Dwight Schar: Innovations That Will Redefine the Real Estate Industry in 2025
As the now-retired founder, CEO, and executive chairman of the board of NVR, Inc., a company whose subsidiaries include Heartland Homes, NVHomes, and Ryan Homes, Dwight Schar drew on a wealth of industry experience to lead the Fortune 500 company. This article will look at some of the latest innovations in the real estate sector and the potential of technological breakthroughs and trends to redefine the industry.
In real estate today, disruptive technology has the potential to revolutionize the industry, with advancements in VR, AI, big data, and the Internet of Things creating scope for a completely new approach to real estate case management. Encompassing almost $9 trillion in assets globally, commercial real estate is the world’s largest industry. Combined with the residential real estate market, which is worth even more, the global property market is the world’s biggest asset class, having generated an astronomical amount of wealth and opportunities over the years.
According to CBRE, real estate investment peaked at circa $338 billion in 2018. Data from Expert Market Research suggests that the global real estate market will grow at a CAGR of 5% between 2024 and 2032 thanks to growing demand for high-quality infrastructure and housing to meet the demands of an ever-expanding population. In the United States alone, real estate accounts for approximately 13% of the country's GDP, ranking as the economy’s fastest-growing sector.
Property technology or ‘PropTech’ is a broad term that covers an array of different technologies created to optimize the way the real estate industry works. From advanced analytics to predict prices to digital platforms enabling homebuyers to peruse properties online, PropTech is playing an integral role in modernizing the real estate market. According to a study published by the Oxford Future of Real Estate Initiative, investment in PropTech surpassed $10 billion in 2022, with this emerging sector tipped to drive significant growth in the real estate market over the coming years.
PropTech trends such as the digitalization of real estate investing, AI-powered real estate platforms, 3D home tours, and tech-enabled real estate brokerages have helped property market professionals overcome deeply ingrained industrywide problems, presenting new opportunities for investors, professionals, and consumers alike.
2024 saw increased interest in green building certification such as LEED, a trend that is not predicted to abate anytime soon. PropTech innovations have helped developers to pursue higher building standards more effectively than ever before. Take for example the deployment of advanced sensors and AI, enabling the optimization of energy usage in commercial properties in line with LEED stipulations. According to the U.S. Green Building Council, LEED-certified buildings use 11% less water and 25% less energy than non-green alternatives, presenting significant incentives to invest in sustainable property solutions. Growing awareness of climate change has placed PropTech front and center in terms of futureproofing the real estate industry and ensuring its sustainability.
Meanwhile, platforms like Buildium and Avail present all-in-one property management facilities, automating rent payments, lease agreements, and even maintenance requests. This automation not only reduces paperwork but also speeds up processes for property managers and landlords, enabling them to manage their properties more easily and effectively than ever before.
As in virtually every other industry today, artificial intelligence is fueling progress and innovation in the real estate market, with the emergence of a new generation of AI-powered real estate platforms eliminating the need for repetitive and sometimes hazardous manual tasks, optimizing and automating processes to save time and resources. Popular AI applications in real estate include automated property valuation, AI lease abstraction, virtual assistants, tools for property descriptions, and chatbots for high-quality, 24/7 customer support. AI also enables real estate professionals to better analyze data and market trends, helping them to make smarter, better-informed decisions.
