Big Data and Its Impact on the Real Estate Industry

 

Big data can help sustainable development. Recent surveys have revealed that buyers are looking for homes with sustainable features. This presents both an opportunity and a challenge for the builder. Builders who incorporate energy efficiency features into their projects will have an edge over others who still rely on the construction standards of the previous century.

But how can a builder understand what sustainable features are popular with buyers? When they analyze big data they will know.

What is big data and why you should care?

Big data is a collection of large data sets that can transform the way buildings are built and managed. It may even affect government policy.

The biggest USP of big data is its speed. Data is being generated at an alarming pace. Every interaction we have with digital technology helps create big data. And to keep pace with the speed with which data is generated, organizations need to invest in competent analytics tools.

Big data provides reliable information in a matter of seconds. A real world analytics firm may take weeks or months to publish a report on sustainable features.

By simply analyzing the information your users leave behind as they navigate through your website, you can understand their priorities and requirements. You can, for example, use this information to identify the most important factors you should consider while choosing a locality to build its project. Data analysis has revealed that most buyers are looking to invest in a crime-free locality with lots of good schools. Buyers also consider commute time. When realtors know what their clients want, they can promote their listings accordingly.

Big data uses current technologies in innovative ways. Data helps investors assess the existing real estate market conditions. The real estate market in the US is recovering. Home prices and sales have gone up. Inventories and foreclosures are going down.

Data helps realtors understand what their customers want. Take for instance the case of a real estate firm that leases space to tenants. Since tenants in real estate are not an organized lot, it is not easy for realtors to make trends. Data helps fill that void. It helps the realtor target specific groups of customers.

Big data makes information accessible to just about everybody. This openness of information will ultimately force government to update archaic laws.

Data and its impact on sustainability

Hurricane Sandy brought issues such as resiliency and efficiency to the forefront. In order to improve a building's resiliency, you should be able to measure it.

A real estate data company recently analyzed data gathered from Local Law 84. This law requires buildings that measure 50,000 square feet or more to submit an energy benchmark report. People often believe that newer buildings are more energy efficient. However, the findings of this data analysis revealed that this was not always true.

Many masonry buildings built during the 1930s have comparatively low energy costs. As data becomes readily accessible, energy managers will be able to take measures necessary to reduce their energy bills. Homeowners can also use data to measure the ROI on their energy efficiency investments. This may even encourage others to invest in green technology.

Need lead product solutions? iLeads delivers results that fits your needs! We are a lead solutions provider with lead generation covering Insurance, Lending, Real Estate, Direct Marketing, as well as Lead and Data Analytics. Contact iLeads today!

 

How to Store Your Data

Forward-thinking real estate companies have already started gathering and analyzing data. The problem with data is that it is mostly unorganized. And this poses many challenges for the data manager who needs an appropriate strategy to store and analyze data.

If you gather data, you will have huge amounts of both structured and unstructured data. How do you organize this data? This is a question that all data managers ask themselves.

One of the biggest data problems that real estate companies face is the large amounts of unorganized data that pile up. Data scientists are aware of the presence of unorganized data. They simply don't know what to do with it. Consequently, they ignore it. But after some time as the stockpile gets bigger and bigger, they will need to decide what to keep and what to throw away.

In some cases, industry regulations may ask real estate companies to keep data for specific periods of time. For example, builders and realtors will have to keep transaction details.

If you are a real estate company that has gathered a large amount of data, you should have a proper plan to sift through data repositories that need not necessarily have any value. You should also have proper strategies to de-duplicate data. You may have the same data in multiple locations. This is a mere wastage of valuable storage space.

Your instinctive drive is to throw away all old data; while at the same time, there is an inherent fear that you might require that data someday. How do organizations deal with the dilemma? The data may exist in internal legacy systems. It may also come from sources such as social media, web sources and machines. To make this information useful, the company will have to invest in long data capabilities.

You will perhaps have to reorganize your data systems over time. This involves sifting through your data repositories, and implementing standards that maintain accuracy. If your company lacks the expertise or resources to do this, you could consider outsourcing this process to data engineers who use cloud-based systems that unify this data into actionable information that will facilitate corporate analytics. And that makes sense because storing your data in the cloud is more economical than keeping it on your data center storage.

In addition, by moving your archival information to the cloud, you save yourself the trouble of having this information on the site. And when this data is finally required, you can retrieve it.

This strategy almost always works. But you may still have difficulty finding out which data you should keep and which data you should throw away. If you decide to keep all data, you will have to buy more storage space and pay more for it.

Data poses many challenges. Besides collecting it and analyzing it, you need to store it appropriately so that you can retrieve it when you need it. If you don't have an onsite system to store data, cloud-based solutions are your best bet. Besides storing your data, they analyze it and turn it into actionable insights.

Need lead product solutions? iLeads delivers results that fits your needs! We are a lead solutions provider with lead generation covering Insurance, Lending, Real Estate, Direct Marketing, as well as Lead and Data Analytics. Contact iLeads today!