Real estate, like many industries, has been undergoing a period a period of rapid technological disruption, a trend that a set of panelists at the Foundation for Accounting Education's Qualified Opportunity Funds, Opportunity Zones and ESG Investing Conference on Thursday said has only accelerated since the pandemic.

Panelist Kitty Sullivan, Director of Investments at JLL Spark, noted that the industry has been seeing major technological changes, in areas ranging from capital market transactions to underwriting to investment opportunities to design and construction to property management and more. Sometimes, in the case of companies such as WeWork, the technology simply enables the provision of a more traditional good (in this case, office space), while in other cases, such as real estate investment platform DealPath, the technology does something innovative—it provides a new way to keep track of deals.

The pandemic has not dampened this shift into technology but rather emphasized its importance even more. While much has been made of the use of technology to adapt to current circumstances, panelist Nikki Greenberg, founder of Women in PropTech, thought that this horizon is too short. What's really needed, she said, is to think about the long-term form and shape of this industry, even past the pandemic.

"We shouldn't be thinking about what we're going to be doing in 2021; that doesn't matter—we know it will be chaotic. We need to keep our eye on the horizon and ask what does 2030 look like, with our assets, with our processes, with our legacy," Greenberg said.

Not that the technology landscape hasn't changed at all. Sullivan noted that, since the pandemic, there has been an acceleration of interest in some areas and a deceleration in others. In terms of acceleration, she said, there's an increased appetite in collaboration tools that enable distributed teams to work together more efficiently, as well as tools that can enable better flexibility in terms of leases and business models. Conversely, there has been more hesitance around anything that relies on density as a foundation for its business model, such as co-working spaces, which can also have connections to retail and hospitality asset classes.

Panelist Ian DiBernardo, a Stroock & Stroock & Lavan partner who co-chairs the firm's fintech practice, noted that another area that has received renewed attention is smart buildings with Internet connections that help property managers better leverage data.

"That could be installing smart elevator systems or smart HVAC systems that improve maintenance. We've also seen smart sensors that can track people through entryways, or something as commonplace detecting leaks. This notion of connectivity permeates a lot of what we do," he said. "

Panelist Paul Head, the technology leader of Ernst & Young's construction and real estate advisory practice, said that these sorts of technologies can be leveraged to create what he called a "well building" that assuages people's concerns about health and safety in the pandemic era and beyond. Smart sensors, he said, can assess matters such as air quality and air circulation, and leverage predictive artificial intelligence to proactively address issues before they become a problem. He also said that existing technologies, like scheduling software, might be adapted toward processes such as coordinating which teams will be in the office, and when, in order to avoid having lots of people in the building at once.

Head posed the question, "What can we do with those technologies to take advantage of new concepts that are lessons learned from COVID?"