Economic climate demands data-driven development

Over the last few years demand has been such that whatever a housebuilder develops would find a buyer so the need to link the product specifically to buyer demand was minimal, but that has changed dramatically in the new economic and financial climate.

“You can really see that projects that have not been supported with data are now being stopped, reassessed and re-evaluated. Then they’re going to change it but unfortunately all those projects now have to be redrawn by an architect, reassessed by the municipality to decide whether it’s allowed to be constructed,” said Joost van der Zon, founder and owner of proptech platform Houzr.

“For about 12 months we have a lot of real estate developers, real estate agents and municipalities starting to use our software platform, Houzr, and are using the data in that application to create better project plans,” Van der Zon said.

He explained that the app’s users are able to see what revenues they can create, what prices they can ask for different type of houses, and thenjointly decide that certain products might not be the best fit with the market and can discuss how they can improve the plan so that at least they become feasible.”

Rising interest rates and high construction costs have made it more difficult to get a project from plan to actual development.

“Data is being used to assist this entire process, to avoid unnecessary risks and to find the right program mix to generate a positive outcome,” he said.

“Whenever projects have been supported with data barely any adjustments had to be made, even though the market has deteriorated so much from a financial point of view.”

Please click on the video above to watch the full interview or listen to the podcast below.

Author: