RPA in real estate:
10 use cases and best practices

RPA in real estate: 10 use cases and best practices

December 26, 2022

10 RPA use cases in real estate

From property and facility management to accounting and marketing, RPA in real estate can be deployed in a variety of key business functions. Here's a brief rundown of popular RPA use cases in this industry.

Tax billing and reporting

Real estate agencies can manage numerous properties subject to taxation, not to mention corporate taxes such as the CIT. Therefore, tax billing and reporting is another process worth automating via RPA. Bots can extract information from different sources, prepare property tax invoices for tenants, and compile all due fiscal documentation for competent authorities faster and more accurately than humans.

Scheme title: Example of property tax billing automation.
Data source: deloitte.com—Corporate Real Estate and Facilities Management in the digital world.

Bot interfaces with tax management system

Bot extracts data to spreadsheet

Bot manipulates data and populates monthly filings

Bot validates customers’ eligibility, status and equipment list

Bot creates invoice within customers’ ERP systems

Bot captures invoices submission confirmation details

Bot generates monthly report and distributes to team

Lease contract processing

The manual procedures for drafting and processing lease or rental agreements are subject to errors and inaccuracies, as they require administrators to manage a lot of information gathered from different sources. A bot can take charge of these operations, for example, by entering data in standardized forms and creating the tenant account in the property management software once it has received the lessee's and landlord's digital signatures.

Resident communication

RPA bots can effectively interact with residents. For example, they can automatically send messages about rent increases, key returns, contract renewals, and rent payments. Autonomous reminders may trigger under certain conditions. Bots can check incoming payments, mark insolvent tenant accounts in the corporate system, and contact them via email.

Tenant onboarding

This process includes many tasks, such as creating new tenants' applications, checking for their criminal records, reviewing referrals, incomes, and proceeding to the final approval. Collecting all this information and filing proper documentation with bots is faster and more accurate.

Maintenance and cost management

Managing the maintenance costs and all the related bureaucracy is challenging, especially in the case of large companies with numerous properties. RPA can be implemented to automate heating, water, and electricity reporting, consumption-based invoicing, and maintenance requests.

Bank and account reconciliation

The role played by RPA in the financial industry, including reconciliation, has also proved useful in real estate. Bots can extract bank account statements, verify the correspondence between them and the company’s general ledger, and identify any discrepancies in the cash flow due to delays in recording payments or simple compilation errors. Once the analysis is complete, bots can trigger validation requests or send a report to administrators.

Accounts payable and receivable

RPA can facilitate processing inbound and outbound invoices, especially if drawn up in different formats. In this regard, bots can lend a hand by extracting salient data from incoming invoices and entering it into corporate systems or by drafting standardized forms addressed to customers. These extraction capabilities can be further enhanced with AI-powered tools.

NAV calculations

The Net Asset Value (NAV) is a fundamental yardstick for measuring the future returns of a real estate investment fund. The calculation of this parameter, which takes into account different types of market data, can be improved by adopting RPA tools.

Chatbots

Valuable virtual assistants allow customers to interface with an agency 24/7, improving the customer experience. Chat messages can trigger bots to perform relatively simple tasks, such as showing real estate for sale in a particular area. Chatbots integrated with RPA and other AI-based technologies can deliver better customer service.

Marketing

Various RPA solutions allow realtors to automate the publication of content on social media and, if enhanced with predictive data analytics in marketing, to target potential customers based on their preferences and interests. Bots can also speed up the compilation of mailing lists and automate the sending of emails to keep the customer base updated on the latest real estate news.

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Benefits of RPA in real estate

Implementing RPA bots in your real estate business processes will help you achieve the following pay-offs.

Cost efficiency

Accuracy

Compliance

Scalability

Integration catalyst

Better customer experience

Real-life examples of RPA in real estate

- 30%

processing times

Sunway Group

One of the top Malaysian real estate companies, Sunway Group, significantly reduced processing times across 35 business operations with an AI-powered RPA solution.

$1m

in savings

WAM Group

The Brazilian leader in the fractional ownership market deployed a cloud-based RPA solution to enhance the processes of its finance, tax, and research departments.

45h > 1h

reporting time

Deloitte

Deloitte assisted a real estate multinational in implementing RPA bots to speed up its tax billing and maintenance tasks, including reporting, data extraction, and data manipulation.

700h > 400h

processing

Hoas

The Foundation for Student Housing in the Helsinki Region almost halved the processing time required to handle 8,400 housing applications after adopting RPA software robots.

Best RPA platforms for real estate

While some real estate companies invest in custom RPA software development from scratch, organizations prioritizing faster RPA implementation and lower upfront costs may build their solution on top of an RPA platform provided by a third-party vendor. According to Gartner's 2021 Magic Quadrant for Robotic Process Automation, these are the four RPA market leaders.

