SV Podcast 3: The State of Real Estate Tech — Alejandro Artacho (CEO of Spotahome)
By Siddharth Choksi, Analyst at Samaipata Ventures
Meet Alejandro. He is a proud, and incredibly enthusiastic entrepreneur from Madrid. He is the CEO and co-founder of Spotahome, a transactional marketplace, based in Madrid, that aims at becoming the global reference brand for mid to long-term real estate rental. Alejandro holds degrees in business and law. Proceeding his academics, Alejandro went on to set up a number of ventures, including 2 in China, to eventually set up Spotahome in March, 2014.
Here’s a little taste of what you can expect in today’s podcast:
- How tech is penetrating and transforming the global real estate market
- The importance of trust and transparency, specifically in real estate marketplaces
- The role of “supply-lock-ins” in the digital real estate industry and how it can be leveraged
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THE STATE OF REAL ESTATE TECH: A DEEPER DIVE
1. THE EMERGENCE OF AR/VR IN THE REAL ESTATE MARKET
AR and VR are likely to become standard in the real-estate industry in the near future; in fact, Forbes recently published an article which highlighted the potential of VR (e.g. for transparency), however, as Alejandro shared, despite that tech has only recently started to emerge in real estate, it is clear that now is the time to leverage disruptive technologies to increase quality / value of service. AR may not necessarily have an as large scope of uses (yet), but, a great possibility would be to use the transformative technology to virtually furnish unfurnished homes.
2. PILLARS OF RENTAL PLATFORMS: TRUST AND TRANSPARENCY
As we’ve discussed in one of our previous articles, trust is an incredibly important and elaborate pillar for marketplaces (or any form of online platforms for that matter). In the podcast, Alejandro stresses the point that trust, transparency, and honesty are even more crucial for real estate platforms like Spotahome as the transactions tend to be of several hundred euros, therefore customers need to be completely confident and at ease.
3. SUPPLY LOCK-IN AS A STRATEGY FOR LIQUIDITY
The concept/strategy of supply lock-ins is rather key in the global real estate market (especially online) as it allows platform to count on certain property providers to stay in exclusivity with their platform, allowing there to always be a certain amount of supply-side units. With supply in place, platforms can focus on demand in order to generate liquidity.
“Supply lock-in is a great problem to have, the opposite would be far worse: you have a bunch of supply and nobody wants it!” — Alejandro (CEO, Spotahome)
With that said, it’s a great strategy one can implement to (attempt to) create liquidity, but can also prove to be useless if one is unable to attract demand.
As usual, feel free to leave us a comment / send us feedback, we will be more than happy to get back to you!
