Promoting Productivity and Entrepreneurship Within Real Estate Post-Covid

Promoting Productivity and Entrepreneurship Within Real Estate Post-Covid

Real estate investment is something we all aspire to reach. If you’re a natural-born entrepreneur, you’ve likely considered throwing your hat in the ring at least once. The real estate industry needs entrepreneurship and increased productivity now more than ever while emerging from the impact of COVID.

But how can we achieve this? Buzzwords like “productivity” and “entrepreneurship” can often become meaningless. The best way to explore ways to promote productivity and entrepreneurship within the real estate industry is by looking at what industry leaders are currently doing.

The major question for the post-covid real estate industry is which changes will stick. If there’s one overarching trend for promoting productivity and entrepreneurship within the real estate industry, it’s going digital. The rest is largely up to your entrepreneurial mind to determine.

The challenges facing property management post-Covid

Like every industry, real estate has faced challenges as it comes to terms with the pandemic. Although it’s difficult to predict the long-term consequences, the immediate impact is clear. Real estate professionals work to find a balance between preserving their existing portfolios and strengthening their competitive assets.

The real estate industry struggled to grapple with health and safety for customers and employees, which hurt the industry’s productivity. To ensure future productivity, entrepreneurs will need to find ways to incorporate health and safety into their forward-thinking strategies.

Property management agencies need to remain relevant for clients and developers alike. Communication is key – and it’s a two-way street in every direction. Every real estate professional wants to earn the trust, loyalty, and respect of their clients.

Part of entrepreneurship is ensuring that the needs of your customers and employees are fully met – potentially leading to a need for overcommunication. You can better your productivity by taking the extra time to ensure that everything is correctly communicated to protect your staff and ensure your customer’s expectations are met.

Entrepreneurs are always looking to the future. The best way to ensure your productivity is to start planning for the future today. Within real estate, this means rethinking the established norms. With COVID accelerating demand for flexible working, will large-scale commercial office spaces remain lucrative? How can real estate address growing customer demands for more sustainable and environmentally friendly housing?

Entrepreneurs looking to succeed within the real estate industry will have to find ways of gaining insight into the industry’s future as it undergoes a generational change.

How leading real estate operators are navigating the post-Covid world

Yongmin Zhu, CEO of Sea to Sky Management, has pointed to the need to leverage technology to navigate through the challenges of Covid. Zhu says that “VR and AR are both significant game-changers for the property industry. Using virtual technology can help buyers visit their future homes without leaving their current homes”.

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Real estate professionals are also using the pandemic to transition to new technology, particularly data management systems that facilitate keeping up with the latest trends. Cloud storage solutions have become an intricate part of ensuring productivity by synchronising data internally—in turn streamlining daily tasks and management projects. Sea to Sky Management has recently transitioned to Appfolio to increase its capacity and streamline property management and listings.

Sea to Sky Management isn’t alone in this. Leaders across the real estate industry have been diversifying their revenue sources, prioritising the tenant experience, and pursuing digital strategies to set themselves apart from the competition. The pandemic has turbocharged the needs of the industry to transition its strategy.

Before the pandemic, only a few real estate management companies used technology to attract tenants, valuate assets, and oversee lease negotiations. If you’re following your entrepreneurial spirit into the real estate industry, you want to ensure you’re leveraging the latest technology and data management to boost your productivity.

One change we’re seeing amongst high-level property management agencies is a centralisation of cash management – going directly against the common practice of decentralisation. Keeping cash management centralised allows real estate investors to identify efficiency issues and take a leaner mentality towards their expenses.

One of the best ways to promote productivity and entrepreneurship within the real estate industry post-COVID is embracing digital development. Customer experience will become more important than ever as the industry becomes more competitive during the real estate boom post-COVID. To promote productivity and entrepreneurship within real estate, we must address how the pandemic has changed the industry – and society at large.

Written by Aine Lagan in association with the FG Magazine.

The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of The World Financial Review.