Smart Phone Apps For Realtors

Of course, you’ve got the standard apps on your smart phone, tablet, or whatever other mobile device you carry around with you while navigating between properties and appointments. We’re talking about Trulia, Zillow, realtor.com, the standard mortgage calculator, etc.—and if you don’t have those, please read our earlier post on this topic. However, the app world is moving faster than an asteroid headed for earth; if you want to keep up, we have some news you can use about the latest smart phone apps for Realtors.

1. MagicPlan has been around for a while but has recently been updated to get rid of some of the earlier bugs. This FREE app creates floor plans by taking pictures of rooms, exporting them into PDF, JPG and DXF formats. Once that’s done you can post images and even design interactive floor plans. Just what you need when walking through properties with a client.
2. Instagram. You can use this photo-sharing program to promote listings, neighborhood amenities or anything to help you be more hyperlocal. Instagram makes sure that you never take or post a bad picture. Its filters make your pictures look artistic and it links directly to Facebook, Twitter, your email and Tumblr. It also has is its own social media channel. It’s free, and the new version is available for Android as well as iPhone.
3. Open Home Pro. Another free app that provides a super-simple way to collect information about potential clients that visit your open houses. Within seconds either you or your potential client can input a name, email address, number of bedrooms they are looking for and more. Then Open Home Pro saves all of the data in its address book. You can export data to a .csv file, but the best part is that it sends a personal email from you direct to every client in the system thanking them for visiting your open house. If a client replies to that email with additional questions, it goes straight to your inbox.
4. IREM Comps. This app from the Institute of Real Estate Management is handy for anyone dealing with rental properties. It helps you establish competitive rents for any residential, office, or retail property. You can enter data for three comparable properties and the app will calculate the adjusted effective rent for your subject property. It then creates a spreadsheet that you can e-mail directly to a client.
5. Zite is a sort of personalized, design-it-yourself magazine that learns what you like and gets to know you better each time you use it. Zite becomes your personal librarian, assembling the content you want. It collects anything from real estate news, housing, home improvement, finance, social media – any topic you’re curious about but don’t have the time to search the web for information. Zite lets you share articles with clients and colleagues, give material a thumbs up or thumbs down, and choose to receive more from certain sources or block ones you don’t like.
6. Overdrive Media Console. And speaking of reading (as we were) this free app from REALTOR.org lets you download EPUB eBooks and MP3 audiobooks directly to your iPhone or Android. You’ll be able to select from nearly 200 eBooks and another 200 audiobooks available through the Virtual Library eBooks Collection on the REALTOR.org site.

(Shameless plug alert: stay tuned to the Winning Agent web site and be the first to get our new eBook series on marketing and social media for Realtors—available shortly.)

7. Find my iPhone. OK, admit it—you have occasionally misplaced your phone, right? It feels like cutting off your right arm. Thankfully there’s an app for that. Find My iPhone will locate your iPhone, iPad, iPod or Mac by using another iOS device to track its whereabouts. You can see where your device is located (hopefully on your desk or under the car seat). If it happens to fall into the hands of a stranger, you can display a message, play a sound, remotely lock the device or erase the data on it completely. Now if I just had one of those for my keys. . .

The virtual world will never stop changing. Rather than let you be overwhelmed by all the possibilities out there, we’ll try to condense the best of the best and provide you with periodic updates about tools to help you save time, grow your business and streamline your life. How about joining our newsletter in the box below, and you’ll end up with some private content that only subscribers get.

Smart Phone Apps For Realtors winningagent.com/smart-phone-ap… via @winningagent

— Richard M. Hartian (@WinningAgent) April 24, 2013