With technology, real estate processes can be better streamlined

Mr Kirimi Muriithi, a seasoned property investor in Nairobi, recalls with amusement how, if you wanted to buy a piece of land in the ’70s, you would either ask friends and colleagues whether they knew of any property on sale or walk several miles looking for one with a “For sale” sign. But even then, he says, chances of being swindled were high.

Fast forward to 2017, and the Internet has radically changed the way the real estate business is done. If you are looking for property today, you are most likely to begin your search online. Indeed, a website is now a must-have tool for any serious real estate company.

Reports from around the world tell of huge sums of money being sunk into real estate tech companies that are changing the way the business is managed.

However, things are not moving as fast locally, with some processes still being conducted manually. So, how can technology improve this industry?
DN2 sought insights from IT experts who have been involved in designing comprehensive systems for real estate companies in the country.

MONITORING AND EVALUATION

Mr Martin Njuki, the product development manager at tech company Excelle Insights Ltd, says the most important software available for real estate companies is the one that enables them to monitor and evaluate their business processes, which is especially useful in marketing and construction.
“If, as a marketing team, you have a budget of Sh50,000 at the beginning of the month, how do you tell at the end of the month that the budget has worked for you?” asks Mr Njuki. “When you look at sponsored listings, say on Facebook, the only way to know their effectiveness is through monitoring. You need to monitor and evaluate the process from the time you deploy the budget to the time you make sales so that you don’t just give Facebook money but get nothing in return.”

He says if a company fails to make any sales, the different campaign teams start pointing accusing fingers at each other. This is mostly because there is no data to show how the individual teams performed.

“If this happens, come next month, you’ll have another Sh50,000 for a marketing campaign but you won’t know where to spend it. Had you monitored and evaluated the previous month’s campaign, it would be easy for you to, say forego fliers and go heavy on online marketing because that’s where you got most customers from. By the end of three months, a company should have enough data to know where their project is heading,” he says.

Besides, an online system allows you to follow up issues. “If you are the boss, you can know from the sales team how many people have expressed interest in your product and who is following them up. So instead of the usual ‘We are doing well’ from your sales team, you get very specific information about your company’s performance,” says Mr Njuki.

In addition, staff monitoring and evaluation is much easier with a system. Mr Njuki says that issues such employees coming to work and lazing around all day would be a thing of the past.

“With a system, you can allow your sales people to work from anywhere because at the end of the day, you only need to log into the system, check on, say Employee A whom you assigned a certain task, and find out what he or she has done that day,” he offers.

He notes that with a system, it is hard for employees to cheat their employer because they have to feed information on their whereabouts and activities into the system, with a report on the same being generated every day.

If an employee is on leave, the human resource tool in the system must indicate as much. “So there is no escape for lazy employees. A system makes business operations more effective and efficient,” he says.

INFORMED DECISIONS

Mr Njuki believes that the real estate sector needs to seriously reconsider the way it operates, and especially how it approaches the market.

“If, for instance, a company wants to start a new project, what really advises this venture and how it will be done? How does it know that instead of building three-bedroom apartments it should go for two- or one-bedroom apartments? How does it know that it best bet is building the flat on Thika Road and not in Westlands?” he wonders.

Basically, what they should examine at this point is the purchasing power of a group of people.

“If your company had a project earlier in which units were going for, say Sh15 million, and out of the 1,000 people you interacted with about 600 did not buy because they could afford a house worth only Sh7 million, then this information can be used to inform the next project. So if you are to start a new project, you would look for one where you can sell a unit at Sh7 million and still make a profit,” Mr Njuki suggests, adding that even knowing that some people did not buy into your project is valuable information for future planning. However, he acknowledges that you would need a system to collect such data.

ONLINE PRESENCE

Ms Felista Wakina, the CEO of tech company Softlink Options Ltd, who also sells plots, says the question to ask yourself is, “How does technology enhance my business?” One has to look at how they are using the Internet to create awareness of their products and services. Ms Wakina says real estate companies should take advantage of social media. “You can use social media to enhance knowledge of, and market, your products and services,” she says.

Google Maps revolution

Almost every corner of the world is captured on online maps by technology giant Google Inc. This, Ms Wakina says, is a boon to prospective real estate buyers.

