By James Morris-Manuel, MD and VP of EMEA at Matterport
Britain is now the fourth biggest residential rental market in the world, worth an estimated £1.7 trillion per year and behind only America, Germany and Japan. There are now 8.7 million buy-to-let properties in the UK – and with house prices having increased 9.8% year-on-year between 2021 and 2022 according to Government statistics, business is good for the country’s growing army of buy-to-let landlords. With the market expanding rapidly, landlords are turning to new technologies, such as digital twins, to manage and promote their property portfolios more efficiently than ever before.
For landlords, creating a digital twin of a property offers many benefits. For example, when advertising a property, they can help attract prospective renters and speed up the lettings process. They also provide a large amount of data that can be used to make better decisions, including predictive maintenance where problems are dealt with before they happen.
Rent out properties faster
The benefits of digital twins to landlords start with being able to offer virtual tours of properties, providing an honest, information-packed way to ‘view’ properties virtually, helping to build the crucial trust between landlord and tenant. Creating a digital twin of a property is far easier than you might imagine: you can create one using a smartphone camera (or for a more professional finish, book trained technicians with specialist cameras). The data captured is transformed into an interactive 3D model of the rental property which prospective tenants can explore remotely. In larger properties the model can present the full suite of amenities such as gymnasiums, pools and grounds.
Digital twins bring landlords a way of offering virtual, immersive tours of the property to prospective renters, without anyone needing to set foot in the property. This results in less disruption for sitting tenants and means that people who come for an in-person visit are more likely to be serious prospects, saving time for both them and the landlord. In Matterport research, using digital twins within listings is proven to increase the number of enquiries relating to properties.
Within their digital twins, landlords can embed notes (for instance to highlight key selling points such as white goods, air conditioning, marble surfaces etc.), offering a level of detail that simply wouldn’t be easily achievable with a video tour, for example.
Deal with problems before they happen
The benefits of digital twins don’t stop once the tenants have been given their keys and moved in. Once a new tenant has moved in and it’s time to create a snagging list, they can use tags on the digital twin to flag any blemishes or scuffs that were already there. This will give tenants and landlords an extra level of documentation, beyond a mere written condition report.
The same benefits apply for maintenance as well. Landlords can share their digital twins with their contractors and collaborate remotely with them to facilitate bids – for example, for cleaning, repairs or refurbishments.
For landlords, when managing a large portfolio of properties, it can be hard to stay on top of the maintenance of each property. But with digital twins, landlords can use their real-time virtual model of the property to stay up-to-date with repairs, with the help of Internet of Things sensors in properties. These sensors can monitor almost any equipment in a house from alarm systems to refrigerators and dishwashers allowing landlords to identify when a problem is happening and in some cases to predict when it is about to happen. The insights they provide will help ensure that maintenance, refurbishment or replacement decisions can be made, just in time. As a result, tenants won’t have to suffer any ‘downtime’ while appliances are not working, but also landlords will face lower bills due to not having to pay for emergency call-outs and unscheduled maintenance.
Data-driven decisions
Having data on everything from maintenance to property use at their fingertips means that landlords can have a deeper understanding of issues, such as energy efficiency, within properties, based on data from sensors. This can offer landlords the chance to proactively manage their properties to create long-term value. This will be especially important for landlords with a large number of properties, when it comes to the big decisions, such as when to renovate, when to upgrade properties and when to sell.
Digital twins offer easy wins for both landlords and tenants, and ensure landlords can get the most out of properties by renting them out rapidly. Tenants see less of their landlords, with landlords able to monitor properties remotely and step in to deal with problems before they escalate. This helps to build the all-important trust between landlords and their tenants. Renting long-term is increasingly common in Britain, and with the market continuing to grow, landlords need to find a way to differentiate themselves from their competition but also keep current and prospective tenants happy – and digital twins can be the answer.
