Real Estate Investor Magazine South Africa March/April 2020 | Page 20

MANAGING
Digitising real estate
T
he 2020 Real Estate Summit hosted in Cape Town
at the end of February, and in Johannesburg at
the beginning of March, focused on an incredibly
important part of the real estate market – digitalisation.
The impact of technology on the South African, and global,
real estate industry and how this is set to evolve over the next
year. For most industries, technology heralds disruption and
change and the real estate industry is no exception. From
augmented reality home tours to digital estate agents, the
ways in which investors and tenants and owners engage with
the real estate market are changing.
“Change is the one constant in the market,” says Michael
Franze, Managing Director, Citiq Prepaid. “It is the one thing
that everyone can count on. It also doesn’t mean that things
are changing for the worse, it can represent opportunity. An
opportunity to relook how any given property approaches
its customers and manages its services. The truth is that the
tenant of today, be they commercial or consumer, wants more
than just old systems that don’t put their positive experiences
at the heart of their engagements. It’s a tenant’s market and
they will just leave if nobody is listening.”
One of the biggest trends that has emerged alongside
18
MARCH/APRIL 2020 SA Real Estate Investor Magazine
digitalisation is the need for transparency. From one scandal
to the next, transparency has become a commodity that can
be used by the real estate market to bolster its proposition and
engage with its customers. This is one of the reasons why sub-
metering within the utility space has become so popular – be
it water or electricity, sub-metering gives control back to both
the tenant and the real estate owner or manager.
“With the right partner and sub-metering platform, any
commercial or residential building can transform how it
manages spend, customers and administration,” says Franze.
“Citiq Prepaid has an online portal that provides accessible
reporting solutions to both tenant and owner. The reports
are tailored to the specific market and offer insights that were
previously unavailable from one shared meter and system.”
Sub-metering systems not only improve transparency
but they are on time every month which minimises any
unexpected impact on budgets, and they can be used to
measure return on investment for both commercial property
owner and tenant. This is just one part of how sub-metering
can be used to shift the tenant-real estate owner dynamic and
to leverage digitalisation to achieve more, with less. The future
is here, it’s time to install it.
SOURCE Citiq Prepaid