or branding guidelines for the software?
6. What technologies or programming languages do you prefer for development?
7. Are there any specific integrations or APIs that need to be incorporated into the software?
8. Do you have any security or data privacy requirements for the software? (For example, if this is an e-Health app or one that handles personal and financial data.)
9. What is your desired timeline for development and deployment?
10. What is your estimated budget for the project?
11. Will the software require ongoing maintenance and support after the initial development phase?
12. Do you have any in-house technical resources or expertise available for the project?
13. Are there any legal or regulatory considerations that need to be addressed?
14. Do you have a monetization strategy or plans for generating revenue from the software?
15. Will the software need to be accessible across different devices and browsers?

Tell us about your project — anything you consider important. Communication is key.

What Are the Business Goals and Purposes of the App?

The goal and the purpose of the mobile app or a web-based application is the critical question that you need to know the answer to.

Millions of apps are available on the market, and simply copying something already isn’t a good idea. However, if you have come up with a new solution to an existing challenge, that’s great! That’s what we want to know — why did you decide to create an app or website? What do you expect it to do? How do you envision it reaching its goal?

Business goals also are an important part of understanding and building a software solution. For example, knowing that you would like to use this app or web application to increase your profits by 25% or clients by 10% will help us remain focused on reaching that goal. Otherwise, we might create a solution that will meet all the technical requirements but might not solve the original issue. We’ll “win the battle, but lose the war.”

The more precise your definition, the better and simpler will be for us to understand what’s required and what technologies we’ll need for those tasks. For example, “I want an app for restaurants” is quite broad and vague. However, when you talk about “An app where clients can see the restaurant’s menu, order food, and pay for it, as well as a backend system for administrators to manage the orders,” our PMs can already start envisioning the system’s architecture.

Are There Any Examples of Similar Apps or Systems?

There are times when you use an app or a system and you think “Dang, everything’s great, except that one thing or one scenario. It would be perfect for a shopping app to have an option with a speech-to-text feature for grocery lists. I need an app like that.”

If you tell us “Here’s a similar app I liked but I want it for another purpose,” this will also give us valuable information about the system architecture and what you want to see as the final product. We can reinvent the wheel, but at the same time, there’s no need to reinvent it just to change the tire pattern.

And if it’s a brand new idea the market hasn’t seen yet — well, great! Let’s do it!

Do You Have Any Preference for the Technologies?

At HUSPI, our standard technologies are based on JavaScript (React for the front end and Node.js for the back end, most of the time). However, the tools should be chosen based on the requirements and documentation.

If you have an existing system and you want additional modules for it, the solution should integrate with it seamlessly. If your system uses PHP, for example, we’ll need to make sure that everything works correctly (given the systems will work together.)

If you don’t have any preference and it’s a brand new project, then our PMs and developers can brainstorm on the best-fitting solution that would suit your needs and use the strengths and experience of our team.

What Is Your Project Deadline?

Some sales representatives might tell you that it’s possible to create an app within two weeks. However, chances are that the app will not meet your requirements (except the deadline.)

As a rough estimate, developing a basic MVP for a mobile or web app typically takes anywhere from 2 to 6 months. This timeframe includes activities such as initial planning, requirement gathering, design, development, testing, and deployment. Keep in mind that this estimate is for a basic MVP, which typically focuses on delivering core functionality and may lack some advanced features or extensive polish.

Therefore, it’s important to:

1. Plan ahead and be realistic.
2. Realize that good things take time (and no, we don’t just say that because we get paid per hour.)

Most of the time, you’ll need around 3 months for a good-quality MVP. However, based on your goals and plans, there is always a way out even when the deadlines are very tight.

For example, do you need to pitch a project to your investor in two weeks? We won’t be able to have a product ready in that time, but we can create a prototype, which will show the advantages of the solution. Other things that can be done in a relatively short period of time are the project development plan, design, etc.

Is This a New Project or Do You Have an MVP Already?

Do we need to start from scratch or do we need to rework the existing system? Counterintuitively, it’s often (not always) faster to create something from scratch than to dig through the legacy code in order to understand the project’s architecture. A side question to this one is — do you need to create a standalone product or a module for the existing system? We mentioned this briefly in the question about the technologies, but it’s an important piece of information that will help us make decisions regarding the languages and databases used.

