Powered by artificial intelligence, brokerage leaders eye big tech spending in 2024: Triple-I | Private Equity Weekly

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Despite the alluring sheen of brokerage technology in theory, it’s often not that sexy in practice.

According to January Inman Intel Index results, the vast majority of brokerage technology investments in 2023 are related to the fundamentals of their CRM, lead generation, websites, deal documentation and HR software.

It’s not the most appealing list.

But as real estate technology companies reach more sophisticated stages of launching AI-enhanced products, brokerage leaders appear to have taken notice.

Inman Intel extracted a range of insights about technology investing from 1,029 real estate professionals from the brokerage, real estate technology and mortgage industries in its flagship monthly industry sentiment survey, also known as Triple-I.

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Is this good news for proptech entrepreneurs? In 2024, brokerage firms’ attitudes towards investing in new technologies will be roughly the same as last year. But the tools they want to invest in are increasingly centered on the promise of newer AI capabilities.

This report details this shift in thinking in the rapidly changing world of brokerage technology: what these leaders want to invest in, why they are willing to invest now, and how to keep more reluctant broker owners off the sidelines.

Read the full report below to learn more.

The current state of brokerage technology

The survey’s 1,029 respondents included 324 broker owners or executives at brokers or real estate associations.

These leaders revealed that they have experienced healthy interest in proptech over the past year.

High-level takeaways:

• more than Three-quarters of brokerage leaders Tell Triple-I about their company Invest in new technology in the past 12 months.
• the remaining 1/4 said they chose to stick with their existing technology infrastructure last year, refuse to invest in new products.

Clearly, most brokerage leaders are on the market for new technologies at any given time.

But as Intel explores recent analysismany are still waiting for returns on their recent investments.

• Among brokerage leaders who invested in technology last year, 35% Indicates that they have achieved the expected benefits, compared with only 10% Who says no.
• still, more than half Brokerage leaders interviewed said it was too early to tell whether their investments would pay off.

Intel’s 2023 technology spending breakdown

In addition to how many people are investing in technology, Intel also asked broker leaders what specific solutions they had invested in over the past 12 months.

Here are the real estate technology areas that will attract the most technology investments from brokerages in 2023.

• this Most Popular Technology Investments Brokerage firms made in lead generation or CRM software in 2023 — 29%
• this Second most popular technology upgrade category In connection with improving or optimizing the website – twenty four%
• Come in Strong third place Whether the brokerage firm has invested in tools to digitize documents and trades— 17%
• this largest remaining share of respondents indicate they have investments in finance, HR or back-end functional software – 14%

But perhaps more interesting is what brokerage leaders say they want to invest in the coming year.

The future of real estate technology

Triple-I found that the proportion of brokerage leaders looking for new technology in the market appears to be similar this year.

• 69% leaders stated in the survey that “Yes,” they expect to invest in new technologies in 2024.
• twenty one% “Hardly”No” and here’s why.
• most of the rest 10% Who chose “other” Expressed a certain degree of uncertainty as to whether they would enter the new technology market.

Why are nearly one in five brokerage leaders so convinced they won’t invest? For many, this is simply because their technology currently meets their needs.

• 37% Brokerage Leader Who doesn’t want to invest? Respondents in the technology space this year said it was because they had made recent investments or the technology was generally up-to-date.
• But a large part of this subgroup is called cost considerations (19%) or concerns about revenue in 2024 (17%) as a reason not to invest.
• for 10% For this group, the recent experience of getting burned on a tech deal was daunting. Many say they are sitting on the sidelines because previous investments have not produced the expected ROI.

Still, proptech sales will remain strong in 2024 as brokerages continue to navigate a depressed market that may be improving.

Triple-I found that many of them are very interested in the prospects of artificial intelligence tools as the real estate technology sector continues to mature.

• 40% Brokerage Leader who plans to invest This year the tech community has said it is paying close attention to artificial intelligence.
• This is significantly higher than the next closest lead generation/CRM option, which received 26% share of this subgroup.
• Website and SEO improvements completed 17% Respondents who indicated they planned to invest.
• and 8% Members of this group said they were looking for financial, human resources or back-end software investments.

In addition, some interviewees also provided written responses on the proptech or artificial intelligence solutions that currently excite them most.

This is what they call a paradigm.

• “I’m not sure what excites me the most. I don’t want my employees to have AI completely replace their actual work, but more to help them.”
• “Marketing, staying connected to customers, who are agents in our case, does not replace human interaction.”
• “Artificial Intelligence leads follow-up.”
• “Used in backend systems to assist agents.”
• “Response faster.”
• “Restb.AI (Real Estate Image Analysis).”
• “Perplexity (Artificial Intelligence Powered Search Engine).”
• “The power of artificial intelligence assistants.”
• “Advertising Writing.”
• “Exploring Artificial Intelligence.”
• “Big Data.”
• “Voice.”
• “Conversational Artificial Intelligence for Leadership Development.”
• “Nothing. I’m actually worried.”
• “No – it’s a godless invention.”

Email Daniel Houston