The headlines of tech publications say it all: Embracing Change, REThink, Innovate, Transform | Smart Building Initiatives | Accounting Technology: Potential Profit Center | The Use of Drones in CRE | Common Data Standards for Smart Cities and Buildings | Using Technology to Automate Mission-Critical Debt Management | Crowdfunding Real Estate Deals: Technology Meets Transactions | Embrace Mobile to Set High Innovation Benchmark | Enterprise Cloud Backup and Recovery Solution.

Technology and real estate have finally introduced themselves to each other, although we have to admit real estate has been in the dark ages and opposed to any type of change that any industries have adopted.

As a result, there is a lot of money being pumped into this new tech model. For the first time in my career, the ability to use specialized applications through an open environment means that the transaction business focused on movement is actually moving! There are platforms across entire portfolios to allow tracking in real time and access to reporting dashboards. There is a shift in importance of data and data aggregation. Now we can mine and manage infrastructures. Videos provide almost first-person access to properties. Social media is being used to promote properties, 3-D modeling is being done on iPads and there are transaction apps in the cloud that allow you to transact an entire deal by only swiping, clicking and typing. I’ve never been able to see so much information at my fingertips. The ability to chat and collaborate real time is a game changer.

What is going on?!? Have we completely lost our frigging minds? Yes, and thank goodness for it. We can now communicate and measure performance to direct our businesses rather than just using our gut.