Real estate technology, also known as proptech, is radically impacting the industry. Now, there are over 6,000 proptech companies around the world and just last year, over $4.6 billion was invested into the industry.

Some technological advancements include building information modeling (BIM), drones, 3D printing, virtual and augmented reality (AR/VR), and machine learning.

Proptech particularly benefits the flexible workspace sector as it allows operators to provide more value for tenants. For example, coworking firms can offer AR and VR tours of their workspace, chatbots to quickly answer any potential questions 24/7, and provide biometric security.

IWG has entered into the proptech world itself with its IWG Broker app that allows agents and brokers to submit, track, and manage referrals across the company’s numerous flexible workspace brands such as Regus, Spaces, No18, HQ and Signature by Regus.

“Beyond our existing real estate skills, we need to layer on top ‘modern’ hardware, high speed connectivity and cloud computing,” said Antony Slumbers, a development and technology strategist in real estate. “All of this as a platform for designing the data science and analytics the best real estate operators will apply to the real-time data points emanating from the Internet of Things networks.”