What will be the next massive American real estate pivot? How soon is it coming? How do real estate agents and investors need to prepare themselves if they want to survive it? More importantly, what steps can be taken to thrive in the next pivot?
A new blog from speaker, marketer and bestselling author, Seth Godin, highlights the developing trend in self-driving cars. It warns real estate companies, investors and Realtors of just how fast this change is coming, and alerts them to just how dramatically it will alter the American landscape and business.
Self-driving cars have already been cruising our streets. Regular cars have been becoming more and more automated and autonomous. Not much difference has been seen in impact on driving, auto sales, or property markets, yet. Once we reach the tipping point, adaption will increase in velocity and geography. The outcome could be far more significant than most real estate professionals can fathom, partly because many haven’t given it much thought.
Get ready, because those that have a handle on the coming impact of self-driving cars are going to have a massive advantage over the rest. If this isn’t taken into consideration, many might find themselves trapped in the housing market trunk before they know it:
How Self-Driving Cars Will Change the Real Estate Landscape
Self-driving cars will change everything. Think about this. Once adapted, self-driving automobiles will push out of date, and downright dangerous driver controlled cars off the road. At least in inner cities and major highways.
Automation and technology will change roads, intersections, road crossings, and speed of travel. Traffic can move smoothly and speedily. Passengers that used to be drivers will have more time to do other things in the car besides watch the road. If GPS tools and online maps of recent years are anything to go by, traffic patterns and paths will be altered dramatically. Perhaps the highest bidder will get to have all the traffic directed past their business.
Now, consider that American cities have been built around the traditional automobile for decades. These traffic plans, road systems, and building plans will be inefficient in the new driverless world. This is what will really change everything. Now that cities won’t have to cater to old school drivers, and driverless cars, which could see windows replaced with computer screens can drop off passengers right inside buildings as a valet service, and conventional parking lots aren’t needed any more, dramatic infrastructure changes will emerge. This will change architectural demands and styles, city planning, density possibilities, and will ultimately create new cities, or at least modern hubs which replace inefficient old ones.
3 Ways Driverless Cars Impact Real Estate
1. Advertising
Driverless cars dramatically change real estate advertising. Billboards, yard signs, storefronts; who will see them? Riders will likely be embedded in media rich vehicles, plugged into the web and social during their commutes, with more and more media automatically served up based upon past preferences, and social connections. This will make social media infinitely more valuable, and will give the best mobile marketers a huge edge in dominating minds and closing real estate sales. This could even automate the home search, and augment it with downloadable driving itineraries of open houses. Of course, by then, renters will be receiving automatic alerts on their wearable devices notifying when they need to move based upon lease renewals.
2. Desirable Properties
New traffic patterns and design trends will also change which properties are desirable in a city, and outside of them. Parking could become far less valuable, glossy exterior architecture less important, and a factor which builds in far more profit for builders. So which properties and neighborhoods will be the most in demand and valuable in your city then?
What about those that still want to drive their own cars and want privacy? How many will migrate to the suburbs, and even rural areas where they can still feel the thrill of being behind the wheel?
3. Which Properties are the Most Profitable
This won’t just change which properties are the most in demand in the future, and which property features buyers will flock too. It will change the performance of real estate investments between now and then, and the value of portfolios. Are you investing with this in mind?
Why Change Will Come Faster Than Most Think
In addition to billions of marketing dollars, and the typical patterns of increased velocity and reduced costs, government and municipalities will be highly motivated to embrace new infrastructure. Some of the reasons behind this include:
- Huge potential increases in property tax revenues from increased density
- Reduced public service costs
- Less money required to support health care
- Reduced liability
- Reduced crime
- Retaining competitiveness
Staying Ahead of the Curve
Serious real estate professionals might want to keep all of this in mind, and leave room for these changes in their business and marketing plans. Stay ahead by keeping wired into the news, and the who and where of driverless cars. Know which services are already putting social and internet in cars, and how to market through them. Consider how it will create the most massive change of all in the auto industry. What will ex-car workers and taxi drivers do now? Where will they move?
