The Custom App Technology Revolutionizing CRE

Tech platform Airtable is taking the guesswork out of technology for real estate companies. With it, companies can create bespoke apps and tools tailored to any sector within the industry—from property management to investment to brokerage—all without hiring an IT team or knowing anything about coding. The concept has already sold many companies, like SRS and Newmark Knight Frank, and is backed by $70 million in funding.

Howie Liu, the co-founder and CEO of Airtable and an experienced tech developer, recognized that most custom software in the real estate industry has more commonalities than differences and actually often uses the same set of building blocks. “It occurred to him that if you were to create a lego-kit made up of those various parts—and got rid of all the coding—you could make it possible for anyone to create their own powerful business solutions, without needing to hire an external developer, or bring in the entire IT team,” David Peterson, growth manager at Airtable, tells GlobeSt.com. “Many CRE professionals today simply don’t have the option to hire those developers and IT teams, so they are using spreadsheets in lieu of apps designed for their needs.”

Spreadsheets are an inefficient method for creating the lists and housing data that is critical to many real estate companies. Airtable is meant to fill the void for a user-friendly system to house and access data. “Spreadsheets were built for number-crunching, and for that, they are truly amazing. But, most people don’t use spreadsheets just for accounting purposes. They use them for list making and as makeshift database apps,” says Peterson. “For the latter use case, Airtable believes it has a better solution, and replaces these messy, text-and-number-only spreadsheets with a rich and structured collaboration experience that lets professionals build the workflows they need.”

The platform is already popular among some of the industry’s leaders, like SRS, NKF and even WeWork. One of the benefits is that many different types of industries can use it and adapt it to their needs. “In the past, those firms had to wrangle an unmanageable stack of multiple software platforms and spreadsheets to keep track of all leads, clients, listings, comps, and transactions,” says Peterson. “Now, they can build a highly-customized solution in Airtable to manage everything, all in one place — and it’s as easy-to-use as a spreadsheet. The foundation of most of these apps is data, whether it be tenant information, MLS listings, building maintenance, or marketing campaigns. From there, Airtable makes it simple to connect, manipulate, and build actions on top of this data.”

Creating custom apps and tools has pushed some companies to create internal efficiencies and update outdated practices. Ultimately, it could lead to more technology integration. “By democratizing software development through Airtable’s platform, real estate professionals are rethinking decades-old industry practices,” Peterson explains. “Each CRE professional knows what tools and technology will help them most, but building and implementing these solutions has traditionally been time and cost intensive. Now that professionals can take matters into their own hands and build exactly what they need, they are transforming CRE operations from the ground up.”