Agencies rapidly jump into real estate app development, and some apps are becoming the Ubers and Facebooks of the real estate market. One example of such an app is Zillow, which currently has over 160 million active users a month.

But you don’t have to be Zillow to be successful in the mobile real estate market. Just think about this: over 90% of real estate firms have websites with property listings. Real estate is already very digitized, but a website is only the first step.

This article will focus on why you need a real estate app or website, how to build a real estate app and how to make money from your app.

• Why You Need a Real Estate App
• Benefits of Real Estate Apps
• Top Real Estate Apps: Trulia And Zillow
• Main Features of a Real Estate App
• How Much Does a Real Estate App Cost
• Top 4 technology trends in real estate in 2020
• Top Apps for Real Estate Investors
• How do Real Estate Apps Make Money?
• Top 10 Best Apps For Real Estate Agents

Why You Need a Real Estate App

According to the National Association of Realtors, back in 2016, 44% of all home buyers screened properties online first. Now, in 2020, we can say that the majority of people go online to choose a house they want to buy or to put a property up for sale.

But they don’t just go online. They use mobile phones. In fact, the majority of people currently use mobile phones for almost everything, from ordering food to searching for homes. According to statistics, more and more people are accessing the internet via mobile phones.

Moreover, most of the time spent on mobile devices is dedicated to mobile applications.

Why do people spend so much time in apps rather than on mobile websites? First, apps are faster and better adapted for mobile devices.

Second, apps have access to a mobile phone’s hardware, which allows for lots of mobile-specific features. For example, you can send users targeted push notifications, use mobile devices’ hardware like cameras, and even use augmented reality that is now possible only in mobile apps.

Remember that as your target audience changes and a new generation begins to buy houses and become your clients, a mobile presence will become more important.

Read Also: How to Make a Lot of Money in Real Estate While Young

According to a research by the National Association of Realtors, 58% of Millennials and 46% of Generation X homebuyers have found their home on a mobile device, compared to 33% of Baby Boomers.

Benefits of Real Estate Apps

If you are still unsure about your decision to invest money on a mobile app, just have a look at the list of benefits that you can avail when you have your own real estate app.

Faster Property Search

With a mobile app, you can not only enhance the visibility of your property listings, but can also truly improve your customers’ experience by allowing them to easily and quickly search for suitable properties on the fly.

Enhanced Communication

Regular communication is the key to maintaining a healthy relationship with the customers. This is where your real estate app can prove to be a real game changer and help you maintain a constant and direct contact with your clients.

Improves Processes

One of the major benefits of having a mobile app for a real estate business is that it allows real estate agents and property owners to efficiently manage their properties in just a few taps, thus eliminating their manual efforts to a great extent.

Increases Sales

A mobile app can not only help you keep your real estate business in the hearts and pockets of the customers, but can also prove to be beneficial in increasing your sales and revenue in the long run.

Creates Brand Awareness

Yes, with your own real estate app, you can easily reach out to a wider audience and create a unique business identity. In addition to all this, an app also lets you send instant notifications of special offers and deals to the customers, thus gaining their attention and converting them into leads.

Top Real Estate Apps: Trulia And Zillow

Trulia and Zillow are two most popular real estate websites in the United States. They both have mobile apps, and boast millions of unique monthly users. Currently they’re parts of the same company, as the Zillow Group bought Trulia for $3.5 billion in 2015. However, for users these are still different products.

Both Zillow and Trulia are very similar: they provide users with real estate databases full of houses and apartments for rent and sale. Their core features are listings with photos and detailed desctiptions are rather similar. However, there are some key differences.

Zillow provides estimates of each building based on market and publicly available information. This is called Zestimates. This helps both users and agents to learn more about property market value and make sure they get the best possible deal. A Zestimate is merely a suggestion and a starting point which realtors and sellers can use as a reference to put prices on their estates.

Trulia provides more information on the neighbourhoods, giving users access to 34 different maps that show schools, average level of income, crime rate and other characteristics of a particular area. This helps users to not only choose the property, but learn more about the environment around it. Trulia also offers great tools for calculating monthly costs for mortgage payment, taxes and insurance.

Main Features of a Real Estate App

Here we’ll explore best features for real estate apps for agents and their clients. Let’s start with common features and then tell you about features specific for agents and buyers.

To separate these features from each other, you can either do two separate apps, or to make a two different user roles in one mobile app. To moderate your platform, the best practice is to create a web app for administrators.

Onboarding

Onboarding should be as easy as possible. That’s why you might want to use social media accounts for signing in. You can also register users by phone number or email, but don’t make onboarding compulsory at the very beginning. Allow users to have a look at your app first.

