How has technology empowered the new-age realty buyer in India
If there is one single thing that consumers can rejoice about this festive season, it is the advent of technology in the space of real estate that is enabling everything from buying, selling, renting, investing, finding flatmates, forming groups on social media, rating developers and projects etc. This not only is helping the end user save time and money and make life simpler but more importantly, getting rid of the hassle of dealing with unprofessional and often unethical middlemen. Now that everything can be done at the click of the mouse, he is no longer at the beck and call of others.
According to Manish Tripathi, a 48 year old executive with a telecom company, “The worst thing is when you are not in control of your situation. Earlier in the value chain, you were almost at the mercy of others especially the broker. Your home search was as good as the mood of the broker or the options he would show. And you were plain helpless if he was charging above market rate and delivering below standards.” No longer this! Whether it is a landlord looking for his tenant or a prospective homeowner looking for his first house or a seller looking for a buyer, platforms such as 99acres, magicbricks, housing.com, nestaway have made life simpler and given the consumer the confidence that the buck finally stops with him.
Take the case of 41 year old single mom Riddhi Vohra who has an eleven year old son and stays in West Delhi. A middle management human resource professional in an IT enabled services company based in Gurugram, Riddhi invested the better part of her savings into buying a home that would generate rental returns. Now after she managed to buy a two bedroom home of 800 sq feet for Rs 45 lakhs, it was time to look for a tenant. Says Riddhi, “I was petrified about the whole process in this extremely male dominated ways of the Indian property market.” Her biggest anxiety was what if the tenant did not pay rent on time or worse, did not evict home-“who will fight my battles?” Technology came to her rescue when she put up her listing for Rs 10,000 at Nestaway and stated preferences such as no pets, only single women etc. Within a week, she got assisted visits of prospective tenants and police verified tenants. The company also got the house cleaned, did small repairs, took care of documentation, made legal contractsin short “all the headache was outsourced to this one agency which charges ten percent of the rent (for family) and if its single/bachelor (12.5% of the rental) every month but they justify that amount by the services they give,” says Riddhi. The best part, she says, is “come what may, the money gets deposited in my account on the first of every month”. The contract in this case is between Riddhi and the company and tenant and the company. Portals such as these are today’s de facto brokers who deliver value for services they charge.
Till date, Nestaway’s tenants have saved more than 38+ Cr on brokerage, confirms Amarendra Sahu, CEO and Co-founder, Nestaway Technologies, “Nestaway was launched to address the existing trust deficit between homeowners as well as tenants. This managed home rental network, thus becomes the proxy of trust between the two parties.” For homeowners, these intermediaries help them with complete home management services, rental default guarantee, guided house visits, tenant verification and up to a 1Cr worth of house insurance. For tenants, they help them find affordable homes, with zero brokerage, low-security deposits and assisted move-ins and move-outs. Sahu adds that they have been working as property managers and provide endto-end solutions to homeowners to take care of their property. But most importantly, they have adopted and nurtured a policy of ‘homes that do not discriminate’ approach so that tenants are not differentiated based on their gender, caste, religion, lifestyle habits, etc.
Again thanks to technology, you can find a room, paying guest accommodation or a roommate – all this matching your preferences, as you can keep an eye out for red flags on things you are most particular about. Be it students or young working professionals migrating to new cities in search of work or studies, all they need to do to find a decent accommodation especially co-living space is just download the app of the likes of Zolostays, Stanza Living, CoHo, Colive and OyoLife. According to 29 year old Abhishek Verma who came to work in Noida in an IT company from Patna, “Just by downloading the app, I managed to find my accommodation- and that too sitting in Patna, I managed to shortlist my choices. I can now focus on my main job and not be bothered about spending time on hunting for suitable accommodation.”
Technology has empowered the buyers who are able to organise themselves into groups, be it on whatsapp, yahoo groups or social media. According to Neeraj Bansal, ASEAN Head & Partner, KPMG, “Until now, the homebuyers were suffering because of the fact that they were not able to come together as a group and represent themselves as a single entity. They were doing things on individual basis. But now technology has galvanized buyers into a single large force to reckon with, something never seen before.” There are conversations happening across social media and online forums that rate a developer and a project. For the projects themselves, this presents an opportunity to climb the rankings by consistently improving the quality and impact of the conversations about them.
Going ahead, technology led innovations are further expected to influence the current functioning of the real estate business and further empower the end user.