IT Can Lead to Competitive Advantage

As chief technology officer of Ahdut Development Inc. it is my job to seek out methods that best suit our company and its goals. As described above, much of the IT available to the real estate industry has benefited companies in a similar fashion to ours. A lot of hard work must go into the different steps of the development process. Coordination of information is required from the blueprint phase all the way through to the leasing phase. Heavy research is conducted to find a location our company can thrive in. Demographics, location, prices, styles, etc. are all part of the necessary information we must gather. For example, since our current project is located in the business area of Washington DC, many of our apartments will offer a large bedroom with a smaller room that can be used as a den or office. As for the contractor, although we have a contractor lined up, our research team will use bidding sites to find going rates for comparable work. Throughout the development stages, engineers and layout technicians will frequently visit the site with laptops and handheld devices to stay updated and make necessary changes on location. Rather than undergoing the hectic back and forth of visiting the property and then going back to an office, people can now bring the office to the work site. This enables greater flexibility and accuracy at all ends. Once we are ready to lease out the spaces in the building, there are a few marketing strategies our company will utilize. Firstly, we will make use of an online program called www.rentmineonline.com. This site allows for the exploitation of all the social networks that usually are a waste of time. (That can be a discussion for another time.) Friends can refer other friends or family to the building for a slight commission. It is a win-win situation as the owner spends less time worrying about getting spaces off hand, while residents get more of a community feel with people they know. More so, important IT programs we use include an intranet, along with property owner and financial software that keep track of all our companies’ properties, residents, and financials. This reduces the need for a property manager allowing cost cutting in the area. More marketing strategies include YouTube, listing sites such as Craigslist.com, and even text messaging. People will be able to drive by the property and see a number they can text free that will send a listing of the spaces to their phone. This makes great use of IT, as a text message will do the work instead of actual human labor. Information technology continuously improves our companies operations in efforts to create the best environment possible wherever we go.

IT and Real Estate Today

In our day and age, it is almost impossible to imagine a world without information systems and technologies. Although it took a little longer for the real estate industry to jump on board as quickly as other industries, it soon did and now reaps the benefits of information technology and its advancements. So many sectors and agencies make up the real estate industry that a network of constant information is necessary to conduct smoothly running businesses in coordination with other companies. A real estate project requires the attention of numerous agencies and companies that must combine their efforts to deal with different aspects of the job that pertain to their respective area of specialization. Real estate information must flow through a network consisting of municipal planners, real estate developers, appraisers, architects, builders, utility companies, building managers, contractors, bankers, brokers, etc. It is clear that all these firms have important relationships in the field of real estate. For instance, it is crucial that the builder and contractor of a particular project have a clear understanding of the architect’s plans, just as much as the utility company must be familiar with those same plans. Without this flow of information, it would be impossible for the builders and utility companies to do their jobs accurately in coordination with the project’s blueprints. Information technology (IT) plays its most important role here, as anyone involved in the real estate field needs similar information relevant to properties and site infrastructure.
Now that we have touched on the importance of information sharing, it is possible to discuss ways in which information technology has made this possible. For starters, even before a project has begun, locating and contacting the right clientele has become much less of a hassle due to new IT. The most obvious technological advancement utilized by the real estate field today is the internet. There are websites designed as online contractor finders, some that even act as bidding sites where contractors lists their service and price and developers bid for their work. In addition, real estate agencies, of course, use the internet to create sites to market their companies and post their listings for potential buyers to look at. There is an array of real estate listing sites, social networks, blog sites, and even viral sites open for use by all sorts of companies within the industry. Some real estate companies even make use of virtual assistants, which are advanced programs that can take care of web design, html, brochure layout, graphics design, document management, and more. The use of all the options IT has made available to the real estate industry has helped many companies improve accuracy, reduce operational costs, create more flexibility and exchange better information.