Technologies real estate agents can deploy in Covid-19 era

For a long time, the nature of the real estate business in Kenya has been driven by human-to-human interactions.

Besides, it is largely paper-based and encourages social gatherings in the form of site visits and home expos.

But in the wake of Covid-19, strategies put in place to contain the spread of the virus, such as social distancing, working from home, paperless transactions, enforced isolation and public gathering restrictions, have caught many realtors off guard, threatening their source of livelihood.

“It’s quite a tricky time. No one expected the disruption we are experiencing, and fast innovative solutions had to be found,” Username Investment CEO Reuben Kimani told DN2 via WhatsApp.

He adds: “We knew the most important factor is the safety of our staff. The next important matter is to keep the business afloat.”

To achieve the two goals, Kimani says he sent 90 per cent of his employees to work from home on full pay, with the rest working on rotation to assure essential business services.

He admits such a decision would not have been easy to make had his company not adopted some form of digitisation before the global pandemic hit.

“We had been automating our operations for some time before Covid-19, and therefore, it was easier for us to have members of staff work from home,” he says.

NEW NORMAL

Some of the operations he has automated are customer documentation, such as drafting sale offer letters and agreements, and location information for properties.

Local customers, he says, are encouraged to do e-banking and M-banking payments, while diaspora clients use e-payment platforms such as Wave and WorldRemit.

But his is not the only real estate business that has gone online. Optiven Group has introduced Shamba Mkononi, an app that allows customers to view their preferred projects via Google Earth, book a site visit online, pick a plot of choice and pay for it online.

The company’s CEO, George Wachiuri, says that a number of things are bound to change in the real estate sector, the first being the usual group site visits.

“Taking people to site was a daily engagement. Now, it is going to be all about self-drives to the site. Customers, moving forward, will most certainly be seeking Google coordinates of the property and then proceed to take themselves to site,” he says.

Commentators have predicted a new world order after the coronavirus, asserting that working from home, online shopping and distance learning will be ground zero for the new normal.

Kimani agrees: “Use of technology will become the norm going forward. I expect the percentage of online business to increase significantly after the coronavirus passes through exponential acceptance of online tools in use during this disruption period, a factor that will reduce operation cost.”

As the local sector plays catch-up, we took a look at some simple technologies that have been in use elsewhere and have come in handy during the pandemic.

Openn Negotiation

As the name suggests, this platform provides an online process for open negotiations by allowing vendors and agents to continue to list and negotiate properties under management.

The buyers have an advantage in the sense that they know exactly how many real competing buyers there are.

The tool also allows buyers, who may be in enforced or voluntary isolation, to participate in auctions as they normally would, but from their home, office or other chosen location.

To do so, buyers need to enter the starting price into the app and have their terms and conditions signed off by the seller. These can be things like settlement day, level of deposit and finance condition.

Openn Negotiation Managing Director Peter Gibbons recently told the media, “We’re well-placed to support the industry and help businesses meet their Covid-19 preparedness goals — we can have agents certified via our online learning facility in under two hours.”

Openn Negotiation has been described by users as the fairest way to buy and sell thanks to its price transparency, a defined campaign period and a sophisticated buyer qualification process.

And with a quick return to normality now in question after the Covid-19 disruption, real estate companies need to begin equipping their staff and agents to better understand and use technology in serving their clients. Having a tool such as Openn Negotiation would be a better place to start.

3D virtual tours is the way to go

Long before the coronavirus pandemic, a few local companies had adopted the 3D virtual tours tool to help prospective clients view the property on sale without visiting it in person.

Post-coronavirus, IT experts say this will be the new normal, replacing the traditional Saturday site visits.

Mukira Gitonga, a data engineer and the chief technology officer at Chimera AI, believes that 3D virtual tours will be the inevitable future for realtors.

“The markets will be down, companies can’t afford to have that many agents to conduct tours; therefore, most real estate companies will have to cut down on manpower and adopt technology, virtual reality tours, coupled with alternative ways to gain buyers, will be the way to go,” he observes, betting that artificial intelligence and machine learning will take over.

As the government is restricting the movement of people, meaning that projects outside the Nairobi metropolis are inaccessible for site visits and open days, virtual tours would come in handy.

In Australia, real estate agents are getting creative with their smartphones, offering FaceTime and WhatsApp video appointments to qualified buyers.

The advantage that comes with selling properties at this moment, they say, is that only serious buyers are looking.

Leverage on social media

In place of social gatherings - where companies invite people for open days - real estate agents can now turn to social media for an equally useful virtual gathering.

Conducting Facebook live videos that are thereafter ‘boosted’ to the page followers will help them promote their properties, perhaps more efficiently.

For those who are not very familiar with Instagram, they are just about to discover the power of the photo and video-sharing networking site. Unlike Facebook, it comes with a direct messaging feature, one that every marketer should be taking advantage of.

According to Sprout Social, Instagram now has one billion active monthly users. If you are a seller, you will be surprised at how many of those are your prospective buyers, which means you should be there too.

Instagram allows you to direct-message (DM) almost anyone, which means that when you get a new follower, you can send them a DM to say hello.

It goes without saying that DMs are a powerful way to have one-on-one conversations with the people in your community.

What’s more, with most countries enforcing social distancing and many more going on lockdown, reports indicate that the rate of social media use has gone up exponentially.

This provides realtors with a perfect opportunity to introduce themselves to people they can close deals with when things calm down.

While at it, real estate agents need to understand that video, especially personalised video, is one of the most powerful ways for them to connect with their clients and potential clients.

Contract execution

Now more than ever, real estate agents must find a way to replace manual and paper processes with automated, digital technologies.

Already, there are several software that can help them break free from the practice of scheduling an in-office appointment to review and sign offer letters, purchase and sale agreements, and closing papers.

In the US, for instance, DocuSign lets realtors manage the entire real estate eSigning and document-tracking experience online, with any file type, from beginning to end.

Besides speeding up the process and improving the home-buying experience, this tool cuts down on the bulky, hard copy paperwork and saves time.

Most electronic signing software have an inbuilt tracker that lets you know where each document is, in the process eliminating the possibility of misplacing documents.

But such electronic signatures need to be embedded in the law to ensure they are at par with handwritten signatures and subject to the same legal scrutiny.

The government’s recent decision to allow electronic signatures, Wachiuri says, would not have come at a better time. It will surely improve the process of property ownership, he says.

The government’s input

But for the real estate business to fully automate, real estate insiders say that the government must actualise its long-standing promise to digitise land registries.

At the beginning of this month, Lands Cabinet Secretary Farida Karoney told the media that digitising property registration was one of the key areas targeted in the government’s reform agenda, adding that the ministry is willing to engage all stakeholders in fast-tracking the process.

“Be it land or buildings, we have to go online not for the sake of it but for the common benefit of the sector. Simplicity in accessing the digitised sector should be the hallmark of the process,” she said.

She said this after closing down all lands offices and registries indefinitely to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. To realtors, this means that new land transactions will have to wait.

“The biggest challenge is the fact that land registries are closed, and therefore, it’s not possible to conduct a search. New purchases have become difficult since customers have to view properties first,” Kimani says.

“Full digitisation of land registries will ensure continuity of services in the future should we have another disruption.”

Optiven Group’s Wachiuri strongly believes that there is always a silver lining behind any dark cloud, and that the coronavirus crisis is no exception.

“Given this pandemic will change the way business is done across the board, it will surely usher new innovations, new thinking and a new way of doing things. The beauty about it is that it is already changing some of our behaviours and cultures for the better,” he says.