Commentary
Actually, Tablet Users Do Shop For Houses With Them
- by Joe Mandese @mp_joemandese, October 25, 2011
While people don’t use tablets at retail, they apparently do use them at real estate. In fact, real estate shopping appears to be the exact opposite mobile media experience from either conventional retailing or soft products like financial services. Offering almost the exact opposite scenario as Coldwell Bankker’s Michael Fischer, Move Inc. Senior Vice President Tracy Mahnken said people don’t buy houses with their smartphones, but they do use tablets.
“Raise your hand if you’ve bought your house off an app,” she asked OMMA Mobile attendees. After the brief cricket-chirping pause, she answered herself, “No?”
By contrast, she said she’s been surprised to see people lugging their tablet computers while canvassing prospective homes they’re looking to buy.
“You particularly see it on the weekends where, our user base is most likely in their car in neighborhoods literally walking around looking at houses with a tablet,” she said, adding atht on weekends a third of Move Inc.’s Internet user base may be accessing it via tablets.
Joe Mandese is the Editor in Chief of MediaPost. You can reach Joe at joe@mediapost.com.
I'm sitting here, reading this and typing out my reply on my tablet. Thinking about how I've recently been conducting a home search, using this same tablet and the tablet-friendly Zillow.com mobile app. Because buying a home will involve selling my current home, I've also been giving lots of thought to how my home's online listing is going to look and function on mobile devices, including tablets.
The rise in Tablet use by home hunters, combined with QR Codes and applications like Zillow, pose a unique challenge to Real Estate agents, who are struggling to justify themselves as a value added part of the process. With mobile / Tablet-based Augmented Reality applications like Layer coming on strong, it will be interesting to see how quickly the Real Estate industry can react and stay relevant.
It's amazing how popular real estate apps are. In fact, Realtor.com mobile apps have been downloaded over 7 million times. The Realtor.com iPad app has some really cool features that are useful for home buyers, and for Realtors. One of my favorites is the "Area Highlighter," which lets you draw your search area right on the tablet screen. Take a look: http://youtu.be/4UlIWz9NS_U