02 Sep Real Estate Technology Advancements Of 2010

Back in December of 2009, Inman.com published an article predicting technology advancements in the real estate industry. This included Internet, social media, search engines, and mobile technologies. The author recently revisited his predictions to see how things went. He wasn’t wrong about anything I don’t think, he just thought it would happen this year and it didn’t. I still think most of his predictions will come true.

His mobile predictions had a lot to do with location-based applications suited for certain demographics. He predicted that applications would be developed and accepted by users based on their settings. Think rural versus urban settings. This didn’t come to light this year. By and large smart phone applications still cater to more urban settings but I think that we will see this eventually happen.

The blending of off line and online experiences are happening all around us but there aren’t many dealing specifically with real estate. There are several options like augmented reality that can do this. Also, location-based services such has Foursquare and now Facebook really took of this year as predicted by many experts. As the article points out, there were none that were developed specifically for real estate.

As far as Internet search goes, there were some steps towards real estate specific searches. Yahool joined up with Zillow but Google stayed out of the real estate realm. According to the article, Google will probably stay on course with its current local search which blends real estate with other local aspects such as cafes and stores.

So what advancements were made this past year? A lot actually but not a lot specifically for real estate. Maybe 2011 will be the year when the real estate industry really takes emerging technologies and runs with them.