Personal profiles

Personal profiles are different for buyers and agents. Agents should be able to see their properties, schedules, and profiles of potential buyers who have contacted them. Buyers should see a list of properties they liked while browsing listings.

Database and listings

A big database is crucial for your application. It’s a core feature, and for your app to be successful, you’ll need to have lots of listings for potential buyers. Information about properties in the database should be reflected in listings.

Make sure listings give the information the buyers are most interested in, including pictures.

Categories and filters

Finding the right property is the most difficult part of the whole process of buying or renting a house. That’s why you need advanced сategories and filters for your mobile app, as they’re the primary tools that buyers will use.

Property profiles

A property profile should include extensive information about the property. Showcase more photos, give a description of the property, list a price for purchase or rent, and let homebuyers call a real estate agent to ask about the property.

Favorites

It’s important to give customers the ability to shortlist properties they like to make the decision easier. Favorites should be visible in a user’s profile or in a menu.

Calendar

Integrate a calendar into your mobile application so that both real estate agents and clients can schedule appointments and link them to properties.

Price calculator

Add a calculator to your mobile app to help users find out the final price of a home including loan interest in different banks. The calculator should be detailed, allowing users to choose the price of a home, their initial payment, the loan interest and the loan repayment period.

Call button

A website or mobile app is just a first step toward buying a house. To move users forward through the sales funnel, you need to let them call an agent. You can offer users different ways to connect to an agent:

• Call button
• Callback button
• Online chat
• Request for a consultation

Maps

Maps can provide lots of valuable information to homebuyers. Apart from showing the locations of properties, you can also show data and statistics across different areas. These statistics aren’t very hard to find: usually all you have to do is research on government websites before you create your own real estate app.

You can show information about average incomes, crime rates, the risks of natural disasters, infrastructure, and school locations on your maps. All this will help users to make decisions.

Push notifications

Push notifications achieve two important goals. First, they retain users and remind them of your app so they use your application more frequently. Second, they allow you to reach out to users and notify them of important events, such as:

• Price changes
• New properties in an area
• Any updates on properties

Push notifications should be personalized: send only relevant messages that will bring value to users.

Analytics

Analytics is crucial for any kind of application. Whether you have a platform where real estate agents meet their customers or a mobile app for your real estate agency only, you need to see how your business is growing.

If you have a realtor app for Android and iOS, you need to gather analytics from both apps and compare them, as the user behavior is different for these two user categories.

Analytics can give you valuable insights on your app’s performance, but more importantly, they can show you how successful your business model is. Analytics gives you information about your target audience so you can tweak your strategy according to users’ preferences.

Real estate agent profile

Real estate agent apps should have a database of brokers’ profiles, where they can show their credibility, properties and ratings. This will help an agent to sell his services and also manage the clients.

An agent should be able to add a property into their own catalog, add photos, description and edit it if needed. To make your platform credible, you want to come up with a verification strategy, so that buyers know exactly what they get when they contact an agent on a certain property.

Real estate agents listing

Apps for real estate agents and buyers should have not only property listings, but also agents listings. They can be done according to the property listing template with some changes. A picture, short description, number of properties, location, rating and sources of credibility: all this should be present in a listing.

How Much Does a Real Estate App Cost

The cost of real estate mobile app development depends on three main things:

• Feature set
• Technologies
• Hourly rate of the development company you hire

Hourly rates usually depend on the location of the real estate app development company you hire. For example, you can develop your application in the US and pay over $150 per hour. Or you can outsource development to a country in Eastern Europe and pay $35 per hour.

Even for small projects, you can save money that you can then invest in marketing and support. If you want to create two real estate applications for Android and iOS, you’ll need to multiply your budget by 1,9.

Now we’ll see how many 8-hour days of development it takes to develop each feature we’ve mentioned in this article. You can choose the features you need and calculate the approximate price of your real estate mobile app. Note that setup, communication, business analysis, and real estate app design design will require additional investment.

Feature	Estimate in days
Onboarding	3 – 6
Personal user profile	1 – 3
Properties catalog	3 – 5
Categories	1
Filters	3 – 6
Property profile	2 – 4
Favorites	2 – 3
Calendar	3 – 5
Price calculator	3 – 5
Call button	1
Online chat	5 – 10
Callback button	1
Maps	4 – 12
Push notifications	2
Analytics	2 – 4
Real estate agent profile	3 – 5
Add a property	3 – 6
Real estate agents listing	2 – 4

Top 4 technology trends in real estate in 2020

Real estate industry has become extremely complicated, as prices for real estate are the most sensitive to any changes in economics. Also, the demand for housing is increasing, so people seek for more effective ways to connect owners, agents and buyers along with renters.

These are technologies modern real estate companies use to make their service more effective.

