When you think of automation, real estate might not be the first thing that comes to mind. But if you've ever been involved in commercial real estate transactions, you might see automation as the key to speeding up what are some notoriously long and drawn-out ordeals.
We've entered the age of automation, a time when computers and machines are beginning to do more and more of our jobs for us. They aren't always superior to humans, but in a growing number of cases machines are able to do things faster and better, taking on roles that have been held by humans for our entire history.
This challenge is focused on improving one particular aspect of commercial real estate transactions: the ALTA Survey.
ALTA Surveys Slow Things Down
Every commercial real estate transaction requires a boundary survey to be done of the property. The gold standard for the nation is the ALTA Survey, an in-depth examination with exceptionally stringent minimum requirements set out by the American Land Title Association.
ALTA Surveys include information about improvements, easements, encroachments, rights-of-way, public road access, and much more. Since different states have different property standards, the ALTA Survey is useful because it provides the same rigorous examination for any property around the country. Property surveys are needed for title insurance, which is required for the transaction.
The ALTA Survey is important but it also takes quite a while to complete. Surveyors usually need to travel to and explore the property, review the title, and plot out the survey before it can actually be done.
ALTA is also a trade association that licenses surveyors to perform these surveys, and they have a personal interest in keeping those licenses active and incoming.
But this situation is significantly slowing down the process, adding at least an entire month to every commercial real estate transaction. The AiLTA Team believes this is a situation that doesn't have to continue for very much longer.
Automating the Property Survey
The AiLTA Team is putting up $100,000 for an industry-disrupting breakthrough that automate this property boundary survey process. It will need to accomplish everything the ALTA Survey does, but at a fraction of the cost and time spent.
They see machine learning as the linchpin concept: designing systems that will learn to recognize all the aspects of an ALTA Survey, elements of land ownership like improvements, easements, presence of water, etc. The scope of this challenge is pretty wide, but it's likely that automated drones might be an important piece of the puzzle.
The future will likely see commercial real estate transactions growing in frequency, and this should encourage us to make that process more efficient. By automating boundary surveys we can make them more accurate, more affordable, and more capable of bringing real estate transactions to closure.
The ideal solution will completely replicate the ALTA Survey but will be more convenient to use, cheaper and available to a wider audience. It will modernize and speed up the due diligence process in the real estate industry, but it could also form the basis for a scalable billion-dollar business itself.
Are you ready to get involved in the AiLTA Challenge? Then head on over to the challenge page for more information. The contest is currently in the Pre-registration Stage, but you can start sharing your thoughts right now in the challenge forum.
