Real Estate will never be the same post-COVID sums up 2020 for most Developers, Architects, Property Owners, and Construction Companies.
In just over 4 months, Covid-19 re-ordered nearly every industry in the world. Offices have become obsolete, (i.e. companies like Twitter and Facebook allowing employees to work from home indefinitely), landlords are not receiving rent because renters have become un or underemployed and our homes have become our fortresses.
Everything has changed since the arrival of Coronavirus Disease. Spaces will have to meet all of our needs; work, live, and play. Materials for building will have to be germ resistant and layouts will need to be able to provide safe social distancing and contactless human interactions.
The Covid-19 pandemic has forced many of the world’s largest developers to rapidly rethink their visions for future projects and the manner to best built-out new environments. For example, McDonald’s rollout of touch screen self-serve kiosks has been shelved.
Broadly speaking, real estate development pre-COVID centered around building communities with interactive spaces and shared experiences through intimate group activities like shopping, bars, restaurants, and stuffing buildings full of digital innovation to eliminate clutter.
Real estate’s new development buzzwords are quickly morphing into language that includes “privacy”, “virtual” and “secluded”.
So where does Real Estate Development go from here, post-COVID-19?
In Real Estate mecca’s like New York and LA, developers are building private full-sized soccer fields, indoor basketball courts, private tennis and racquetball courts, and in-home golf simulators, in the hope that these amenities will soothe the worry of luxury buyers.
In areas with more space, the development concept is the same but with more space to work with. So instead of a tower with private rooftop soccer fields, the development may be a private gated subdivision with amenities like home indoor pools, racquetball courts, and private gardens with lots of acres of land around each home.
For many developers, architects, and builders staying relevant and being responsive to their clients and the market is what keeps them ahead of the curve. For instance, top developers are delivering amenities that clients can enjoy without leaving their home or their building, such as in-house concierge services or clubhouses that offer top restaurant quality selections.
Next-gen amenities focus on health and wellness, like air purification systems, easy cleaning building materials, aromatherapies built into structures, increased natural light, and even water filtration systems are becoming a more requested item as of late.
Touchless “tech” is next on many developers’ mission-critical lists, especially where it relates to minimizing co-mingled surface contact. Touchless/keyless door entries, voice command garages, and biometrics scanners that include optical or facial recognition technologies are being requested at a greater demand. In the future, clients will never have to touch anything in the building or a home.
In future buildings, with greater use of technology, better wi-fi signal receptors built into structures for remote access are expected, with the increase in designated home offices or living room-like terraces will also be a mainstay within projects, as more fresh air and outdoor spaces will be a premium.
This Coronavirus has the potential to change everything about how we live. We just don’t know all the ways in which it will do so just yet. One of the inevitable consequences of this pandemic is that real estate is morphing into something that it wasn’t before.
We are excited to see what the future holds.
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