Homepal is the first fully digital real estate agency in Italy, both from experience (it has been online since 2016) and for ground numbers. It closed 2021 with a turnover of 2.7 million euros, marking a growth of 58% compared to 2019. In the same year, through the platform, 18 thousand properties were valued and 750 real estate transactions were carried out (an increase of 70% compared to the pre Covid period19).
Virtual reality
The real estate sector enters the metaverse
10 March 2022
Today, in Italy, the PropTech sector is in clear expansion, just think that in 2018 there were just 43 startups mapped, while at the end of 2021 there were 184. But when Homepal took its first steps it was a true pioneer and not only a Italian level. The idea came to Andrea Lacalamita, Founder and President of Homepal, as often happens to respond to a personal need.
“I have moved 18 houses in my life and have always been unsatisfied with the services received. I realized that the potential of technology was underutilized in the real estate sector and so I thought there was room to create a new system. We started practically from scratch. , because even at the international level there were no great experiences, apart from Redfin and Zillow “.
The idea becomes a project, therefore a platform, thanks to the involvement of Fabio Mara, Chief Commercial Officer, and Monica Regazzi, current CEO of Homeopal. The main challenge was to be able to objectively identify the right price of the property. Using Big Data and Artificial Intelligence, crossing the information provided by the customer with that obtained from other announcements on the market and with the official data provided by the Ministry of Finance, and taking into consideration a series of other parameters, in 2018 Homepal was the first in Italy to provide an objective assessment.
“Today – comments Lacalamita – it is now an established fact. We use about thirty data points for each property, obviously the richer the data, the more precise the evaluation will be, but let’s say that today we can provide very reliable estimates. The fact is that at the beginning we focused exclusively on the technological question, which was complex, but less complicated than another aspect: being able to estimate the difference between the objective value of the property and that perceived by the owner “.
The challenge is no longer technological, but moves on how to convince the owner to accept the estimated valuation through the use of Big Data. This led Homepal to change its business model: “We started by focusing 100% on technology. We weren’t even a real estate agency, we provided a peer to peer service, then gradually we accompanied the technology with some phases managed by beings. human. Today we are at 80% technology, 20% human, but it is that 20% that plays a fundamental role in our business “.
A new transformation is taking place in this direction: in September, a new method of interacting with the customer in the evaluation phase will be available, the “price comparison”. Starting from the Big Data analysis, the owner will work alongside to show him the market value of similar properties in the reference area. “There is a sort of voyeuristic logic, not unlike the concierge who tells you:” Do you know that those on the sixth floor sold for four hundred thousand euros? ” the starting data “. This is one of the novelties expected after the summer, in addition to the restyling of the site and to enhance a conversational method with the customer, during the insertion of the ads. For this reason, a new, rather important round of financing is underway. The fifth, after more than eight million euros have been raised to date.
The agents
Big data, artificial intelligence, technology play a fundamental role in the development and growth of Homepal but, as is now evident also from numerous other PropTech experiences, the human role cannot be completely replaced. Perhaps, in five or ten years, real estate agents will no longer perform the same tasks as today, but they will still exist and will be essential.
For Homepal they will be “digital agents”. They will not have to deal with acquiring properties to sell or visits and the contractual party will not be their task. Their function will be to assist customers in establishing the price and managing the negotiation. “In a highly automated process chain – explains Andrea Lacalamita – the agents will have the task of building the relationship of trust, starting from the data. It is a new, highly qualified figure that we choose through a long selection process. At the end. , we usually hire one out of every hundred, one hundred and twenty candidates “.
Currently there are 12 agents and they manage about seventy sales each year, but the number is destined to grow. “We have completed a plan by 2026, with which we expect to go from 700 to 20 thousand transactions per year and consequently the number of digital agents will have to grow proportionally. In the next five years we expect to reach around 150”.
Projecting towards the future, in the Real Estate sector, we also look with curiosity at the opportunities offered by the metaverse, which is still very ethereal today. “In addition to the possibility of buying virtual houses and land for speculative purposes, the element that seems most fascinating to me is the possibility of having a property visited in a totally digital way, making the visitor immerse as if he were there. This is very interesting for builders, who can show the house to potential buyers before it is finished, but also in the purchase and sale of existing houses to streamline the management of visits “.