07 Oct iPad Apps And Open Houses Don’t Mix

With the advancements in mobile technologies such as the iPhone and the iPad there have been lots of real estate focused applications designed for sales.

Teresa Boardman questions the practicality of such applications in a recent Inman.com article. While technology enthusiasts may quickly greet her critique of a certain application harsh, she raises a great point on not only real estate mobile applications but all apps.

Just because an application is designed to help agents sell homes doesn’t mean it is completely practical as professionals outside of the industry design most of these applications. Her review of the Open Home Pro application is the perfect example. In theory the app is a cool way for agents to gain valuable information about open house participants that replaces traditional sign-in lists. At the end of the open house the application neatly organizes the information for Realtors. It’s a great idea but as Boardman will tell you, the execution is nearly impossible given the conditions of running an open house.

Open houses are hectic, fast paced, and often crazy. There are children running around and people coming in and out of the homes constantly. Is this really the environment where you want to hand your iPad out? Boardman says no and I would agree. While the idea is great, the application developers didn’t realize what it would mean to actually use the application during an event.

I think that this review represents an underlying theme for real estate right now. It applies to mobile technologies and social networking. Some advancements are going to be great for our industry and others aren’t. As real estate professionals, we need to be able to identify the good from the bad as most developers of these apps are not in our industry.