Digitalisation has become a central part of the day-to-day business of the real estate industry, an iPad survey carried out by German lender Aareal Bank at the MIPIM trade fair in early March has revealed.

Within the framework of a spontaneous survey, Aareal in cooperation with PropertyEU questioned visitors at an Aareal Bank customer event on various aspects of the topic ‘digitalization’ and their significance for the financing of specialised properties.


Over 90% of those surveyed reckoned digitalization plays an important or very important role in the business. In addition, approximately half of the respondents stated that new business is no longer possible without a basic package of digital services, highlighting the central position gained by these types of processes in the recent past.
 
More than 43% of respondents said that a lot of their clients are currently working on digital transformation processes. In addition to apps for smartphones and tablets, the most important digital services include cloud-based services and the processing of digital signatures.

Interestingly, almost 56% of those surveyed see themselves as trendsetters in this matter, identifying digitalisation as a key success factor for their company. A quarter of respondents reckons they are just ‘getting started’ as more and more processes are done the digital way. However, there is still a large share of property professionals – around 21% – that believes that digitalisation has not yet had a significant impact on the business, which is ‘done as always’. They believe in relationships rather than technology, with their slogan being ‘people matter not machines’.
 
‘Our new motto this year is In Motion. By Conviction,’ Dagmar Kopek, management board member at Aareal Bank said at MIPIM. ‘What this means is that we want to be flexible, look at new markets and we want to look at digitalisation.’
 
‘I believe digitalisation is important for the industry as a whole, particularly in terms of customer services, it will provide a lot of new opportunities to handle the business in a new way,’ added management board member Thomas Ortmanns. ‘We have to look at our business and adopt a new view, approach customers in a new way. We at Aareal are already offering IT systems and digital products to our clients, including for instance new ways to communicate with tenants. I am optimistic that we will all find out together that digitalisation provides new opportunities for the business.’