The time required for updating existing software versus creating something from scratch can vary depending on several factors. Let’s consider both scenarios:

Updating an Existing Software:

1. Scope of Changes: The extent of changes required in the existing software plays a significant role. If the updates involve minor bug fixes or small feature enhancements, the time required may be relatively shorter. On the other hand, if the updates involve significant architectural changes, integration of new functionalities, or major design overhauls, the time required will be longer.
2. Codebase Familiarity: The familiarity of the development team with the existing codebase is crucial. If the team has prior experience and understanding of the codebase, it can expedite the update process. Conversely, if the codebase is complex or poorly documented, it may take longer to make updates.
3. Testing and Compatibility: Updating existing software requires thorough testing to ensure that the changes do not introduce new bugs or affect existing functionalities. Compatibility with different platforms, devices, or integrations may also need to be considered.

Creating Something from Scratch:

1. Planning and Design: When starting from scratch, planning and designing the software architecture, user interface, and feature set are essential. This process can take time, particularly if there are complex requirements or a need for extensive user research.
2. Development: Developing a software product from scratch involves building the entire codebase, implementing features, and integrating necessary components. The time required will depend on the complexity and scale of the project.
3. Testing and Iteration: Rigorous testing and iteration are necessary during the development process to ensure quality and address any issues. This iterative cycle can add time to the development timeline.

In general, updating existing software may require less time compared to creating something from scratch, especially if the updates are relatively straightforward. However, significant updates or changes can also take considerable time, potentially rivaling or surpassing the time required to develop a new software product from scratch.

What is MVP? We wrote about this approach to development and the benefits of MVP for new software products.

What Kind of Budget Could We Expect to Work with for This Project?

Yes, we realize that oftentimes this question sounds too upfront. However, one of the reasons we ask is because having an idea about the system's projected budget helps us schedule the activities on the timeline, choose the technologies and integrations, and see what we can do for the MVP.

At HUSPI, we don’t work for stockholders’ equity in the project. It might be a good option for larger companies that are searching for startups to invest in and we’re steadily growing toward that goal. Nevertheless, at the present moment, this business model is not one of ours.

We wrote about our estimation process and inception phase process.

Project Management Questions: Infographic

Ready to answer those questions? Let’s meet!

It might seem like we want a lot of information, but if you think about it — you probably have all the answers to the questions we’ve asked. Our final goal is to create an application for you that will ultimately help your business grow and prosper. We love the success stories of our clients, especially when we have helped along the way.

Got all the answers? Let’s connect for a meeting.

Originally published at https://huspi.com on May 24, 2023.

Questions for a Correct Software Development Estimate was originally published in HUSPI on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We have all heard the phrase “Sharing is caring,” but what does that mean in our current realities, when it comes to sharing something other than a sandbox or a toy? How can sharing be beneficial to people of different roles in the community?

In this article, we’ll talk about the general business trends in the sharing economy and will focus in detail on how this concept can benefit the Real Estate industry — both on the developers’ side as well as the tenants.

What is sharing economy?

Sharing economy is a term that stands for an economic system where goods or services are shared between individuals. From a financial perspective, there are four ways this works:

1. Goods and services for free
2. Goods and services for a fee
3. Goods and services for barter or exchange
4. Goods and services purchased together and the price of it shared

For example, you and I both decide to purchase a car. Neither of us needs it on a daily basis and therefore two cars aren’t really necessary. We decide to buy a car together and then use a Google calendar to book the car when we need it.

What are the basic benefits for us in doing this?

1. Together we can get something better than what each one of us would get on our own (and at the same time, we have a chance to save money.)
2. We would need less parking space.
3. We will do something for ecology.

We’ll stop on benefits in more detail later in the article.

The History of sharing economy

A shared economy or sharing economy has been around for millennia — people always shared things with each other for as long as history goes. However, most of the time, it was on a local level from one person to another with no system or mechanics.

As more people got access to more money, it became more popular to get something of your own rather than having to share it with others. Until the second half of the 2000s, when consumer behavior once again changed significantly, when ecologists’ and economists’ words and forecasts about the future became not very bright.

With over seven billion people living simultaneously on our planet, purchasing everything just for yourself no longer was sustainable. A growing number of people started recognizing that their consumer habits had to change in order to leave resources for future generations.

From 2009 onwards, the sharing economy was on the rise with numerous startups such as Airbnb and Couchsurfing becoming known worldwide. Since then, numerous other companies have started to pay more attention to sustainability and going green by offering shared services and goods.

Sharing Economy Statistics 2022

According to the PwC Share Economy Report 2021, this industry is forecasted to grow by a staggering 2,133% in just 12 years (from 2013 to 2025.)

