Real Estate Industry and Technology: A Text Mining Approach Using Patent Big Data

In Korea, the real estate industry is generally characterized by small-scale operations, low added value, and slow adoption of advanced technologies and innovations compared to industries such as manufacturing. The complexity, conservatism, opacity, and information asymmetry within the industry also present significant barriers to innovation. Recently, however, innovative technologies have begun to converge under the umbrella of “PropTech” (Property Technology). It remains to be seen whether this industrial innovation represents a sudden shift or is part of the real estate industry's long-term transformation. This study examines the relationship between the real estate industry and technology. It acquired and analyzed 145,790 patent application documents from KIPRIS by searching for the keywords “real estate,” “housing,” “commercial building,” “apartment,” and “land.” Text mining techniques were employed to uncover basic statistics and trace technological evolution. The analysis methods included keyword frequency analysis, word cloud visualization, co-occurrence analysis, and N-gram analysis. The most frequently mentioned terms were “real estate,” “information,” and “service,” indicating a strong demand for information services within the real estate industry. The evolution of patent filings reflects broader technological trends. From 1970 to 1995, patents focused on architecture and construction-related technologies. Between 1996 and 2015, patent activity shifted towards internet, wireless, and telecommunications technologies. More recently, patents have increasingly centered on technologies related to the fourth industrial revolution, including platforms, AI, and blockchain. This aligns with the observed growth of the real estate industry and the increasing focus on PropTech as a means to enhance service quality and efficiency through technological innovation. Furthermore, emerging IT technologies such as the internet, blockchain, and artificial intelligence are being applied across real estate services, management, and transactions. In conclusion, this study finds that the Korean real estate industry is actively embracing IT technologies. This trend suggests that the PropTech phenomenon has been evolving since the late 1990s, even before the term “PropTech” gained widespread recognition.