Indispensible Digital, Mobile Tools For Home Buyers

Like it or not, if you’re like one in every two Americans, you own — and sometimes are a slave to — a smart phone device. As a member of this ever-growing community, you have access to the mobile technology that smart phones provide for obtaining quick information and accessing resources that simplify our lives and optimize precious time in our busy schedules.

Accepting the reality of those statistics, it behooves us, as real estate professionals, to educate, communicate and share information in a mobile format with our clients.

Here are two fantastic and free mobile tools available for home buyers in the Bradenton/Sarasota areas:

• Listingbook – Do your own property searches or find up-to-the-minute, detailed real estate information about home listings for a certain neighborhood, zip code or for an entire city with Listingbook.  You can choose to open your free Listingbook account as a complimentary account or, if you’re working with a real estate agent, you can connect your Listingbook account with that agent. By connecting with your agent, you can ask questions, get notified of listing changes and price reductions, receive "new listing alerts" that match your home criteria, and save a history of your favorite listings. For busy home buyers, this is a time-saving way to request showings of your favorite properties and to receive and share information with your agent. Listingbook also offers community information like  population demographics, housing availability, school information, community descriptions, education and employment stats and interactive tools for comparing data for cost of living and side-by-side comparisons of different communities. The best way to use Listingbook is in tandem with a knowledgeable, experienced real estate professional. Contact yours to ask for elaboration and demonstration of this useful digital and mobile tool.

• Kurio — Kurio is a MLS mobile search service that works with nearly any mobile device and uses GPS technology to locate and display listing information for any MLS listed property. Kurio also offers to home buyers:  daily real estate market updates; open house information for a desired area, zip code, or neighborhood listing; and neighborhood information that includes tax and mortgage information, walk scores and property photos and tours. You can request a showing of a certain property and get current mortgage information tailored to your price criteria and financial specifications.  If you’re driving through a neighborhood and see a home that you like, the information for that property is at your fingertips. If you’re touring a community and want to see all the open houses that are scheduled for that community, you’ve got that too, in an instant! Your real estate agent can give you instructions and information about this mobile tool and suggest ways it can be used to complement the professional services that your agent provides.

And finally, a word about QR Codes. You’ve probably noticed those funny little black-and-white squares with odd graphic designs popping up on signs, postcards, business cards and lots of other places on the Web. Those are QR Codes, a type of bar code intended to transmit quick text, video or photographic information about an individual, place, business, product or web address. QR is an acronym for quick response — an apt description of what these magical little squares can convey in an instant to a consumer. In order to take advantage of these compact little messengers, you’ll need to download a QR Code reader specifically made for the type of smart phone that you own.  Here are just a couple QR Code readers that are available:

• BeeTagg Reader – works with most smart phone devices including: Android, iPhone and Blackberry
• Quickmark – also works with most devices including Windows phones.

Happy "mobile: trails to you… until we meet again!