According to Statista, the number of sharing economy users in the United States from 2016 to 2021 (in millions) is below:

The home-sharing industry has decreased during the pandemic and dropped in 2020 to 23.3 million users, as normal travel was not possible. However, this trend is projected to increase in the future, reaching 68.2 million users by 2023.

Let’s move to the real estate market and how the sharing economy can benefit all involved players in the business process.

Sharing Economy Benefits

There are numerous benefits to a share economy for everyone involved. We will stop on three main “actors” of the process:

1. The tenants — those who live in the apartments or houses
2. The property managers — those who own the properties or just manage them
3. The real estate developers — those who are building the properties and need to sell them

What are the benefits of a shared economy for tenants?

While it’s important to have a personal space to live in, many of the things we purchase for ourselves aren’t being used by us every single day. For example, a portable grill that we use once a week or so. At the same time, it was an expensive purchase at the time and we kept talking about the pros and cons, trying to justify the purchase.

The same story applies to power tools, cars, parking places, etc. Even if you are financially stable and can afford to buy or pay for all of those things for yourself, the question is more of: should you?

We have so much… stuff.

• The average 10-year-old in Britain owns 238 toys but plays with 12 daily (The Telegraph)
• The average British woman owns twice as many clothes in her wardrobe as she did in the 1980s, buys 59 new items of clothing every year, and has 22 things that she has never worn. (The Daily Mail)
• 1 out of every 10 Americans rents offsite storage to put stuff they don’t need. Storage units are the fastest-growing segment of the commercial real estate industry over the past several decades (New York Times Magazine).

So… besides getting a storage unit or refusing to buy absolutely everything that isn’t strictly critical, what other option is there? Sharing economy!

Instead of buying that portable grill for just ourselves, we can buy it together with our neighbors and use it whenever we need it. Instead of purchasing all the sports equipment for our private home gym, we can find a place with a shareable gym available in the house, where we can simply book a period.

Sharing promotes community-building and nowadays community is so important. Whenever we face issues like the pandemic or the current political situation in the world, we all need to know the people living with us in the neighborhood or in the apartment complex. Such relationships are potentially mutually beneficial.

Besides reducing the carbon footprint and going green by purchasing less stuff (because we buy one item to share instead of two for each), we also reduce our expenses and can afford to buy something of higher quality and still pay less than full price for it.

What are the benefits of a shared economy for property managers

A sharing economy is also great for property managers because the apps that promote co-living and community building usually offer great ways of communicating with the tenants and subcontractors.

The implemented sharing economy also helps to manage common areas such as gyms, parking places, garages, and possible co-working areas in case they are available on-site. With the booking feature, everyone gets access to the required goods and services, everyone is happy, and management is much easier.

Community apps also offer ways to submit tickets about various issues that crop up every once in a while at the properties and it’s important to be notified of those issues quickly, manage them in a convenient way, and store data about past issues.

What are the benefits for developers & construction companies?

So… we have taken a look at the tenants and property managers… but how the sharing economy can be helpful to construction companies and developers?

Well, actually, the developers also can benefit from community-building software and mobile apps. It’s one thing to build a house, but it’s another to build someone’s home. Home holds a special meaning in people’s hearts.

With single houses, this might be a simpler task and with apartment complexes, you need to offer something more to improve the clients’ experience. Community and share economy apps that go together with the apartment purchase increase the interest of clients to become an owner or rent apartments.

Therefore, there are two goals for real estate developers in integrating sharing economy apps and processes:

1. Boost sales for new clients. When you have two apartments with similar features, it’s the small details that start to matter to the clients. If I, as a client, would know there are community services as well as a well-established neighborhood, I would much rather choose that apartment over the one with nothing of sorts, where I have to figure it all out on my own.
2. Increase satisfaction for existing clients. Having an app where I can get all the news about the apartment complex or living area, submit tickets about maintenance things, learn about the events that are planned in the neighborhood, or have a way to share equipment without having to buy my own set of everything — that would make me happy. The mundane processes are taken care of and I can enjoy the results.

How to choose the software your business needs?

There are numerous startups that deal with property management already — we wrote about them in our previous article. However, the majority is focused on maintenance processes or events.

To create a community with sharing economy principles, it’s better to have your own cost-effective solution that would be tailored to the needs of your real estate property — be it an apartment complex or several single-family homes located in the same area. This way you won’t have to decide how to adapt this or that feature to your property, instead, the process would work the other way around — the app would adapt to your specific needs.

We are currently working on developing a lightweight software solution that would have these community and sharing economy features in it.

