BY: JOFF VAN REENEN, EDITED BY THE EDITORIAL TEAM :: PICTURES: SUPPLIED & SOURCED
Joff van Reenen, the founder and CEO of PropTech firm The Chant Laboratory, provides his perspective on the necessity of using apps in your real estate business and offers practical advice on embracing proptech.
In 2010, when Apple trademarked its prophetic “There’s an app for that” slogan, even the late Steve Jobs couldn’t have foreseen how true it would become. While mobile apps like email and diaries had an earlier origin, the world’s first one-stop consumer platform for app downloads was launched in 2008, offering fewer than 600 choices.
Today, there truly is an app for everything, with nearly 9 million of them available. According to Statista, we will download these apps, along with thousands more released monthly, a staggering 299 billion times throughout this year.
Rather late than never
It’s astonishing to think that the real estate industry, dealing with the world’s largest asset class worth around £340 trillion, has been a relatively late adopter of technology, despite app usage surpassing mobile web browsing as early as 2011. The industry needed a global pandemic to realise the digital transformation that had long been evident, and it has been catching up ever since.
To spell it out for property professionals: No technology investment, no business. Period.
Apps versus a website
One of the most frequent questions I still field from property professionals is: “Why do we need an app if we already have a website?” From a client’s perspective, here are the key reasons:
Real estate is a fluid industry where timing is often a factor. Apps provide an instant connection between brokers and clients.
- App functionality is up to five times faster than a mobile browser, reducing client frustration and preventing them from leaving.
- Apps are specifically designed for phones, offering simplicity and user-friendliness without address bars or complicated navigation. Mobile websites, on the other hand, can feel clunky as they rely on browser functions adapted from computers.
- Apps offer instant updates on new listings
From a business perspective:
- Big data. In real estate information is gold, and apps are the mother lode.
- Great apps provide real-time insights into market trends, pricing, demand patterns, and consumer behaviour, enabling property professionals to make informed valuations, better investment decisions and develop effective marketing strategies.
- Real estate apps can also leverage predictive analytics to identify emerging market trends.
- They’re basically your one-stop-shop for brand growth, gathering market intelligence, trend spotting, targeted marketing, client reach, streamlining transactions and more accurate business forecasting.
Joff van Reenen, Chant Laboratory CEO and NAA Director
App strategies for real estate professionals – a two-step plan
1. Brand WrAPPing
The first phase is to take the leap and brand your own app. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel; simply choose an app that:
- Is easy to operate on the back end
- Can adapt to the look and feel of your brand
- Offers nifty functionalities like mortgage calculators, in-app broker contact, secure channels for payments, and document submissions
- Allows tailored marketing messages
- Supports images, videos, and streaming
- Integrates your social media feeds
- Offers the best bang for your buck
2. APPsolutely everywhere else
The second phase involves blasting your brand across other people’s apps.
- Think first in terms of social media platforms. In January 2023, South Africa alone was home to 25,8 million social media users, equating to 42,9% of the population. Property companies need to reconsider their social media strategies, offering a mix of choice stock and consumer-resonant content to attract and retain loyal followers.
- Another opportunity for showcasing your brand is through leading property search engines. Property24, for instance, was the 16th most visited site in South Africa last year, with a monthly average of nearly 14 million page views.
- The recipe for rising above the brand clutter on these crowded apps is simple: quality. Professional visuals, whether stills or multimedia, are essential. Generous image galleries should showcase well-staged interiors and exteriors, while the property narrative must be comprehensive, inviting, well-scripted, and grammatically correct.
Plan now for the future
Throughout my 30 years of experience in real estate, my mantra has always been that failing to plan is planning to fail. The same applies to technology in the property industry. If we fail to plan for it now, we’re planning the roadmap to business failure. Embrace the change because it offers new and better tools to meet our clients’ needs.
- Joff van Reenen sits on the board of the US-headquartered National Auctioneers Association, the largest professional auction association in the world, as well as the board of the SA Institute of Auctioneers.
