What is PropTech? Why it Matters for Property Tax Teams

If you’re in the commercial real estate space, chances are you’ve heard the term PropTech being thrown around. But what is it and what does it mean for property tax teams?

HealthTech, FinTech, and AgroTech are just a few of the acronyms you may have heard in other industries. These buzzwords tend to sprout up around a paradigm shift in their industry, where user-centric innovation helps companies and customers become more efficient, improve processes, and ultimately deliver more value to their end users.

What is PropTech?

PropTech – or property technology – refers to the technology, software, and tools being built and developed in the real estate space. Similar to other industries, the rapid growth of PropTech innovations has accompanied a shift in the industry’s openness to embracing innovation, uncovering efficiencies, and delivering value.  

Experts agree that PropTech is poised to only become more ingrained in the industry. That’s because there are ever-more applications and opportunities for technology.

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What are Examples of PropTech?

PropTech is broad. As such, innovations span diverse industries and applications. Technological applications may appear everywhere, from property management to construction. Some examples include:

• Construction management: innovations in developing project plans, managing documentation, and streamlining communication between stakeholders ‍
• Business management and intelligence: tools like itamlink help you automate day-to-day tasks, consolidate data, and generate insights on your portfolio ‍
• Selling, buying, or leasing property: technology that connects tenants and landlords or automates the advertising of commercial property listing ‍
• Smart buildings: automating things like lighting, heating, ventilation, and security

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How does Property Tax Management fit into PropTech?

Property tax management is a key opportunity for technology and innovation for many reasons, including:

1. Property tax is a manageable expense. Thus, leveraging tools and technology to oversee it can help contain and control business expenses.  ‍
2. There’s a significant volume of data. Managing this data – and generating useful, actionable insights from it – is a key component of property tax management.  ‍
3. Most real estate documents are still being shared in paper form. Tools like itamlink Capture, which helps digitize and abstract key property tax data points, reduce manual work and improve efficiency. Similarly, document management systems (like itamlink Docs) help organize paper tax documents that can be easily retrieved and shared as needed.  

PropTech innovations are helping companies realize significant benefits in managing their real estate taxes. For example, software like itamlink help teams to:

• Proactively identify risks and mitigate them, such as late or missed payments or appeal deadlines
• Review assessment data and identify appeal opportunities
• Understand portfolio performance and inform business decisions

Thanks to the growth of PropTech, companies have a new and evolving set of tools at their disposal. We’re better equipped than ever to understand what your data means and make better business decisions that drive real impact for your bottom line.  

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