Automating Apartment Building Data Updates for Real Estate Management

Challenge

A real estate management firm struggled to maintain accurate, up-to-date records for hundreds of apartment buildings across rapidly changing urban markets. Manual updates via Google Maps were time-consuming and error-prone, leading to:

Outdated information: Phone numbers, addresses, and websites in spreadsheets often differed from live Google Maps listings, risking tenant and partner miscommunication.
Labor inefficiency: Employees spent hours cross-referencing and updating spreadsheets, diverting focus from strategic tasks like portfolio optimization.
Inconsistent data quality: Human errors during copy-paste workflows resulted in incomplete or mismatched records.

The firm needed an automated solution to synchronize spreadsheet data with real-time Google Maps details while ensuring reliability at scale.

Solution

BlocBelt developed a Microsoft Power Automate Desktop Flow to streamline apartment building data updates. The workflow included:

Automated data extraction: Pulling building names and addresses from Excel columns (A and B) into Power Automate.
Google Maps integration: Launching browser searches for each entry and scraping updated details (name, address, phone, website).
Dynamic data mapping: Transferring retrieved information to designated spreadsheet columns (C-F) with precision.
Error resilience: Conditional checks to flag missing/incomplete Google Maps results, enabling manual review for edge cases.
End-to-end UI automation: Mimicking human interactions (copy-paste, browser navigation) while avoiding API dependencies.

The Flow operated seamlessly within the firm’s existing Microsoft 365 ecosystem, requiring no additional software.

Outcome

The automation delivered transformative operational improvements:

90% reduction in manual effort: A 4-hour daily task now completes in 25 minutes.
100% data accuracy: Real-time Google Maps synchronization eliminated outdated records.
Scalability: Effortlessly handled 500+ property updates weekly, supporting portfolio expansion.
Proactive error management: Less than 2% of entries required manual intervention due to robust validation.

The firm reported enhanced decision-making agility, improved tenant satisfaction, and newfound capacity to focus on growth initiatives.

Technologies Used

Microsoft Power Automate Desktop: Core platform for Flow design and execution.
Excel/Spreadsheet: Central repository for property data input/output.
Google Maps: Source of real-time building information.
UI Automation: Browser and spreadsheet interaction via mouse/keyboard emulation.