'We see everything that happens': 5 real-estate execs explain why data is changing how we live and work

Real estate is easing into the digital revolution, with so-called iBuyers purchasing homes in a week and venture-capital money flooding into startups that add a tech twist to the industry.

Business Insider talked with executives at companies ranging from short-term-rental firms to commercial real-estate brokerages about the ways data will change how real-estate professionals do their jobs.

While all the execs said they were analyzing data to better understand markets and customers, they also flagged hurdles like small sample sizes and still emphasized the importance of a human touch.

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While other industries are jumping into machine learning and artificial intelligence and data scientist has been dubbed the best job in America, real estate still has a reputation for handshake deals and decisions made on gut instinct.

But companies that revolve around real estate are quickly finding ways to adapt to a digital world. Where before documents lived in a file cabinet, they're becoming digitized. Zillow, Redfin, and other so-called iBuyers are closing on homes within a week of the application. Venture-capital money is flooding into “proptech” startups that marry real estate and technology.

The first step is collecting better data and finding ways to actually use it.

Business Insider talked with executives at companies ranging from short-term-rental firms to commercial real-estate brokerages about the ways that data will change how we work and live and the way that real-estate professionals do their jobs.

Many acknowledged that the process of capturing enough data to pull out legitimate trends can be cumbersome. Some said that for short-term rentals at least, higher turnover may help produce more data than house sales do.

There are also worries about potential regulatory issues that could hem in the growth of some startups and the data they can collect, as well as the ever-present challenge of selling people on change.

And finally, some said that real estate still requires a level of human interaction and judgment that evades traditional data analysis.