How property technology will affect the investment experience

He highlighted: “We're a real estate agency, fully licenced. We have agents running around working for us and we use technology to make the whole experience better,” he highlighted.

Basically, he took a model that has been working for many years and made it better through technological innovations.

“Uber's a good example—you still have a car pick you up, there's still someone driving and you're still paying. The service is the same but the technology makes it a lot nicer and easier and quicker,” the property professional explained further.

Productivity and efficiency

Instead of replacing the parts that are working properly, Mr Rigby and his team simply worked to augment them in order to provide better services to different types of clients.

Upon observation of the investing habits of the new generation, he found out that young investors are quite similar to the older ones in terms of valuing communication and transparency. Regardless of their knowledge about technology, investors want to talk to someone face to face as they are dealing with a transaction as big as a property purchase.

For them, the role of technology is simply to make the process easier, faster and more efficient. Through innovation, professionals are given better tools to do their job, making them capable of producing an increasing number of better outcomes.

He said: “Technology will empower the professional to do their job better. A lot of the stuff that they used to do, which was very manual and not necessary, technology will just replace it.”

Since productivity levels increase as a result of humans and technology working together, the company will have the ability to offer better prices to their clients.

The future of proptech

Seeing the positive influence of technology on the investment experience, Mr Rigby believes that property technology businesses are here to stay.

For the past 30 years that he’s been marrying technology and property investment, he has heard great feedback which continues to inspire him to run his business.

According to him: “We hear stories about how we impacted a customer's life. He couldn't be happier with the process and the service levels and they got the great price they wanted. That means that everything we did upfront was working.”

“It's a very rewarding time to be running the business because we're still relatively new. We're just starting to see all these great case studies coming out now, and it's very, very satisfying,” he added.

It’s a big, bright future for property technology, he said, especially as technological innovations begin to unfold in other industries.

Somehow, in some way, he believes that all of these moving parts—finance technology, media players and even cryptocurrency—will be connected through technology, all for the benefit of investors.

At the end of the day, it’s all about producing better outcomes for their clients, he said.

“No one really knows how that's all going to unfold, but one thing for sure—it'll be simpler and easier for investors and they get better service, and that, I guess, is the main goal. It's all about the outcome. You want to make sure that the person in your corner is doing the absolute best they can,” Mr Rigby concluded.

Tune in to Adam Rigby’s episode on The Smart Property Investment Show to know more about his insights on how changing technology will impact the real estate industry in the future.