5 Ways to Apply Data Science to Real Estate

What are the tangible benefits, and where can we learn these techniques?

Data science is the technology likely to have the biggest long-term impact on the real estate industry. (Photo by Jannes Glas on Unsplash)

There is huge pressure on the real estate industry to unlock the potential of big data and incorporate machine learning and evidence-based approaches in their workflows. In the KPMG Global PropTech Survey 2018, 49% of participants thought that artificial intelligence, big data, and data analysis were the technologies likely to have the biggest impact on the real estate industry in the long term.

Consequently, some forward-thinking top executives at real estate institutions with long operating histories are pushing their firms to unlock the potential of their decades of records of transaction, valuation, asset management, listing, and other data. Simultaneously, the data provision space is maturing (possibly even overcrowding) with successful startups such as HouseCanary and Reonomy joining established players like CoStar and Real Capital Analytics, making it possible for any company interested in real estate to quickly obtain large amounts of relevant data.

However, as noted in a recent NAIOP article, real estate professionals are facing challenges figuring out how to actually utilize data. The KPMG Global PropTech Survey 2019 confirms that 80% of firms still do not have “most or all” of their…