An insight into future technology for real estate

I remember being inspired by the 2002 film Minority report. Not by the concept of the police being able to stop crimes before they happen – but by the concept of the wall sized screen manipulated by Tom Cruise as a virtual workpad for application software on screen. It seemed to demonstrate that we should not be bound by traditional screens for working – so it should be for real estate searching.

So I was interested in the post this week from 1000Watt consulting which provides valuable insight into real estate technology. The question posed was the extent to which the emerging ‘ambient web’ as ubiquitously enabled by GPS technology would empower significant changes in real estate. You may recall in the film the dynamic billboards that delivered personalised advertising messages as you passed by, very much leveraging the concepts of location based advertising.

The capability envisaged by 1000Watt is the ability to activate a reporting device as part of the on-board computer of your car which would feed real estate listings for available properties as you drive around the suburb. Naturally along with all the content details would be the ability to contact the agent directly to provide that personal service.

In addition to this idea, I have always believed that through a memory stick you could upload to a standard car GPS system the portfolio of open homes that you were interested in viewing on a Saturday. This would provide an optimised routing to the sequence of the open homes. During the drive between homes the voice messaging could also provide a description in an audio file. Naturally the sequencing of properties to view could also manage the time plan to accommodate a coffee or lunch break.

These ideas are entirely achievable – the technology is evolving, I would judge the consumer demand is there. What we lack is the universal commitment by all of this industry to embrace the empowerment of the consumers and thereby ensure that all properties marketed are comprehensively presented with rich data, images and most important of all the addressing of properties.