Leave your contact info to be notified when the demo is live.

Originally published at https://huspi.com on April 18, 2022.

Sharing Economy in Real Estate Property Management was originally published in HUSPI on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Open banking is a new way to connect lenders and borrowers. It’s time to start thinking about how it might impact your real estate business in terms of innovation.

The term “open banking” refers to the idea that banks should provide customers with access to information about their financial accounts, regardless of whether they use those services. This means that consumers will be able to see all of their account balances, transaction history, and other important details online.

There were three major waves of real estate digitalization and property technology development identified since 2000:

1. V1.0: Moving the industry online in general. This involved introducing digitalization and digitization for basic processes like online booking, etc.
2. V2.0: Real estate startups appeared, offering innovative products that involved integrations with other services and marketplaces.
3. V3.0: PropTech as we know it at the current moment, where there is more experimentation with emerging technologies like virtual reality, blockchain, open banking, and others.

Open Banking Benefits for Real Estate Industry

There are numerous benefits and advantages of open banking for businesses and people in general. However, when you deal with real estate, where the sums of money and transactions are usually quite high and the risks are, accordingly, also quite high, you need more than just bank statements.

The bureaucratic procedures for acquiring or renting or lending properties are cumbersome. All sides are trying to ensure that their rights are observed and that the possible risks are assessed and minimized.

How can open banking help with that?

Minimized paperwork.

One of the benefits is a reduced amount of paperwork to print out and exchange. When you have everything digitalized, it increases the efficiency of both sides. You can find necessary information much faster, not to mention that digital signatures from banking institutions are more secure than just a printout that could’ve been edited to match the requirements.

Personalized offers.

Open banking allows lenders to share data with third parties, such as real estate agents. Of course, there is no sensitive data that is shared, but the general audience information is helpful to create more personalized offers to attract both sellers and buyers.

Improved customer experience and service.

Open banking streamlines and automates many of the mundane and boring aspects of the paperwork, which, in turn, helps to communicate about more important subjects and just be humans without being buried under the papers. Also, open banking is a trend on the rise right now, so by offering this feature to your customers, you open more doors for them to enter because your option seems more attractive than the one where they have to do all the work.

Increased security and data protection.

At first, it might seem that sharing your banking information with third parties is risky and scary. But in fact, open banking increases the security of your financial data because it is only accessible with specific credentials and only in a very specific way. For example, if you need to provide a financial statement from your bank, the company will get only that, nothing additional that might provoke problems.

With open banking, all the actors of the real estate property processes are benefiting: renters, landlords, and property owners. In today’s world of image editing tools, it’s simple to forge bank statements. However, with open banking’s data directly from the bank, it’s impossible.

Simplified communication.

Along with the customer experience and service, you get simplified communication because it’s focused on the properties and not so much on the paperwork itself. For people, it’s important to feel that they are treated as people and not just as bringers of the papers, and more time can be spent on discussing the pros and cons of specific properties with the goal to find the best fitting option.

Faster approval rates.

This is one of the most important features and advantages of open banking for everyone involved. With traditional banking systems, all the paperwork has to be prepared and analyzed manually. Did the renter pay the rent on time before? Are there any issues the landlord should know about in terms of financial information? These and many other questions have to be answered beforehand in order to approve the person’s ability to rent or purchase a place.

With PropTech and open banking, this becomes faster and easier because it is easier for computers to detect anomalies and analyze a large number of data and figures to see whether everything is good. Additionally, this verification can be done at the onboarding stage with minimal effort required.

Examples of Open Banking for Real Estate Businesses

Open banking connects technical providers, banks, and third partners together to allow data exchange in a secure and simplified manner.

Here is a general overview of how the traditional process of renting a real estate property works as opposed to the process empowered by open banking technology.

The steps to rent a place in the traditional process (and this is a quick overview):

1. You look for a property on a real estate aggregator and find the ones that you like.
2. You apply for that property and, if/when approved, you submit the necessary documents.
3. Once approved, you get a call or an email with a notification about it.
4. You negotiate and sign the contract.
5. You pay your rental bond as well as the monthly rental fee.
6. Enjoy your life in the new place.
7. Once the period ends and you need to look for another rental, you terminate the contract and repeat the previous steps for the next property.

Does open banking change that? Oh yes.