“By using coordinates, people can get a clear idea of the exact location of whatever property they would like to buy, especially land in an open field. Now, with a Google Maps pin you can actually stand on your plot and drop your pin on your smart phone and it will give you the coordinates so that even if you can’t find any other landmarks, you will know that this is the land that you own,” she says.

Ms Wakina adds that the ability to zoom in and view a piece of land without having to go there is an advantage to buyers, adding that the satellite images on the Google Maps enable them to zoom in on a home to establish what the surrounding environment looks like, and even narrow down to the estate and the court itself for a clearer picture before buying the home.

ENHANCING BUSINESS PROCESSES

Commending home leasing companies for online listing and making house hunting easy, Ms Wakina adds, “Enhancing a business process is basically using technology to help you take a client from one step to the next in the buying process.”

She gives the example of the partnership between commercial banks and telecommunication companies, which has facilitated the disbursement of quick loans via mobile money transfer. She notes that this has eliminated paperwork as well as the need for agents, not to mention reducing the time for getting a loan to just a few hours.

“Land selling companies have not taken steps to shorten the sale process, however. For instance, why can’t I go online, select a piece of land, view it via Google Maps, verify that the property is legitimately registered by the selling company and, if the property interests me, submit my paper work online? All this is being done manually,” Ms Wakina laments.

MARKETING REAL ESTATE EVENTS

To improve their performance, real estate companies should take advantage of online event management tools, and especially those on social media, to create awareness. “The other day a friend’s land-selling company held an event in Juja [Kiambu County], where they were showing pieces of land for sale. While the crowd was considerably big, I couldn’t help imagining how much bigger it would have been had he announced the event on Facebook,” says Ms Wakina, adding that real estate players should take advantage of the readily available event management tools to market events.

ONLINE DISCUSSION GROUPS

To stress the importance of having online discussion groups, Ms Wakina cites the example of how one of the most popular browsers, Mozilla Firefox, evolved,

“One day a group of software developers came together and formed an online discussion group where everyone could post a query, an idea or contribute to an existing idea. This continued for some time and in the end these guys came up with Mozilla. I see this often in the IT world, but it’s something the real estate industry could borrow.”

She says having online conversations, which might eventually result in partnerships being formed to come up with something big, is what real estate needs.

“What I like about partnerships is that they go beyond geographical limits to become global, so people end up introducing s new ideas to a certain location. For instance, when I visited South Africa, I saw some very big aquariums, with sharks and other types of fish. If you wanted to swim, you could just get into your swimming gear and dive into the water to swim with the sharks. If such an idea were introduced here it would seem strange but would still attract a lot of people. That is what happens when people from different environments interact,” she says.

ONLINE COMMUNICATION ‘CREATES TRUST BETWEEN AGENTS AND CLIENTS’

Real estate relies heavily on human interaction, so some people might argue that by eliminating this interaction, technology can create problems.

However, Mr Njuki notes that technology has not eliminated human interaction, but streamlined the sale process.

“Compared to the manual system, the customer relationship management (CRM) system has introduced an element of trust in favour of the agents. Picture an agent based in London trying to convince a customer there to buy a property in Kenya. How does the customer tell that the agent actually works for the real estate company on whose behalf he/she is selling property?” he asks. He notes that it can be difficult for such an agent to convince a client that he works for a company in Kenya, and that the documents he has are genuine.

However, he says, there is a way around this problem: all you have to do is create an account for the agent within the system. That way, when the client has agreed to buy, the agent sits them down and the sale process begins online, with the agent entering the client’s details in the system. At the end of the process, an offer letter prepared by the company’s lawyer is generated for the client, to be signed by his/her lawyer. Also, the system sends the client a text message confirming what he/she has booked as well as alerts for any transactions he/she makes, including payment. “This introduces an element of trust and in a way validates the agent. It’s like depositing money with an M-Pesa agent; the text message confirming that transaction creates some trust in you.”

What’s more, employees can set a reminder to call a particular customer and follow up with them.

FYI

Monitoring and evaluation are crucial to the real estate business because they enable you to tell how the various sections of your business are doing so that you can learn from your mistakes and use funds more productively in future projects.