New functionality added to Realtor.com app
Realtor.com was one of the first to launch an iPhone app for real estate back in 2007, and they gained considerable traction with their 2010 product update and today announce further enhancements to their free iPhone app to meet the launch of the mysterious Apple announcement on October 4th (which everyone knows is the launch of the iPhone 5).
Realtor.com has added a neat feature called “crab walk” that allows iPhone and iPad users to do the walking as they browse between listings. Additionally, the maximum amount of listings has been increased from 100 results to 500 and the app now offers thumbnails of maps.
According to Realtor.com, their apps “have downloaded over 6.7 million times and downloads continue to grow. In August 2011 alone there were over 1 million active users of the Realtor.com Real Estate Search Apps for iPhone, iPad, Android and Windows Mobile 7. As the amount of people using smartphones has increase, so has the use of the Realtor.com mobile apps which have grown over 341% year over year. An average of 15 properties are viewed every second.”
Real estate search wars heating back up – the battle for mobile
There is no word yet as to what is on the horizon for Realtor.com’s next step for Android devices, but the competition is hot in the real estate search sector as technology is innovated so dramatically from year to year. While this product version offers upgrades that are helpful, they are few, so it will be interesting to see what the real estate giant has in store for their long term Apple plan, especially given the unique capabilities of iPads.
We have the unique opportunity to see what the real estate search companies have in store long before it goes public, so what we have seen behind the scenes leads us to believe that this game is about to heat up very quickly as they each wage the battle for consumer eyes via mobile.
