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The Future: Property Tech conference focussed on bringing tech disruptors and property sector professionals into one room. It succeeded. Here’s what tech is coming next for the property industry.
“Technology, in itself, is the differentiator”
Google’s Scott Sinclair discussed why storytelling in the property industry can build a property brand and how online video can do this.
Questions from the audience included “what’s the best way to target the most amount of people?” Scott explained that it wasn’t a case of targeting ‘everyone’ but using Adwords to target the perfect audience that’s looking for property.
Behind the scenes many people in the audience were wondering if Google will ever go into property search again…we’ll just have to watch this space.
How to succeed in the property industry, in just 3 words
Technology, value and performance – is this the secret to providing a high performing property brand? Founder of eMoov.co.uk Russell Quirk certainly thinks so. The audience was left to ponder on what they considered ‘good technology’ to help them achieve this.
Who will triumph: High Street, hybrid or online agent?
It was a full house when the panel of property professionals took to the stage. The session was chaired by Paula Higgins, the founder of Home Owners Alliance, and the panel included Alex Bailes from Countrywide, Russell Quirk from eMoov, Michael Bruce from Purplebricks and Chris Wood from PDQ Estates.
The question on everyone’s lips was ‘can we see the end in sight for the online or high street agent?’ Whilst you’d expect a lot of disagreement, the consensus of the room seemed to sway towards the hybrid model. All panellists agreed that good customer service was paramount to creating an effective property service online.
We’d love to hear where the property portal giants stand.
What does local mean?
Over the day we heard a lot about value that customers place on local knowledge from their high street agents – but it was left rather unknown what ‘local’ was and how far ‘local’ knowledge needs to extend out.
To solve the issue of local we introduced a new way of thinking of searching for properties by travel time – it means the customers have the control of how much time feels local to them.
We had two excellent advocates at the event. Alex Bailes, CTO at Countrywide announced we’re his favourite prop tech company. Damien Lane, an investor at Episode 1, also picked us as his favourite prop tech of the day in his closing address.
Can tech help predict the future?
The final panel of the day focused on innovating the commercial sector. We heard from Dr Neil Blake, Head of Research at CBRE, Juliette Morgan, Tech Global Lead for Cushman and Wakefield and Daniel Cook, Director of Strategy and Planning at RICS. The session, chaired by Michael Marciano from Shared Property Data, looked at how the commercial sector could open up its doors to innovation – using dedicated teams to understand what tech will help with better decision-making.
Juliette Morgan called for more tech that can take the guess out of valuing commercial properties, particularly as a property may not be in use by the public for numerous years later.
TAKE THE GUESS WORK OUT OF COMMERCIAL PROPERTY
Big thank you
To everyone that came over to chat to us at our stand – we loved discussing the hottest topics surrounding property and we can’t wait to see what the future of prop tech brings.