The commercial real estate industry is often seen as the older, antiquated sibling of the residential real estate industry. However, a new report by inMotion Real Estate indicates that the trends of the younger, cooler, residential industry could be rubbing off on big brother as mobile use in on the rise dramatically in the commercial real estate industry.
According to inMotion Real Estate, commercial industry professionals are going mobile at a quicker pace than they ever have before, with mobile use up 61 percent from 2011 to 2012. The most popular devices should come as no surprise; apple led the way with the iPhone and iPad as the top two as they were also the most popular brand, followed by HTC, Samsung and Motorola.
The fact that commercial real estate professionals are going mobile has a direct correlation to the amount of mobile traffic that can be seen across industry websites. The reports sites a 225 percent increase in mobile visits as a percent of total website visits in 2012 compared to 2011. Mobile traffic to commercial real estate websites now accounts 9 percent of total overall traffic. As tablets and smartphones continue to become their penetration as the primary devices, these numbers will surely increase.
In addition, the movement towards a mobile workforce, especially as it relates to commercial and residential real estate, demand mobile tools, as well as technologies that cater to those devices. As such, what we can expect to see is more commercial real estate mobile websites, apps and mobile utility products designed to meet the shift in the way these professionals are operating their businesses.
Mobile has been on the rise in the residential industry since 2008 as the primary home-buying demographic has shifted to younger more tech savvy buyers. However, the commercial real estate consumer is far different and there are far fewer of them the need to go mobile has not been expedited as severely. Moving forward however, as there will be few ‘phone’ options left that are not smartphones, companies move to smaller offices and tablets replace traditional lap and desktops, the industry will have no choice but to embrace the technology of today.
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