The pandemic pushed physical person-to-person communication to shift to online platforms, as in the short period from February to April 2020, global Internet traffic increased by 40 percent. This created a great demand for online communication and an impetus for the development of technology storage centers.

Savills Impacts forecasts that from 2020 to 2026, the size of the world technology data storage market will grow at a rate of 4.5% per year and reach $251 billion by 2026.

According to JLL, the application of technology in real estate has achieved today's success mainly due to improvements in the speed and accuracy of internet connections. Along with high technology, solutions to save costs and increase efficiency in real estate business were born.

In the two years 2020-2021, when the global investment capital flow for the Proptech field reached over 10 billion USD/year, leading markets in the Proptech field in Asia such as China, Hong Kong, and Singapore also started to receive an impressive investment capital of about 700 million USD.

Proptech has become a fertile field that attracts a lot of investment in Europe, especially in countries such as the UK, Germany and Spain. Protech giants such as Zillow, Trulia, Redfin, Chase, and Epraisal have successfully impacted the market in the US, Singapore and Hong Kong.

According to statistics of ESCP Business School, the Proptech field has grown globally since 2010 with about 1 billion USD of investment capital. This market only really accelerated from 2014 to 2018 and reached about 14 billion USD in investment capital in early 2022.

Ms. Giang Huynh, Head of S22M Data Science Application Consulting Division, said in the current market, investments in the Proptech field are mostly poured into the fields of technology application for end-user connection activities. and cases related to management and support to increase the value of real estate.

Applications include short and long-term rental search platforms for vacations; home sale or rental platforms, real estate brokerage support platforms, co-working space search and rental platforms, and management platforms for short-term rental properties. In addition, in terms of real estate operation management, there are a number of other applications such as building utility management platform, repair and warranty service platform for housing.

Following the global trend, Proptech can be applied to solve theee main problems: access to information; support secure transactions for end users; and asset management and optimization.

Opportunity for Vietnam

In Vietnam, in the period from 2019 to 2020, the market witnessed exciting activities of investors involved in technology development, especially in the field of real estate - proptech, including asset management – ​​real estate, sales platform and fintech investment-oriented platform exploiting real estate.

In 2019, Cenhomes.vn is a real estate technology platform built on big data (Big data), artificial intelligence (AI) applications and many leading technologies such as Connect Peer to Peer, Matrix. Network, VR, 3D Scanning.

In 2021, Propzy, a start-up in the Proptech field, successfully raised $25 million in a Series A funding round. Homebase received millions of dollars in funding. RealStake successfully raised seed round investment from 500 Startups Vietnam and other “angel” investors.

Recently, technology real estate platform Proptech OneHousing (belonging to One Mount Group) launched the first automatic home valuation tool in Vietnam, and the results are accepted by banks as a basis for determining loan limits.

Neil MacGregor, an expert in this field, said that Vietnam's potential is a total population of more than 97 million people by 2021. The real estate market is still in a nascent stage with many problems to be solved. Proptech has the ability to provide solutions to overcome these backlog problems.

In addition, Vietnamese people have a certain understanding of technology and have good receptivity to new technology. The proptech market is tapping into this tech-savvy group of the population, especially residents in apartment buildings who use property management apps.

For sales and marketing, Vietnam's real estate market faces liquidity problems, especially in the secondary market. The proptech platform can support that liquidity and gradually open the real estate market to the masses, allowing all Vietnamese to participate in real estate investment.

Some experts believe that Proptech will help project developers and real estate businesses reach a new generation of customers. Proptech applications will support brand building and development and market real estate products to the right customers.

However, they said that compared with developed markets in the real estate management industry such as Singapore and Hong Kong, the Vietnamese market will face difficulties related to awareness.

In addition, the average age of real estate management directors is high - 40 to 50. Vietnam now faces a shortage of young human resources. Technological change will attract young people to enter the field.

According to experts, Vietnam has high potential for the development of Proptech. Mr. Neil MacGregor said the real estate market in Vietnam will continue to grow, especially in key cities such as Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City and other “resort cities”. In the future, more capital will be invested in Proptech to serve this growing market.

Duy Khanh