From coliving to Passivhaus: What is expected of the real estate sector in 2020

This article was written and published in Spanish and has been translated into English via Google Translate. Click here to read the original article.

What can be expected in 2020 of the impact of technology in real estate? Will the ways and habits in which younger generations decide to live change?

The experts of the Valuation Institute have analyzed the panorama with the intention of shedding light on these doubts, without neglecting the more economical approach such as sales transactions, mortgages or the price of homes.

The brick sector will be even more Proptech

The number of Proptech companies continues to increase, to the point that there are currently 327 startups in Spain dedicated to offering technology services in real estate. Among all of them, they try to cover market gaps and automate processes.

For example, visit a home with virtual reality and without the need to move or manage all the properties of interest through apps directly from the mobile. Also, it has begun to integrate big data, marketing 4.0 and simulators to improve the sales processes of professionals in the sector, facilitating transactions for all parties.

Thus, the forecast is that the most disruptive technologies continue to be integrated into the different services of the sector, with the aim of automating processes, lowering costs and facilitating efforts.

From a property environment to the collaborative environment

Collaboration is booming in real estate. Concepts such as coworking are increasingly common, and it is that new collaborative work environments that allow companies or individuals to rent a certain area of ​​a space sharing with others do not stop appearing.

In the same way, and as an extension of coworking a new residential phenomenon appears: coliving, a trend of "living together" that joins housing and shared work space. Created with the millennial public in focus, and more specifically to entrepreneurial profiles, this new format seeks to solve the housing shortage and gives priority to common areas, where residents can socialize, share experiences and even work. This trend, which is expected to increase and expand during 2020, also offers high returns for tenants.

The price of rentals already shows exhaustion: what challenges will housing have to face in 2020?

More sustainable constructions by law

The future of homes and real estate in general by 2020 will be marked in an important way by the European Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, which states that, by the end of 2020, all new buildings must have virtually zero energy consumption. In addition, said regulation also provides that the energy consumed in these homes must be produced from renewable sources that are in the structure itself or somewhere nearby. One could then intuit that the construction trend will be directed towards the Passivhaus building model, which are basically those constructions that use their own resources to reduce energy consumption.

Possible decrease in transactions by foreign buyers

The most up-to-date information from the General Council of Notaries reflects a 3.2% year-on-year decrease in the sale of free housing by foreign buyers in the first half of 2019, registering the first setback in this type of transactions after 7 years and medium of uninterrupted growth.

The main fall corresponds to non-resident foreigners, with 41% of operations and a decrease of 9.7%, while there was a growth among foreigners residing in our country, who performed 59% of operations, with an increase in 1.9% Among all nationalities, the fall between Portuguese (-8.6%), Irish (-7.3%) and Italians (-1.3%) stands out.

In addition, according to data from the Ministry of Development, in the case of the purchase of new housing by resident foreigners the data are more positive during this same period, the first half of 2019, where the increase was 11.8% compared to the first half from the previous year. Despite the fact that in the third quarter of 2019, operations (1,731) have fallen compared to the second quarter, with more than 2,000 registered sales, the same as with second-hand housing transactions that have increased from 22,132 in the second quarter to 18,500 in the following quarter.

This article was written and published in Spanish and has been translated into English via Google Translate. Click here to read the original article.

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