Real estate businesses have been long using imagery and mapping products to help secure deals, optimize pricing, monitor construction progress and understand the competition. Visual information not only drives value for internal teams, but is very useful to share progress with stakeholders, highlight a property’s features and illustrate the firm’s portfolio. Aerial imaging in particular can be very useful to identify and analyze underdeveloped areas, and frequently can make or break a deal. Currently, this information is primarily generated using drones, satellites or planes. However, the technical, regulatory and cost limitations of these systems have limited the applications and insights that can be derived from these platforms. With this landscape, customers are typically forced to choose between resolution, frequency, flexibility and cost.

At Near Space Labs we have developed a high-altitude flying platform capable of imaging an entire city, every day, at any time desired, in high resolution. This unprecedented technology is changing the aerial imaging market and unlocking new opportunities for the real estate industry. In this article we examine three applications that this technology unlocks for real estate. This is just the beginning of boosting your company’s intelligence and performance with daily, large-scale imaging. Let’s first examine how can this help development analysis.

Market Analysis

Identify new deals and optimize tenant pricing with neighborhood analytics

Real estate firms know that the dynamics and momentum of retail, car movements, and services in a neighborhood can go a long way in qualifying an area for development. And once invested, these data points on changing market dynamics signal opportunities for owner’s to adjust lease prices across areas. Daily high-resolution imagery enables us to keep, for instance, precise parking lot car counts at peak times (i.e. lunchtime) on multiple areas across the city. Near Space labs is the only imagery provider today that is capable of delivering information of this granularity and persistence. Consider the below series of images of the Barton Creek square mall. Barton Creek Square is a 1.5 million square foot commercial complex southwest of Austin, Texas. While a single day snapshot can support some basic applications, daily repeated captures of the same site at the same time show a story.

 

Sunday vs Monday at Barton Creek Sq mall during the back to school shopping season. Source Near Space Labs

Using state-of-the art car counting algorithms we can derive daily retail traffic for this location. This information is a key data point for commercial real estate firms, as parking lot occupancy statistics have a strong correlation with retail revenue. Leading firms in commercial real estate use such imagery insights to improve their understanding of development, purchase, sales and lease opportunities.

Both the data and the derived insights are a powerful visual tool for real estate analysis and negotiations. Near Space Labs flies daily and regularly delivers imagery and insights for the areas that interest you; just log in and your data will be there. No need for tasking or waiting for satellite passes or aerial campaigns. We have recently launched an early adopters program that enables you to explore the data yourself, at no cost. Join here.

 

Construction Tracking

 

Monitor the progress of your portfolio

Portfolio and construction monitoring is typically a disconnected process, involving a combination of contractor phone calls, google maps, internet search and direct site visits to understand the status of construction sites. Using these means, the frequency and accuracy of the information gathered is, at best, inconsistent.

Construction at Austin Community College: Highland Business Center. Source Near Space Labs

Imagine a daily city view dashboard that allows you to monitor, in a single interface, not one, but all of your areas under development. No other service offers this combined frequency and coverage. Our imagery makes it possible to independently assess the performance of general contractors and the progress of multiple sites at once. Moreover, you can avoid site visits, or prioritize sites where you have detected a lack of progress. For instance consider the capture above of the Highland neighborhood in Austin, Texas. We can distinguish a large construction site in progress, outlined in green. Below we have its daily evolution.

Track progress of all your properties under construction. Source Near Space Labs.

Disaster Management and Response

 

Get intelligence about your properties during and after disasters

Because of airspace restrictions during and immediately after a disaster, Near Space Labs is the only aerial imagery provider that can provide situational awareness as the events unfold. Our high resolution imagery not only helps first responders to efficiently plan their operations, but also supports real estate and insurance companies in assessing the scale of the damage. This information is critical in making decisions that can cost millions and affect thousands of lives.

In the example below you can see the Tom Miller Dam under construction. In case of failure it is estimated that the flooding will cause $530M in property damage. This includes the properties shown on the right in downtown Austin.

 

Tom Miller Dam is one of the 6 dams operated by Lower Colorado River Authority. Source of imagery Near Space Labs

Buildings and bridges in Downtown Austin, under flood risks in case of dam failures. Source Near Space Labs

Intelligence

Know what the competition is doing

Most real estate firms are not only interested in tracking construction on their own portfolio, but would like to monitor the locations and progress of their competitors’ sites. With current tools, it’s not easy to learn when a new construction project has popped up or how quickly it is progressing. Daily imaging paired with powerful change detection algorithms can deliver unprecedented awareness of new real estate development and construction across an entire city.

With Near Space Labs’ toolkit, you can identify the areas that interest you and get an alert anytime construction starts. From there, you can select how frequently you want to get updates and progress reports on these sites.

 

Construction sites close to the University of Texas. Source Near Space Labs.

You can explore how this looks and integrates with your own workflow for free by joining our Early Adopters Program! The program allows you to download thousands of high-resolution imagery samples, with direct technical support from our team. Request access to our API and manage your own discovery, or alternatively have us support you step-by-step.

Find more about our API here

Join the free program here