Unlock the Power of Real Estate with Zoning & GIS: Emerging Trends for 2024

It's no secret that the real estate industry is constantly evolving, and digital technology plays a leading role in this – according to Fortune Business Insights, in 2023, the PropTech market was estimated at $33.57 bln and is expected to grow up to $89.93 bln by 2032.

In this, GIS and zoning technologies play one of the major roles as they can provide significant assistance to specialists in decision-making and planning. Thanks to the advanced visualization and analysis tools that these technologies provide, these specialists can improve the quality of their services without requiring outside help. Below, we will reveal the importance of zoning and GIS, analyze their main advantages and directions for further development, as well as consider specific solutions for their use.

Understanding Zoning Laws

So, what about zoning meaning in real estate? In a nutshell, any real estate business must operate under generally accepted zoning laws, which are designed for the safe and proper development of land. Let's look at them in more detail.

• Types of land use. Each of the land territories has its permission for the format of use. This may include agricultural and industrial needs, as well as commercial and residential projects.
• Zoning of building density. There are certain regulations on the permissible density for a specific type of zone – this concerns the size of plots, the height of buildings, the number of dwellings (if we are talking about residential areas), etc.
• Setbacks and building codes. Zoning regulations often require allowable distances between structures and property lines to maintain their functionality and safety.
• Conditional use permits. These permits are required in case of inappropriate use of territories and real estate.

Ultimately, knowledge of these laws ensures the transparency of investments in real estate and allows specialists to formulate their competitive prices. For example, if we consider residential buildings within the city, this is characterized by the maximum population density per square meter. Given the increased demand for such objects, their price (and the cost of their construction) will usually be higher than in the suburbs.

The Rise of GIS in Real Estate

Now, let's move on to the definition. GIS (geographic information system) is a technology for collecting, storing, analyzing, and graphically visualizing geographic data and related information about specific objects. Due to versatility, GIS systems can be integrated into almost any third-party custom software.

As for the real estate industry, GIS provides specialists (brokers, agents, developers, etc.) as well as their clients with spatial data about a specific area, be it population density, soil quality, risks of floods, earthquakes, and other natural disasters, average cost one square meter, etc. Based on this data, they can make more informed decisions, conduct market analysis, and assess the prospects of investing in a particular property.

Advantages for Real Estate Professionals

Now, let’s consider how GIS and zoning real estate technologies provide professionals with a competitive edge.

“Smart” selection of locations

GIS and zoning technologies can be actively used in optimizing the processes of selecting land plots. In particular, by overlaying data on demographics, accepted land use models, infrastructure features, etc., on geographic maps, specialists can simplify the process of selecting locations and make its results more accurate.

Formation of accurate and effective development strategies

Up-to-date data from GIS can be helpful in the formation of accurate and profitable strategies for the development of real estate businesses. In addition to economic information, GIS can also provide valuable insights about infrastructure features, employment rates, legislation, and other things that contribute to business growth.

Housing planning

GIS and zoning in real estate play a leading role in analyzing market trends, consumer demand and supply, and planning developments. They are also quite often used in development initiatives for locations where most of the buildings have to be demolished.

Unlocking the potential of zones and regions

GIS solutions can open up new opportunities for development and reconstruction. This is made possible by combining zoning regulations, current trends, infrastructure and soil data, etc. about a specific geographic area. In this way, real estate professionals can gain a complete understanding of its potential and create sustainable strategies for its further evolution.

In-depth market analysis

The totality of disparate data obtained from GIS real estate solutions can create a powerful foundation for a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of the real estate market. While manual analysis usually involves focusing a specialist’s attention on one or several aspects, GIS, in combination with smart algorithms (for example, based on artificial intelligence), can objectively assess the significance of each source of information and generate analytics taking into account the identified priority.

Evaluation of real estate objects

Since the pricing of a particular property depends not only on the region but also on many other factors, it may be enough for specialists involved in evaluation to consider them all at once. In turn, GIS systems can provide these specialists with information about which aspects are leading in the local market.

As for specific cases of using GIS in world practice, there are more and more of them every year. Moreover, many successful cases have been reviewed in scientific articles, for example, in this one. In particular, due to the lack of a unified approach to real estate evaluation in Turkey, processes such as calculating real estate taxes, expropriation, and judicial supervision are very difficult to implement and often bring biased results. In turn, the introduction of GIS solutions greatly contributed to solving this problem and laid the foundation for drawing up up-to-date and dynamic evaluation maps compiled with the current legislation of Turkey.

Trends Shaping the Future

Finally, let's look at technologies that, when used together with zoning and GIS for real estate, can create a real revolution in this industry in 2024 and beyond.

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence plays a key role in ensuring the high accuracy of decisions made, and the real estate industry is no exception. Due to the need to consider many factors when analyzing geographic areas, such as cost per acre, flow zones, municipal boundaries, demographics, landmarks, infrastructure features, etc., the large volume of collected data provided by GIS can lead many specialists to incorrect conclusions. To prevent this from happening, they can resort to AI-driven solutions that improve the quality of analysis and speed up this process as a whole.

AI can also be used for more local tasks. The direct proof of this is our project – an AI-driven real estate lead generation service. In particular, integration with OpenAI helped us automate the resource-intensive task of describing properties. In addition to creating text content that is attractive to potential tenants and buyers, AI independently makes it SEO-friendly and ensures multilingual support.

3D technology

The combination of data obtained from GIS services along with 3D technologies can offer invaluable experience for developers in data visualization. In turn, end users of such software solutions, such as real estate brokers, are capable of quick and accurate interpretation of this data. Ultimately, this has a positive effect on closing deals since their clients receive only those offers that are truly interesting to them.

Our experience in combining these technologies has been embodied in the zoning analytics platform. This project aims to collect, analyze, and visualize real estate data to provide users with detailed information about property, zoning regulations, and real estate market trends in the United States. 3D technologies helped us here to implement a revolutionary solution of virtual 3D tours that would ensure an immersive effect for potential customers wherever they are.

No less promising for joint use with GIS in real estate are augmented reality (to create even greater user engagement during 3D tours), Internet of Things (for collecting real-time data), blockchain (for implementation of decentralizing software solutions), as well as satellites and drones (for remote sensing in GIS).

Conclusion

All of the above trends – AI, 3D technologies, augmented reality, blockchain, Internet of things, as well as drones and satellites have been actively developing in recent years as independent solutions, so the development of real estate GIS and zoning software with their use significantly accumulates their advantages. If you are just considering the possibility of building custom software for your business, please contact us. We will advise you on the potential of each of the above technologies and schedule the creation of a digital solution that will give you a strong competitive advantage for many years to come.