Useful Mobile Apps for Residential Real Estate

A couple weeks ago I wrote about some mobile apps for Apple and Android devices that might be useful for commercial real estate. Today I want to cover some mobile apps that might be useful for residential real estate buyers, renters or investors.

MLS apps – Searching for available residential property:

Practically every major real estate brokerage has its own app. Also, there are apps available by Trulia and Zillow to assist in the search for homes to buy or places to rent.  These apps are all free, typically available for both Apple and Android devices (but not always) and each have their strengths and weaknesses. It’s best to try several at first as everyone’s preferences will differ.  One complaint I hear about Zillow is the agent identified with a property is often one who has paid to be promoted to the user and not necessarily the listing agent on the property.  For all of these apps there will be some aggravation over the fact that not all available homes or rentals are identified and some that are off the market still come up on the app. Did I say it was free? You get what you pay for.

Homesnap is a little different. In this app, you can snap a picture on your mobile device of a property that interests you and then pull up the information on that property through Homesnap.

Mortgage Financing:

Both Trulia and Zillow have mortgage apps that contain payment calculators, live rates and allow you to seek loan quotes. Trulia’s mortgage app is only available for Apple devices.

Design Ideas:

Houzz Interior Design Ideas  and Zillow Digs each allow you to browse photos for ideas. Zillow Digs also provides project estimates for bathroom and kitchen projects based on your location. Zillow Digs is also only available at this time for Apple devices.

Space Planning, Rehabilitation and Repair:

Magic Plan allows you to create a floor plan on your mobile device (Apple and Android). You take pictures of the corners of the room, fine tune it, and move the room into the overall floor plan with your fingers. Resulting floor plan can be saved as a .jpg, .pdf, .dxf or .html format.

HammerPoint allows you to quickly create professional repair estimates on your mobile device prior to entering into a contract. Available for both Apple and Android devices.

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