Lack of accessible data has been having an adverse impact on the African real estate market, making it opaque, an Estate Intel report has stated.

The report titled “Data Engineering in Real Estate” disclosed that investors (both individuals and organisations) require data to be available, transparent, and easily readable to enable them to make informed decisions.

The Chief Executive Officer, Estate Intel, Dolapo Omidire, noted at a recent event with Techpoint Africa that investors and developers were unable to forecast happenings in the real estate market due to low data in the sector.

According to the report, using transformed and cleaned real estate data would enable investors and developers to extract accurate value estimates for house and land prices across several markets.

“Tools like Vesper make it easy for you to do this by utilising accurate and updated real estate data from Estate Intel’s database. With Vesper, you can also get real estate investment costs and opportunities, construction cost estimates, and contractor recommendations for your construction projects.

“Imagine you want to invest in a property in the real estate market but you don’t know how to get started; data can be your guide.

“For example, Vesper can provide land and property suggestions based on data about your earnings. With Vesper, you can also get access to developers and agent information if you would like to take immediate action,” it stated.

The report further stated time series forecasting helps investors to know where the property market is headed.

“This is done by studying historical trends and using advanced techniques like machine learning to forecast new trends. This helps in making better investment decisions and generating higher returns on investment. With data, you can also forecast the path of inflation, GDP and so much more,” it stated.

The report noted that the availability of the right data creates a strong foundation for making the best-informed decisions as an individual and organisation.

“This is evident in the real estate industry as data availability can be the difference between a prosperous and mature market or an immature and opaque market.”