1. You look for a place you like and find it.
2. You connect your bank account and this step verifies your identity, confirms your income, checks the affordability of the chosen property, provides the necessary information to the real estate agency, and authorizes future payments for the rent (with your conscious consent)
3. Sign the contract
4. Terminate the contract when complete

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the adoption of financial technologies in general and especially in real estate was accelerated throughout the world. With fewer opportunities to meet in person, technologies came to the rescue to streamline the processes that didn’t require too much human interaction, leaving the times to meet face-to-face for more critical ones. This results in:

1. Greater speed
2. Less bureaucracy
3. Friendlier apps

Let’s see what were the business cases for the combination of FinTech and PropTech: namely open banking for the real estate industry.

Credit & Transaction History

Does the person have good financial management skills? Does he have any outstanding debts that might become obstacles to paying rent? Did the person pay the previous credits on time?

All this information can be presented in a simple report from the bank. The old way was to check all the data manually to see whether there were any anomalies. However, with open banking technology, real estate agents can easily get the analysis of the credit history right away and have access only to the information necessary for their purposes.

Also, credit bureaus sometimes don’t have the entire data on tenants’ financial stability and income levels — something where open banking technology can be a handy assistant.

Rental history

Did the person rent a place before? Were there any problems with previous landlords in terms of paying the rent?

Rental history, together with credit history, can be checked using open banking technology with the help of, for example, Rent Passports. While credit history checks the financial practices and discipline in general, rental history checks the payments connected with the invoices for the rent.

When a person had a good rental history, this increases the probability of being approved for the new place faster. Tenants can also automatically verify their past rental payments and share this information with landlords.

Besides less bureaucracy, it also helps renters get references for their next move. For example, in the United Kingdom alone there are over 15 million renters, who move every 12–18 months, and every time they move, they need a new reference. With open banking, this process becomes a lot less stressful for everyone involved. One of the providers that offer data-based referencing to real estate businesses is called Canopy.

Documents verification

Open banking APIs are also incredibly helpful in reducing fraud for document verification. It’s one thing to bring copies of documents and another to have them directly from the banking institution.

Banks usually require identity and address proofs as well as other additional documents when they open accounts for persons or for companies, therefore they do most of the verification themselves. As a result, there is no need to go through the same process again — that very information can be shared in a secure way.

Reduced back-office costs for screening tenants

Back-office and administrative tasks take a lot of time and resources. You need to hire people whose main job would be to screen tenants and, let’s admit, that’s a rather boring mundane task that mainly revolves around papers, papers, and some more papers.

With artificial intelligence for the identity verification process, you, as a business owner, may pay a bit more at the beginning to introduce this technology and integrate it into your processes, but in the long run, you’ll reduce the administrative and HR costs dramatically. At the same time, the quality of checks would not suffer and may actually improve.

Automated payments

Automating payments is also a very convenient thing because it takes care of the “Oh, it’s that time of the month already to pay the rent!”

Besides the basic automated payments, which are available in numerous financial services, there is an added feature that’s convenient for landlords and real estate managers — disbursement of the payments.

For example, the tenant pays $1,000 for rent. The landlord gets those funds and has the additional expenses involved like paying the real estate agent’s fee or other recurring payments. With open banking technologies and set-up automatic payments, the amount that the tenant pays is automatically distributed to the required accounts.

Crowdfunding / Crowdlending

Open banking, due to its security and anti-fraud precautions allows for providing secure crowdfunding or crowdlending service.

Crowdfunding in the case of real estate is a collective property investment while crowdlending is an alternative to bank mortgage loans. Buying a home usually requires a hefty down payment that many cannot afford (even if they can easily manage the monthly payments.) As a result, a large portion of upper-middle-class people would like to purchase a home, but can’t overcome the obstacle of the initial payment.

Open Banking and Real Estate: In Conclusion

Much more can be said about the real estate market and how it’s powered up by open banking and other software technologies. We’ll stop here for now, but we believe that we are just beginning to see the potential.

With a growing world population and further urbanization, we need convenient ways to manage our lives and everything that is connected to our living areas. These tools are needed by tenants, landlords, mortgage brokers, real estate agencies, and many others involved in the industry.

Who benefits from it?

Everyone who’s involved.

Millennials and Gen Z especially are ready to take on the challenge of owning real estate and finding a place to live and take care of their families and with open banking, they have a chance to get a decent mortgage without a credit score even. All that is necessary is risk assessment and that can be done with the help of software and data.

How open banking can transform your business? Contact us to learn more.

You can also learn more about our services and real estate software solutions here.

Originally published at https://huspi.com on August 19, 2022.

6 Ways Open Banking Could Impact Your Real Estate Business was originally published in HUSPI on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.