Offices, factories, event halls – these are important functional buildings, but none exist in such large numbers as residential properties. As many homes, as many solutions, and the demands shaped by the thickness of wallets were given their own section at the PropTech Innovation Now event held on May 16, 2024.
While gigaprojects focused on digital twin technology, BIM, and corporate digitalization, here the talks centered on the possibilities of serving completely everyday needs with artificial intelligence and data science.
When we want a new home, we have several options: buy a used property built for someone else’s needs; choose from the many identical new-build townhouses that dominate listing sites; or even design and build a dream home that reflects our own tastes from the first screw to the last roof tile. Whichever path we take, technological advancement is visible everywhere – just a glance at the listings is enough.
“Right now we are still living in the Wild West era of AI, with all its opportunities and limitations,” began László Balogh, lead analyst at Ingatlan.com, in his presentation. He emphasized that Ingatlan.com has been using machine learning in its recommendation system for eight years, making its nationwide search engine more efficient, and he spoke about the practical uses of solutions available on the market.
For example, the company uses Amazon Rekognition image recognition to moderate listings. “For us at Ingatlan.com, serving the whole country, our experience is that an image covers 90 percent of the added value, and the remaining 10 percent doesn’t add much, even if there’s a video or 3D tour or whatever.” Pictures are crucial, and Amazon helps filter out duplicate listings, watermarked or captioned photos, and inappropriate content that some advertisers still attempt to upload. “We’ve even seen a naked woman in the bathtub,” Balogh said with a smile.
And the limitations? “There is no unified platform yet that you can rely on like Gmail in email,” he explained, recalling how Ingatlan.com once lost a well-functioning machine learning service when the developer company was acquired. Nothing is permanent, there are no indefinitely operating foundational platforms – hence the Wild West.
László Balogh, Ingatlan.com (Photo: Glódi Balázs)
Of course, once we move in, development doesn’t stop. Condominium buildings, for instance, face endless administrative burdens that wear down even the most capable property managers and residents. Mátyás András Dén, CEO of eHáz, a cloud-based condominium management platform, said in his presentation that their service was inspired by personal experience – initially intended to help just one property manager, the system was later scaled to a national level, now serving 370,000 accounts.
“We started digitalizing a graph paper industry. In the first 5–10 years, I traveled the country teaching seventy-year-old ladies how to use computers – they lifted the mouse and said, ‘the eHáz isn’t working,’” he recalled humorously of the company’s early years.
Persistent work eventually bore fruit, creating a robust system that also integrates with the Hungarian Tax Authority’s invoice synchronization for faster accounting, as well as PSD2 open banking account information services, enabling property managers to sync banking traffic on a single platform. “eHáz synchronizes over five thousand accounts,” Dén said. “The entire annual accounting and balance sheet preparation of a 40–50 apartment condominium takes forty minutes.” Compared to that, automated debt management is almost child’s play. And for the last five years, accounting has been blockchain-certified – every process traceable, clear, and secure, with no more after-the-fact edits or handwritten corrections.
The world of property rentals is also entering a new era. Mehmet Yuksel, CEO of Missafir – a Turkey-rooted company now operating in four countries – presented their fully online system that easily scales from short-term stays of just a few days to medium-term rentals (e.g. students). The essence is that the property owner manages their rental entirely through an app: they can track payments, view the booking calendar, or even receive maintenance reports, such as a broken TV. Prices adapt in real time to demand, much like airline tickets. And since tenants are also part of the platform, renting becomes safer and more streamlined, avoiding many of the uncertainties typical of traditional arrangements.
Of course, rental digitalization is not equally profitable everywhere. The “Built to Rent” roundtable focused specifically on this field, covering both domestic and international markets, as well as the challenges facing companies that specialize in building for rental.
“Operating residential property? Little money, little profit. There is no such thing as many small ones, only a few small ones, so you can’t achieve much with it,” recalled Tibor Ruzsinszki, real estate investment director at Gránit Alapkezelő, quoting the old mantra. Developers long saw more potential in sales, but the winds are changing: due to high residential property prices, more people are considering long-term rentals, and according to Ruzsinszki, services in rental housing can be tailored to target specific tenant segments. Attracting such temporary customers is more likely than expecting someone to commit for life just because of appealing extras.
“These supporting features are what matter – to use the most beautiful English word, they need to be ‘instagrammable,’” said Gábor Radványi, chief architect of Futureal Group, speaking about changing needs. “Everyone wants to brag about living in a cool place, and it doesn’t matter how the 40 square meters they actually live in are furnished if they can go downstairs to a fancy gym or check in from a co-working space. That boosts their personal prestige.”
He added that there is no unified rental market, so local demand assessments are important, even broken down by districts within cities. Moreover, regulations don’t always support rental-focused properties – he cited the English system, which mandates a certain number of bedrooms per rental unit, even though current tenant behavior often makes this illogical. (Many bypass this by renting out individual rooms instead.)
And then there’s the importance of digitalization, which Radványi says is also a generational demand. “For today’s target audience, digitalization is fundamental. By 2030, more than half of tenants in built-to-rent housing will likely be from Generation Z. For them, this is the baseline. If you’re not like this, you’re prehistoric.” Once again, as so often, market demand will drive development, and those who fail to keep pace risk falling out of the race.