Real estate can create jobs post COVID-19

                                                         Kapil Kapur

                        Director – Sales, Strategy & Business Development,                                                                              Bullmen Realty India

With the coronavirus outbreak, the real estate industry has seen a major slowdown in sales and halt in the construction of ongoing and new projects. However, looking at the current scenario, there has been a shift from saving lives to saving livelihood. The demand for owned houses will grow. People living in rental houses, or NRIs, have realised the importance of having owned houses.

There will be a greater focus on automation, mechanization among other alternatives to reduce the dependency on labour. Going forward, developers will increasingly look for alternative suppliers and build a comprehensive backup model to overcome the disruption in supply chain management

Realignment of marketing strategies post COVID-19 is one important aspect: innovative new schemes to attract customers, digitisation as a new norm, planning digital marketing strategies, overcoming the real estate challenges and project management

Adopting digital technology is crucial as the industry is becoming more tech-savvy in terms of using digital platforms as means of sales and marketing. With the homebuyers preferring to avoid site visits, developers would need to leverage augmented reality and virtual reality to give homebuyers a glimpse of projects. Hence, more job opportunities will be created in terms of marketing, sales, and in the digital area. Developers are looking for innovative digital initiatives to engage with their prospective buyers. To stay relevant many real estate companies have started spending more on digital marketing solutions and online productivity tools. Therefore, with the increasing digital presence, it is equally important to scale the competence of the team to manage the new business order.

In conclusion, we can say that demand of buying homes will increase as India unlocks gradually. As staying home has proved to the best safety measure in this global pandemic crisis, people have realised the need to own a home. Also, real estate and construction industry is the second-largest employment provider of the country, and post-COVID-19, it is likely to carry the mantle for times to come.