House Hunting On The Go
I took the plunge into 3G recently with the purchase of a Samsung Blackjack. I love it. Having near broadband Internet speeds on my phone means I can check email, catch up on the latest CNN video news, get the latest traffic and weather streamed to me – even catch up on my Google Reader subscriptions if I’ve got some downtime. In a pinch I can even use it as a modem for my Macbook (so no more eyeing sellsius° Rudy’s EVDO setup).
Enough with the geek speak though. Today’s Boston Globe writes about a number of companies that are trying to push banner advertising onto mobile screens and reading this immediately got me thinking once again about mobile technology and the real estate space (see my previous post mRealty: House Shopping by Phone).
Companies like Property4Cell and text-ed.com are already enabling real estate agents to market properties to consumers via SMS. But there doesn’t seem to be an easy way for consumers to search for new homes while out on the road.
House hunting seems to me to be an inherently mobile activity but as yet all of the house hunting options we have require you to root yourself in front of the computer. This strikes me as a pretty large disconnect, especially as the mapping/mashup technology already exists. Google Maps and Microsoft’s Live Search for mobile already make good use of it.
What I’d love to see is a mobile versions of Yahoo! Real Estate or Trulia’s search engine. Something that would allow me to punch in my current location, search criteria and then have it return driving directions to each of the results to me. Maybe even a one-touch ‘click-to-call’ link to instantly connect me to the listing agent. Brad Inman’s call for an open house guide makes even more sense when you throw it into this environment.
Some folks are already trying. Smarter Agent can already show you apartments for rent and recently sold homes and they promise to have homes for sale available this Spring. But I’m not clear where they’re going to be pulling their listings from.
It would also make sense for the local MLS’ to provide this. It may even be a way to allow them to reclaim some of the ground they’ve lost to the Realty.bots (h/t to Greg for the term).
So is mobile house hunting even viable? Anyone else want to see this happen?
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20 Comment(s)
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Robbie | Feb 22, 2007 | Reply
What’s wrong with a laptop and an EVDO card? If size is that big a deal, why not an OQO Model 02 Micro PC?
If somebody did develop a mobile MLS search, what trade-offs would be acceptable? A cell phone may be mobile, but its development environment is more limited/difficult than a typical PC/laptop. Further, the market is smaller because each phone/carrier has different development environment contraints. On the web, you can just get something working on IE & Firefox, and you’ll make 97% of the public happy.
It’d be fun to build an mobile search, but I’d like know what features & phones I should focus on first.
Joel Burslem | Feb 22, 2007 | Reply
First and foremost it would have to be simple. I really love Windows Live search for Windows Mobile – if you haven’t tried it, give it a shot. It’s easy to scroll around on the map (even better if it were GPS enabled) and then overlay realtime traffic data. Great for my commute home. Finding directions and local businesses is fast and easy too, even on my 320×240 screen.
You could drag a laptop around with you but who does that on a regular basis? My phone however, is always in my pocket.
I’d love to be able if I was out cruising around with my wife one afternoon and I stumbled on a nice neighborhood, to just punch in my location in my phone and get an instant return of what houses were for sale around the area. And then get directions to each one to check ‘em out firsthand.
Taking this one step further, why not jump onboard with Garmin or TomTom and provide a GPS-based app that does the same thing. Now that would be cool.
Christian Sterner | Feb 22, 2007 | Reply
Everything lends itself to your conclusions Joel. Seems like this would already be available. A very easy starting point, and this is already fully developed & under-used, is to be able to see a property for sale, text a certain number, and get info bounced back about the house. Oversimplification of what you are asking for, but a start nonetheless.
David G from Zillow.com | Feb 22, 2007 | Reply
Hi Joel,
Interesting post. We developed Zillow Mobile to send Zestimates and basic home facts to your e-mail enabled phone. It’s very useful if you notice a new for sale sign go up and and want immediate info about the property.
To use it just e-mail an address to: z@labs.zillow.com
Zillow Mobile has a passionate but small user base — I’m personally surprised more people don’t use this service but I think therein lies the limitation of many mobile apps; they’re not easily discoverable from your phone.
Incredible Agent | Feb 22, 2007 | Reply
I agree, that would be a great service. However, I believe we need a reliable starting point. We all recognize that the technology is there, but are the home listings there as well? The fact is that someone could go out there and develop an application to do this, but will they have the home listings needed to provide valuable content to the searcher? Right now, I don’t know of any one source that could pull this together. We may have to wait for the listings to catch up with technology before this comes to fruition.
The other concern I would have is monitization of the service. The cell phone ad model worries me a bit. Especially on a 320 x 240 screen with limited WAP adoption by the market. Everyone is just trying to monitize the traffic they get today on their normal website. I can’t imagine trying to monitize it on the cell ad model.
John Schroeder | Feb 22, 2007 | Reply
Our regional RE/MAX office has a website called http://www.httmpda.com
It stands for Homes To The Max PDA. It allows for a very good search while on the go. It covers WI and MN.
Joel Burslem | Feb 22, 2007 | Reply
As far as monetizing the service – I think it would have to come from a subscription fee. Carriers may subsidize it though as it would be a way to encourage consumers to consume more data traffic.
Vic | Feb 22, 2007 | Reply
If only cell phone displays would expand to at least double – as Incredible Agent said – 320 x 240 is tough. Photos shrunk down to fit the screen don’t look all that appealing. Text messaging is a great addition as it will give you the details as you’re driving by a house or the Zillow feature of getting a text msg back with the Zestimate.
