Will the recent launch of the Apple iPad mean the end of the Listing Presentation Folder or FlipChart style presentation? Will we see agents showing off their listings via the iPad? Or perhaps they’ll be using it to watch real estate training sessions or live streamed sales meetings? Either way, could it be a Game Changer? Read the rest of this article »

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Remember the iconic 1980s movie ‘Wall Street’ in which Michael Douglas walks along a beach watching the sun rise while talking into his mobile phone? The thing was about as big as his head (which was big), yet was the symbol of power, wealth, technology and cool. Looking back at it now, the device forces a smile, just like those beige box-like floppy drive PCs of the same era.

Fast forward nearly a quarter of a century, and the current generation of mobile phones are really pocket PCs, things that might have impressed Flash Gordon or Captain Kirk in earlier eras. We check our emails, surf the web, listen to music, take pictures, download and pay for apps – from anywhere. It slips into our pocket, we own it, it’s ours. With the iPhone, it’s stylish to be a geek, and if you’re a newcomer to all this, welcome to the party.

A year ago, mobile traffic to web sites, and real estate sites in particular, did not rate. Yet already 23% of Australians with mobiles use them to access the internet, even though total internet traffic is estimated to be less than 1% through a mobile device (ABS). Still early days.

Part of this could be the catch up of consumers, part of this could be the lack of mobile-ready websites and the small number of ‘real estate’ apps in the iphone App Store. A recent search of “real estate” apps turned up only 5 Australian ones (plenty of American), among these a couple of multi-office real estate agencies, and among the main portals only Domain are present.

In the States, Zillow.com were reported as saying up to 35% of their weekend traffic comes from mobile devices. Pete Flint, CEO of Trulia.com, claims (more believably) their mobile traffic is in the “5 to 10% range”, while a year ago “it was negligible”. Although iphones account for only 8% of our mobile devices, 50% of mobile traffic is coming from iphone apps. Realestate.com.au, in Australia, reported “exponential growth” to its mobile site in December (150,000 unique visitors), claiming this to be “additional” traffic.

Whatever the claims and stats being bandied about, it would appear that mobile is going to be the trend of 2010. Social media is “…like, so 2009”.

It makes intuitive sense that mobile traffic should figure more this year – the technology is here, you can be walking down that beach watching the sunrise and getting your real estate fix. There are apps being developed where you point your camera phone at a building and can see which properties are for sale, at what price and what has sold recently. Househunting is an activity that still takes us out and about, checking into home opens, trawling suburbs in our cars, walking down streets. With the mobile in our pocket, do we really need anything else?

So get ready for the upsurge of mobile web designers and iphone app developers. (There will be snake oil salesmen among them.) And with that, the question – do we “mobilise” our web site or get an iphone app developed, or both, or neither? The former allows your site to be accessible on most, if not all net-ready mobiles (much more fiddly to have coded than you might think). The latter allows people to download your app, have it in their menu making it easily accessible. Apps are sexy and cool, great PR spin, but are more expensive to develop. And how do you get YOUR app downloaded, especially when (in say a year or two’s time) there are hundreds of Australian real estate apps in the iStore, rather than 5? This is the brave new world we seem to be moving into.

Photo Credit – Jamie Riddell, http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamieriddell/2166586104/

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Both Domain and REA have created mobile phone websites allowing users to search and view property through their mobile phone. However, I’m not aware of any agency websites which have been optimised so property seekers can view the agencies properties through a mobile device. This is all about to change due to a nifty web application called Mohbe.

Mohbe allows real estate agencies in any country to have their own agency branded mobile phone website for all of their property listings. The mobile phone websites are viewable through any mobile phone which has an internet browser and access to the internet.

Mohbe specialise in providing real estate agents with mobile phone property listing websites without the agent having to do anything.

But this isn’t all that Mohbe offers agents and property seekers. What makes this product completely unique are the options available to a property seeker to get the property url into their mobile phone.

Each mobile phone property website has its own unique QR Code and Mohbe tiny url making it easy for property seekers to navigate to through their mobile phone.

Mohbe uses the latest in barcode technology by allocating a QR Code to each property. A property seeker will scan this QR Code using their mobile phone camera which will then automatically load the mobile property page in the phone’s browser. For those users who do not have a camera phone, they can quickly enter the Mohbe tiny property url into their browser eg Mohbe.com/3467. Agents enter their listings into Mohbe either manually through the interface or automatically via xml data feed from their real estate property listing company.

Now this is really cool as it means agents can display these QR Codes in all of their print media eg. Sign boards, newspaper ads, magazine ads, brochures, flyers and even in their window displays. Imagine taking a photo of a QR Code displayed on a property sign board and being able to view a complete virtual tour while your standing on the footpath. It also means agents can display more property listings with less property information reducing the cost of print marketing.

The only shortcoming I see with the application is that although the agent’s logo is included in the mobile property websites, the website is branded with the Mohbe blue which could conflict with some agents branding. I’d really like to see the application allow agencies to choose from a colour pallet, the background colour so it blends better with their agency brand. I also think within the interface they need some kind of summary of listings, accompanied with a way to sort property listings similar to the Domain or REA back-ends.

Putting these small issues aside, Mohbe is an innovative and useful application which should be embraced by the real estate community.

Note: Agentpoint was responsible for the design and development of Mohbe and has an equity ownership stake in it.

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On the back of Domain recently announcing a partnership with 1Form, today they launched a very nifty iPhone application. I am lucky enough to own an iPhone so I eagerly downloaded the application and took it for a quick test drive.

The initial look and feel of the application is a much needed improvement on the mobile phone website which Domain currently provides property seekers (which is far inferior to that of REA’s). The layout, design, functionality and speed of the application is excellent highlighting some time and thought has been devoted to developing it.

A few features worth noting include:

• Option not to include surrounding areas - Unlike Domain’s website, the user is provided with the option not to include surrounding suburbs in search results.
• Results Ordered by Latest Listings - By default, search results are ordered by latest listings rather than featured properties.
• Show More Results - Similar to how Twitter limits tweets. Search results are limited to 10 and at the bottom of the page the user has the option to select further results, reducing the time it takes for the page to load.
• View Images - Users can view images in a slide show and can zoom in or rotate images, alternatively they can view all images in a thumb grid.
• Add to favourites - Users can save properties they are interested in and quickly switch between favourites and search results.
• Distinct Call to Action Options - The user has a number of options available to contact the agent. These include email, call their mobile and through their land line, making it extremely easy for the user to make that next step.

Any improvements needed? The application could pinpoint the users location through the phone’s GPS so the initial search can more quickly be performed. They could also include the property location on a map, an option to email a property to a friend and some way to email your favourites to yourself or another person.

There are a few teething issues. On a few searches it returned zero results, whereas I searched the same fields on my PC and I received 23 results. From my preliminary investigations this seems to be because of a property type issue as they are grouping types. This needs to be sorted out ASAP.

I really like how Domain have focused on the user’s experience rather than whats best for generating advertising revenue, resulting in an application which is a pleasure for the consumer to use. Lets hope they transfer some of this technology over to their mobile phone website!

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