The biggest sale in real estate today doesn’t start at the site visit — it starts in your CRM. From the first digital click to the final maintenance request, the customer journey has gone fully online. And yet, most developers are still thinking in brick-and-mortar terms. According to Aayush Puri, Head of ANAROCK Channel Partners and ANACITY, that mindset is dangerously outdated. In this conversation, he explained why developers must stop seeing tech as a support function and start recognising that they’re already running tech companies — whether they realise it or not.
You’ve said before that real estate companies are already tech companies. That’s a bold statement. What do you mean?
Think about it: if your sales are coming from CRM pipelines, if your customer service is powered by WhatsApp bots, and if your resident experience is being run through an app, you’re already functioning like a SaaS company. You just don’t call yourself one.
Real estate developers today manage data, user journeys, subscription-like maintenance fees, cross-platform engagement, and even churn. Those are core elements of a tech company. The problem is, most developers still see technology as an add-on, not as their operating core.
But hasn’t real estate always been a “brick-and-mortar” game? Isn’t tech just a service layer?
That’s outdated thinking. If you ask your customers, they interact with your brand digitally far more than physically. From the first listing they click on to their rent payment, maintenance complaints, clubhouse bookings, and community events, everything flows through digital touchpoints.
According to a report by EY, over 74% of homebuyers under 35 say that the digital experience before purchase is more important than even price flexibility. We’re not just selling houses anymore. We’re selling platforms for lifestyle.
What does this mean for the average real estate developer?
It means if you’re not building internal tech DNA, you’re building obsolescence. The value lies in location and execution. Now it’s in experience, loyalty, and data.
Take ANACITY, for example. We provide end-to-end PropTech solutions, from lead nurturing to post-possession community management. When developers embed this kind of SaaS infrastructure, they see more than just better NPS scores. They see lower defaults, higher referrals, and deeper brand equity.
How do legacy developers make this transition? Isn’t it expensive?
The cost of not doing it is higher. But the answer isn’t hiring a CTO and calling it a day. It’s about a cultural shift. Treat your digital touchpoints with the same seriousness as your site visits. Measure app engagement like you measure site footfalls.
We advise partners to build “product teams” internally, people who obsess over resident feedback, UX, digital payment friction, etc. Just like how a startup would. You don’t have to be a coder to be a tech-first organisation. You just need to think in loops, not linear project timelines.
What do you say to CEOs who still resist this shift?
Look at WeWork’s collapse in USA, a company that branded itself as tech but missed the fundamentals. Now look at firms like Greystar or Brookfield, who are quietly integrating tech in ops and tenant experience. One is a cautionary tale, the other is the future.
Your brand isn’t just your project elevation. It’s your app store rating. It’s your payment gateway uptime. These things are invisible until they break and then they become existential.
You mentioned you’re expanding Anacity across the Middle East and Europe. What’s the reception been like?
Surprisingly hungry. In Dubai, developers are already competing on post-possession experience, not just pre-sales discounts. In Germany, where tenant protection laws are stringent, platforms that provide compliance automation are invaluable.
We’re seeing a 35% increase in adoption YoY across all new markets. And what excites me most? The cross-learning. What a township in Bengaluru teaches us about data workflows can often improve how we design for a housing co-op in Rotterdam.
Final thoughts: What will the real estate firm of 2030 look like?
It will look more like a hybrid between Salesforce and IKEA. Personalised, digital-first, with modularity in its DNA. Developers who understand tech won’t just build better homes—they’ll build better networks.
The ones who don’t? They’ll still exist. But like Blockbuster existed after Netflix launched. For a while.