The only tool I need for house hunting is our MLS and I can access it through my phone and now through my iPad. It has maps and a ton of search features. I know the neighborhoods and the average home prices. You may notice that I publish average prices at least once a month and I am always up-to-dat on local numbers and trends.
The average home buyer doesn't have those kind of resources when they are out looking so I have been testing some iphone/ipad apps. I have the advantage of being able to compare them with the actual data in the MLS. Right now for local home searches the only app I can recommend is Realtor.com because it has all the listings and the prices are up-to-date, it doesn't have any advertising on it and the data comes from MLS feeds. I also found that Real Estate by Smarter agent has all the listings.
For people who are new to the area or who don't know the neighborhoods as well I found the Walkscore for the iphone and mylocal to be the most useful. I used them in areas that I know very well and they had accurate information about what is in the area. There are a zillion apps and I have been testing real estate apps like crazy and most work very well but if it did not find the homes nearby that are on the market I rejected them. If they had inaccurate or missing data I rejected them. I looked at apps that came highly recommended by experts and I found that they did not have any local listings.
I am still playing with the better homes app. The neighborhood information is good. It does not have a real estate search but there it has solid area information and iphone users can take photos of homes and organize them for future viewing which appeals to me. I like photos and I like to have a way to organize them.
I am still testing and will be adding a mobile apps section to this blog with my recommendations for local real estate home searches and information. I keep finding more of them to test. If you have used an app that you think adds value for the home buyer please leave a comment. I talked to my own buyers and in general they didn't use their phone much in their home search.
The most accurate and up-to-date information about homes for sale can be found on sites like mine and those of local real estate companies. They have data that is fed directly from our MLS. There is tons of information on-line these days on every subject but it has to be sorted through. There are plenty of pretty sites with missing information or inaccurate information on them.
It must be a real treat to have the iPad with you when you’re showing homes. Do you find that Matrix responds pretty quickly on the 3G network out there?
Norm – yes Matrix works very nicely and fairly fast but not as fast as through my PC at home. I think they made some changes too. I was able to use a couple of functions on it that were not working on the iPad. Sweet!