Constructing a thriving business in real estate is much like building a home—it all starts with a strong foundation: skilled people, resources, and funding. Without these key elements in place, the entire structure is at risk of deteriorating or even collapsing if challenges arise.

The impact of COVID-19, along with ongoing political and economic instability, has weakened the foundation for many real estate firms. The property sector now faces numerous challenges, including:

Despite current challenges, growth projections for the real estate market indicate a steady compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 1.9% over the next five years. This suggests that growth opportunities remain for those willing to navigate these difficulties. One effective strategy to mitigate these challenges is leveraging Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to increase efficiency while reducing costs and effort.

If you're unfamiliar with RPA and want to explore which processes in the real estate industry are ideal for automation, keep reading. This article will explain how RPA can benefit your business and showcase two successful case studies of automation projects in the industry.

Additionally, discover how RPA is transforming other industries, such as insurance, logistics, e-commerce, and consulting automation.

What Is RPA?

Achieving higher productivity is the ultimate goal for businesses of all sizes and industries. That's why tools that offer even a modest increase in efficiency are in high demand.

This is where RPA comes in. It’s a powerful automation solution designed to handle repetitive, rule-based tasks. Platforms like UiPath are particularly effective for data-intensive workflows and can easily scale as the volume of tasks grows. RPA isn’t just about slight efficiency improvements—when implemented properly, it can autonomously take over numerous repetitive tasks, saving businesses thousands of hours.

As a result, RPA has been increasingly adopted across various sectors. In industries like healthcare and finance, it has become a crucial tool for growth, supported by solid data. In healthcare, for example, RPA is estimated to reduce costs by up to 50%. In finance, which has strong ties to real estate, Juniper forecasts a 60% year-over-year growth in automated investment by 2023.

You might be wondering, "If RPA works in these sectors, could it work in real estate too?" The short answer is ‘yes,’ and here’s why.

Tenant Onboarding

The tenant onboarding process involves multiple steps: creating an application, verifying the tenant’s income, employment, and criminal background, and ultimately deciding whether to accept or reject the applicant. With RPA bots, you can easily automate these tasks by setting rules for data extraction, entry, and the necessary checks.

Bank and Account Reconciliation

Reconciliation tasks, such as extracting and comparing bank statements with your ledger, are repetitive and straightforward. Automating these tasks with pre-programmed scripts can save your employees from unnecessary effort and ensure accuracy.

Payment Reminders

Delays in payment are common in property management. To minimize these delays, automate payment reminders instead of manually tracking and verifying payments and sending notices. Bots can also handle other routine communications, such as contract renewals or rent adjustments.

NAV Calculations

Net Asset Value (NAV) is a crucial metric for ROI in Commercial Real Estate (CRE). Calculating NAV involves gathering, verifying, and processing market data—tasks that are ideal for automation. Bots can perform these calculations more quickly and accurately than humans, eliminating errors in the process.

Portfolio Management

As you expand your property portfolio, tracking their statuses and values, and updating them across multiple platforms can quickly become a monotonous yet essential task. By leveraging RPA bots, you can easily delegate the tedious data checks and entries, freeing you from the frustration.

Avison Young — Empowering Real Estate Analytics

Data-driven decision-making and forecasting are essential for maximizing profits and enhancing customer satisfaction in real estate. To strengthen its analytical capabilities, Avison Young, a prominent Canadian real estate advisory firm, partnered with UiPath, a leading provider of robotic process automation (RPA) technology.

This collaboration enabled Avison Young’s agents to automatically gather and upload critical property information, including details on transportation, air quality, ceiling height, bike and walk scores, with speed and precision. Moreover, UiPath’s RPA platform seamlessly integrated with the firm’s existing systems, automating various back-office functions. The outcome? Reduced time spent on data management and greater value delivered to clients.

Colliers Romania — Streamlining Invoicing

Colliers Romania manages over half a million square meters of real estate, including properties in Bucharest, and provides property management consulting services. With such an expansive portfolio, the company sought to optimize its invoicing process and digitize its financial operations. RPA emerged as the ideal solution.

Leveraging UiPath’s platform, Colliers Romania aims to delegate at least 70% of invoice-related tasks to bots, significantly reducing manual effort and enhancing operational efficiency.

Paramount Residential Mortgage Group — automated loan estimation and granting

Traditional loan processing is riddled with errors on the borrowers’ and underwriters’ end. And their number increases directly to the volume of loan applications submitted. When you are a market leader licensed in 48 US states, like Paramount Residential Mortgage Group (PRMG), manual data handling becomes unmanageable at some point. Especially when experiencing record volumes of loans.

That is why to streamline loan processing, unburden staff, and eliminate delays due to errors; the company expanded its team with five RPA bots built on UiPath. Together, they automated several key tasks, including retrieving and sending disclosure packaging, and data entry, transfer, and organization. And the results? Well, if $2 million savings on improving daily operations efficiency or 40 hours of labor saved EACH DAY don’t convince you, nothing will.

Final Takeaway

While real estate may be slower to adopt RPA compared to other industries, the sector presents immense potential for automation due to its numerous manual, data-driven, and repetitive tasks. Leading companies have already seized this opportunity, and now it's your turn to do the same.

At Destan, automation is at the heart of what we do. Whether it’s through consulting or RPA development, we offer everything you need to streamline your processes, enhance efficiency, and improve accuracy. Contact us today, and let's explore how RPA can help strengthen your real estate business.