The need for PropTech innovation and the lessons it can learn from FinTech

By Gigi Zappel, CEO and Co-founder at IMMO

While industries like FinTech have rapidly embraced technological advancements, real estate has been notably slower in adopting innovative solutions. In the financial sector, automation and data transparency have transformed how investors and consumers engage with services, resulting in improved performance, simpler UX, and significant efficiency gains. However, the property sector - particularly residential property investment - still lags behind.

As the property sector evolves, the need for digital transformation grows with it. The lessons learned from FinTech’s journey can guide real estate’s future, especially in leveraging technology to create more efficient processes, better customer experiences, and streamlined operations. By embracing advanced tools like AI, machine learning, and leveraging data to greater use, real estate can replicate FinTech’s progress, offering improved decision-making, and a better overall experience for investors, landlords, and tenants alike. Here’s how.

The data transparency issue in real estate

One of the biggest challenges real estate faces is the lack of data transparency. Much of the industry’s data remains decentralised, unstructured, and not standardised, making it difficult to derive actionable insights. Many large real estate investment management firms still lack the internal data infrastructure necessary to store information centrally, preventing real-time transparency around their portfolio data and hindering proactive decision-making. As a result, asset management actions are often reactive and/or based on incomplete or outdated data. 

BPF’s recent survey further highlights that 33% of property businesses face cultural resistance to change, while 32% cite unclear cost and ROI as barriers to technology adoption. By contrast, FinTech’s rapid success has largely been driven by data availability, which empowers businesses and consumers alike to make smarter financial choices. 

How automation and AI can drive change

Automation and AI are beginning to revolutionise the real estate sector in ways similar to how FinTech transformed financial services through customised, data-driven offerings. By automating processes like property management and portfolio optimisation, PropTech can enhance operational efficiency while reducing costs.

Predictive modelling and machine learning are also key drivers in this shift, enabling more accurate assessments of property value, investment potential, and market trends. For example, PropTech solutions like those offered by IMMO have already been shown to reduce manual labour by over 30% in property acquisitions, allowing professionals to focus on higher-value activities through the use of AI.

The automation of routine tasks, such as tenant screening, lease management, and maintenance scheduling, also improves landlord-tenant relationships by streamlining communication and enhancing satisfaction. These technologies not only save time and resources but also offer a more seamless experience for all involved, driving better long-term outcomes in property management and investment.

Sustainability also emerges as a significant factor to drive innovation. In the UK, the Labour government’s new policy requires all rental properties to meet a minimum EPC rating of ‘C’ by 2030. This means the housing market will have to adopt advanced PropTech solutions to meet environmental goals and enable effective retrofitting.

The future of PropTech 

For PropTech to truly unlock its potential, the real estate sector must not only accelerate its tech adoption, but ensure that their own data infrastructure is in order, to fully embrace the benefits that PropTech can offer in terms of efficiency, transparency, and portfolio optimisation. Additionally, in the pursuit of creating higher-quality living standards for tenants throughout Europe at scale, finance and property sectors must leverage AI tools and data-driven insights to change several long standing processes for the better. 

Personalised AI solutions - much like those seen in FinTech - are also expected to grow within PropTech’s evolution. This would result in a more customised experience for both tenants and landlords, from tailored property searches to automated administration. This personalisation will be key in increasing customer satisfaction, create stronger relationships, and streamline processes across the board, creating a more efficient and sustainable real estate ecosystem. 

The future of PropTech lies in the real estate industry's willingness to grow and innovate. The value PropTechs deliver will depend on how quickly the industry can centralise, standardise, structure, and make its data available to the PropTech ecosystem. Once this is achieved, the potential for PropTechs to operate within the world’s largest asset class will be limitless.