Pros
UiPath offers solid governance features, a low-code UX app builder, and extensive integration capabilities. It enjoys high ratings for scalability, customization and ease of deployment.
Cons
The price is high and not suitable for small automatization projects. The pricing policy and service/product offering is rather complex, requiring workshops and explanations.
Pricing
Price on request

Pros
Automation Anywhere offers cognitive automation and analytics capabilities powered by AI, along with a strong focus on the cloud.
Cons
Customers reported that data extraction from images isn't always accurate and that upgrading from Automation Anywhere’s legacy platform to Automation 360 is rather challenging.
Pricing
Three packages (Community, Cloud Starter, and Advanced). Pricing starts at $750 per month for the Cloud pack.

Pros
Microsoft’s platform provides solid out-of-the-box API connectors, integration with its rich software ecosystem, and low-code development.
Cons
Power Automate is Windows-centric and the navigation between Power Automate Desktop, Microsoft Teams, and the Power Automate service on the cloud is not straightforward.
Pricing
Per user plan ($15 per user/month) Per user plan with attended RPA ($40 per user/month) Per flow plan (Starting at $500 per month)

Pros
Blue Prism offers automation building with numerous pre-build templates, supports multi-bot architecture and offers intelligent automation techniques (OCR, NLP, and ML). Users admit a high level of security.
Cons
The platform has no trial software, offers back office automation only, is weaker than competitors in terms of low-code app development and API integration.
Pricing
Price on request, a choice between flat and consumption-based pricing models.

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RPA in real estate implementation guidelines

Consider the following best practices to maximize the benefits of investing in RPA technology and streamline its adoption across your real estate organization.

Select appropriate use cases

To ensure a fast and consistent ROI, you should identify the most suitable RPA use cases, possibly with proper BPM solutions. We highlighted the link between these two disciplines in our BPM vs RPA analysis. Consider prioritizing repetitive, high volume, and well-structured business processes manageable by RPA bots that will benefit from increased scalability.

Chart 1: Automation opportunities in real estate
Data source: deloitte.com—Corporate Real Estate and Facilities Management in the digital world.

High

Level of value created

Low

High

Level of effort

Low

Secondary candidates for RPA

Manage bidding process for capital projects

Maintain space and occupancy data

Execute cost allocation methodology

Likely candidates for RPA

Manage real estate-related on-boarding activities for new employees

Manage utility payments and track energy consumption

Maintain up-to-date IWMS data

Do not automate

Monitor operational risk and compliance

Perform project
close-out

Develop capital program plan

Secondary candidates for RPA

Assemble and organize performance management data

Manage service requests

Maintain up-to-date customer and vendor data

Set up a comprehensive adoption roadmap

RPA implementation is a complex, multifaceted process encompassing several key phases:

1

Planning

Identify automation opportunities, evaluate costs and benefits, and design functional and technical aspects of your solution.

2

Configuration

Mobilize human and tech resources, develop the RPA solution according to requirements and assess it in a test environment to identify gaps.

3

Deployment

Integrate RPA bots into your workflows, track performance via KPIs, and fine-tune your solution with the ongoing process and coding improvement.

Define a change management strategy

RPA bots can radically change your corporate workflows and business functions. Preparing the ground for this transformation will require proper measures. These generally include ongoing training and support to help employees familiarize themselves with RPA technology and proactive communication of the adoption objectives. The transformation may also involve several workflow adjustments to harmonize your processes in light of future interactions with bots while avoiding new bottlenecks.

Challenges of RPA in real estate

Similar to predictive analytics technologies in real estate, RPA has immense potential but entails some challenges and should be implemented wisely.

Issue

Solution

Handling exceptions

Issue

Solution

Especially in their "basic" version, RPA bots are limited to effectively managing standardized, rule-based activities and recurring scenarios since they follow pre-established instructions, but they may struggle when facing any exceptions to these rules.

A common trend is to enhance RPA solutions with AI-related technologies, such as machine learning and computer vision. It is known as intelligent process automation (IPA). Machine learning is becoming a staple of most RPA solutions and platforms for real estate, such as UiPath and Automation Anywhere.
Staff concerns

Issue

Solution

When it comes to delegating an increasing number of tasks to robots, a widespread fear among professionals is massive job displacement. According to data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the percentage of automatable jobs in the real estate sector could reach 40% of the total industry.

To avoid this negative effect, employees can get proper retraining focused on improving non-replaceable human skills, such as strategic planning, data-driven decision-making, creativity, and public relations.
Conservative industry mindset

Issue

Solution

Compared to other sectors, real estate has traditionally shown a limited propensity for change because interpersonal relationships between agents and customers are still perceived as a crucial point. According to estimates by the National Association of Realtors, 41% of sellers who turned to real estate agents found them through the recommendation of friends and family.

Reshaping an obsolete corporate culture from the ground up is not a simple task. However, promoting digital literacy through targeted training initiatives and incentives and enticing stakeholders with small-scale, fast achievements will facilitate the shift.

Driving innovation in real estate

Relatively easy deployment and remarkable automation capabilities make RPA an ideal candidate to foster digitalization in a conservative industry like real estate. At the same time, forward-thinking companies should consider the relative backwardness of this sector as a potential benefit. Even if the real estate industry is a couple of steps behind others in terms of automation, it means early adopters could benefit more from RPA implementation. If you intend to position your organization among the real estate innovation leaders, consider relying on Itransition's expertise in RPA consulting and development.

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