Robbie | Feb 23, 2007 | Reply
I think it’s a human factors problem, not a tech problem. Higher end PDA (such as a Dell Axim x51v) can do 640×480. The oqo model 2 is a micro PC, that runs at 800×480, runs Windows Vista, and is slightly larger than a PDA (try to get a demo someplace, it’s really impressive).
Unfortunately, these high res portable devices create a new set of problems, even though the resolution is OK, the screen is so small that it’s to hard to read. Even if the text is readable, you still want larger photos and maps. If you make the screen larger, then it’s no longer as portable as a cell phone (which is presumaby what you want). If you want to do something useful with it, you need a QWERTY keyboard (which also adds to it’s size). Also human finger sizes aren’t getting any smaller and human vision isn’t improving.
We’re getting there, but I don’t think we’ve hit the right mix of price, size, usability, and functionality yet. The oqo is close though…
Jamie | Feb 23, 2007 | Reply
Joel,
Jamie from Trulia here, nice pic on the BlackJack. We have spent some time thinking about mobile here at Trulia and I did as well when I was at Yahoo Real Estate. I think there are a few factors limiting rapid development in real estate mobile applications:
1. devices and networks have not really been able to handle web browsing to really enable a good experience, however now with devices like the BlackJack and iPhone coming out I think this will change;
2. consumer adoption in the US has been quite slow w/ advanced mobile functionality so it’s kind of the chicken and egg problem, there are no users so no one is building apps in the space
With this said, I think mobile is quite exciting especially as there are more GPS enabled phones where a user can just open their browser on their phone go to Trulia and view all homes for sale around their current location, driving directions, recent home sales and local information. The next 18 months will be exciting times for mobile real estate.
Galen | Feb 23, 2007 | Reply
Joel, I think we’ll be introducing something up your alley in the next few months – it’s definitely a market we want to hit.
matt | Feb 23, 2007 | Reply
I’ve never been in a situation where I was at a certain location and wanted to whip out my cellphone and see what was for sale around me…
I’ve wanted to read real estate RSS feeds, and real estate news, and even tried the zillow comps when it was first introduced.
I can see how the GPS service would be helpful if you are trying to find a home for sale and you are lost. I like the idea of getting real estate information about a location.
Real estate data on the third screen will happen, but not for on-the-fly home searches.
I can see driving by a home for sale and then watching the virtual tour for that home on my treo, as I sit in the driveway.
Greg Tracy | Feb 23, 2007 | Reply
We considered doing something with this on BlueRoof and it actually wasn’t going to be that difficult to do.
We already have text messages of new listings sent to your cell phone daily and we were going to include property description and photos, but the reality is that most people simply don’t care about having this. We asked quite a few clients about it (looking for design and functionality guidance) and mostly we heard that nobody really cared.
I think that sometimes we (the techy, online real estate crowd) think of all these cool ideas and think how much we could revolutionize the industry with our ideas, but buyers spend a few weeks looking for a home and their done.
Usually people like to jump onto their favorite real estate site and search on their desktop, where connection speeds are faster and the screens are largee and take time playing. They don’t want to drive around looking for homes, they like to drive around after they’ve printed addresses.
Bo Wills | Feb 24, 2007 | Reply
I can’t wait until the people who develop this type of technology figure out a way to provide this type of functionality out of one tool. And I hope I know them personally!
Thanks for the site
TitleRep | Feb 25, 2007 | Reply
I’m REALLY looking forward to the iPhone and seeing what type of apps get developed for it along these lines…
A nice phone with built in GPS would make my YEAR!
I can only hope…
Dan Hotes | Feb 26, 2007 | Reply
Galen
I hope you figure out how to make money with your site someday. By the way my clone of your site will be done in a few weeks, thanks for the design ideas.
ps the multiple will be shutting your site down in a few days due to a techincal error you have that you are not aware of.
Ahmed Anies | Mar 5, 2007 | Reply
I liked this article so much that cchosing a house is a very complex proccess, this article spoted smoe light on points is very important.
Ahmed Anies
( Egyptian Real estate Agent )
( Egyptian Real Estate BLOGGER )
Phone: (002)+ 016 1334420
Email: info@egypt-realestate-agent.com
site: http://www.egypt-realestate-agent.com
Lucy | Mar 7, 2007 | Reply
Great post, and excellent idea! Yes, I would definitely like to see this type of technology in the near future. I’m glad to see agents keeping up with the changing technological advances. Agents who haven’t heeded to the changes better watch out!
Dave w/ CellSigns | Apr 26, 2007 | Reply
You guys should check out the Mobile Agent product we rolled out a few months back. It’s a true mobile search for homes for sale on the MLS. You can see how a CB franchise is using it here: http://cbdiamond.com/customcontent.aspx?fp=178. It’s all about home information on the go – searching for homes by address, neighborhood name, mls id, etc. It’s using a short code so it’s real fast and offers the customer the ability to schedule a showing or a call back from an agent from their phone. No chunky wap searching required either. Real fast and slick UI.
Bill Skrypnyk | Jun 29, 2009 | Reply
Joel, almost exactly as you mentioned in your comments, MyRealPage iphone/android search was built exactly for someone to find listings as they are in a location they would like to explore. You don’t even have to punch in your address, the geolocation aware browser in iphone and android locates you (unless you decide to “teleport” yourself to a different address which is also possible).
We are not a portal, so all access to this application is via our customers’ websites: realtors who host their websites and listings with us.
I wish now Blackberry and others followed suit by providing a better browser to make these kinds of applications more widely available.