The human side of data in Real Estate

When people consider the future impact of technology in the Real Estate industry, they tend to focus on AI automation, driven by a mesh of IoT devices connecting property infrastructure, the role of VR/AR in allowing leads and tenants to make decisions and take action without taking time from team members, or how to centralize correct and easy-to-leverage data (that’s us, UDP!), which will usher in an age of data-driven decision-making.?

This future sounds efficient, but it feels far from the human connection that makes a building a place people can call home. At UDP, we believe that technology would make buildings more human, primarily through data-driven decision-making.?

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Often, people think of data as an oversimplification of a person. How can you reduce someone's wants and needs to just a set of numbers? How can you decide without the all-important face-to-face interaction? Ultimately, who is responsible when data makes decisions?

All these points are true, but also wrong. You do not want to do any of the things described above, which are indeed possible with data (and without data as well!). These oversimplifications are not the only thing you can do with data, nor the ones you should do.

There are many ways to use data that reaffirm our shared humanity.

One of the main sources of interpersonal personal problems is misunderstandings. We often have a hard time communicating what we want and an even harder time fully understanding what others need and want, and we find ourselves in relationships and contracts that are not the right ones for us.

Above everything else, data's role is to reduce misunderstandings and better align all parties involved in a decision or transaction.?

When we build or buy a property, lease it, and sell it, success hinges on having the right match on the other side of the transaction. We want a property in the right place, set up with the right features, so we can best serve the specific persona we expect to encounter at this location.? The wrong property, with bad features, the wrong tenant or a tenant with the wrong terms, and even the wrong disposition are all the source of most troubles. And all these troubles start with some big misunderstanding.

Misunderstandings come because we need more data to make an informed decision, the skills to interpret the data correctly, or the will to be objective given what the data tells us.?

Now, we will always have imperfect and incomplete data. The goal here is not a perfect record of your assets and tenants at a molecular level ??. The goal is to have enough information to trust and make decisions that will align you with buyers, sellers, vendors, investors, and, most importantly, tenants.?

?Data-driven decision-making will help you build the right product for the right people and serve customers in a way that yields in longer, more profitable relationships, generating more happiness and prosperity for all. This is the trend civilization follows: what before was the knowledge of few is now the knowledge of all. What in the past was unknown and scary today is a set of probabilities you can weigh to reduce risk and conflict and get ever closer to shaping the world and seeing fit.?

In this massive technological trend that puts data at the center of knowledge and decisions,? Real Estate owners and operators are “surfing a wave” that all other industries are in: the move from crude mental models of places, assets, and people towards a worldview that aims to understand things as they are, to about friction and misunderstanding, and get everyone rowing in the same direction.?