Rental Property Investor · San Diego, CA · Member since 2017 · 57 posts · 62 votes
For reference, the Internet of Things (or IoT) is a network of ‘things’ that are Internet-connected and exchange data back and forth.
‘Things’ can include physical devices, computers, automobiles, appliances, etc. These ‘things’ are embedded with sensors and software to connect to the Internet in order to send and receive data. Each device in the IoT network is unique and able to interoperate with the Internet’s infrastructure.
With personal home assistants such as the Google Home and the Amazon Alexa, the average consumer is becoming more receptive to smart homes and interactive appliances.
In terms of commercial real estate, do you think the IoT can be beneficial to this industry?
Software Engineer / Real Estate Investor · Kansas City, MO · Member since 2017 · 30 posts · 16 votes
8y
I think IoT will have a huge impact on the commercial real estate industry. Starting at construction management and monitoring of supplies and worker efficiency. IoT is already starting to make inroads to optimize construction and shave hundreds of thousands of dollars off of large scale construction project expenses.
For Retail, you have realtime customer analytics the moment they enter your store. A sales clerk in the near future could have a full profile of every customer on the floor including past purchases, routes through the store and stores can be optimized to better serve the customer.
In all real estate not just commercial real estate, cities are starting to design infrastructure and overall city planning processes to build for the influx of rural and suburb populations moving into urban and metropolitan areas. To meet this influx, cities need to be planned differently integrating IoT devices to track road conditions, city maintenance, foot traffic, trash pickup, security and more. In my area, I've seen new projects cut the average parking spaces in half to start planning for the increasing trend of metropolitan residents getting rid of their car and utilizing uber or lyft. This trend will only increase with autonomous vehicles making large parking lots wastelands of useless real estate.
As far as managing commercial real estate, any form of maintenance, cleaning, security, and even optimizing a desired experience in a building can be improved or made autonomous through IoT and the right management platforms. These platforms are not fully there yet that incorporates all avenues for these IoT devices, but a ton of companies are focusing on these areas.
Investor · Indiana, mostly. · Member since 2014 · 25 posts · 3 votes
8y
Absolutely it (IoT) will shape CRE.
More things measured means more things optimized, only caveat is it may take a while. Only time will tell which sensors can be aggregated into useful data versus what inherent noise there will be. More data and more curiosity is better.
What we think of as efficient use of space may change a lot in ten years.
Investor · Indiana, mostly. · Member since 2014 · 25 posts · 3 votes
8y
Justin M Christian could you speak a little more to “optimizing a desired experience” as you put it?
Also I’d love to ask more about your experience in the parking conversation because so many places are having difficulty decoupling spots and units or sq ft.