1. Big data

Big data allows to store and process large amounts of data, and gather information about each user to later predict their behavior and decisions. Big data is used in real estate in pair with artificial intelligence to perfect suggestinons and offer users exactly what they’re looking for.

2. Blockchain

Due to its transparency, blockchain is widely used to prevent fraud in real estate business, as it allows to double-check all the documents and make sure nobody is able to make any changes to them. Blockchain also helps to reduce the amount of red tape and avoid endless mediators that charge fees for their services.

3. Artificial intelligence

Is used mostly for analysing the user’s preferences and requirements to make the most accurate and personalized suggestions. This allows a user to save time. Also, AI can help with property management by processing maintenance requests, tracking changes in listings, prices, etc. AI can analyse the market prices, and also help with risk management.

4. Augmented and virtual reality

Augmented reality helps to increase sales by visualizing the property to potential renters or buyers and help them imagine how it will look like after the purchase. AR is perfect for remote virtual tours around the property: this helps both buyers and sellers save time and enhance property marketing.

Top Apps for Real Estate Investors

These apps for real estate investors will help you invest smarter, save money and close more deals.

Let’s get into the exact tools that I use to be a better real estate investor.

1. Fundrise

Fundrise is an obvious choice. If you want exposure to real estate crowdfunding and eREITs either as an accredited or a non-accredited investor, you have a single platform to do so.

Plus, Fundrise offers affordable investment account minimums of only $500. You can become a real estate investor overnight. Fundrise has and continues to be, the market leader for finding new investment opportunities online.

If you are a single-family home investor, you can diversify by entering commercial real estate like investing in industrial real estate or a completely different market from your local market. 

Features

• The minimum investment amount of only $500 in total
• Free to sign up and scan potential investment opportunities 
• Earn passive income with commercial real estate investing

2. Personal Capital

Personal Capital is a personal finance app that tracks all your income, cash flow and net worth. It’s a completely free app that includes a retirement planner and more. It’s not just for personal finance anymore. 

Personal Capital is fantastic for real estate investors now. You can link your real estate assets and properties. 

When adding assets simply link your real estate and choose monitor value using Zestimate from Zillow. 

Want to keep your real estate investing business and personal net worth tracking separate?

Why not create a separate account on Personal Capital? This can be a great way to track cash flow, income and net worth with real estate. Read more about the app here Personal Capital review.

Features

• Completely free to use
• Comes with automated net worth tracker and a retirement planner
• Fully integrated with Zillow home price estimates

3. Rentometer Express

Rentometer is the ultimate tool for single-family home real estate investors. I believe the single most important variable or way to extract value off of a new investment opportunity is through rent pricing.

More often than not market-based rents are not reflected in the current tenant’s rental rate. Rentometer bridges that gap and will help you find a reasonable rate to charge.

You simply input the address and bedrooms. Then, you will start seeing actual lease comps within the area. It’s an absolute must-have app among the best apps for real estate investors.

Features

• Actual rental comps for your desired location
• Premium on the go screening of properties

4. Zillow

You’ve probably heard of Zillow. It remains to be a great mobile app to use. 

With the Zillow app, you can use it to find rental rates in a particular area or even find an estimate home value by using their “Zestimate.” 

You can use the app to create alerts for particular neighborhoods, streets, bedroom counts and more. You simply just need to type in your property address and you’ll be ready to rent or sell your property in no time. 

5. Auction.com

There are many pros and cons to real estate investing. To me, the pros outweigh the cons. Using Auction.com’s app, you can find flip investment opportunities to make money with real estate. 

Auction.com is the best place to find foreclosure and bank-owned properties. You can see a snapshot of the Minneapolis, Minnesota foreclosure market above from the desktop view.

However, Auction.com has a mobile app that will help you find properties on the go and get alerts of new auctions, listing and more. 

If you like the strategy of buying distressed assets, then the Auction.com mobile app is the one for you. 

These real estate investing apps will save you time and money. Don’t feel obligated to use all of them or most of them. Use the ones that consume most of your time first.

Real estate investing is all about staying in your comfort zone and mastering a few sets of skills. 

How do Real Estate Apps Make Money?

Real estate apps primarily make money through the sale of ad space and through “premium” features for agents.

Zillow and similar apps mentioned above sell ad space to real estate companies like lenders or property management companies. This allows these companies to find their own customers or renters.

These apps can also sell subscriptions to agents so that they can have access to special search criteria and see some data that the general public can’t see. Agents can also elect to advertise their own services on the site to drum up business in their local areas.

• Take a monthly fee from realtors to feature them on your website

Realtors can buy the monthly or yearly packages in order to be listed on your website. The best choice here is to offer a trial period for free, so a person can see if this model is suitable. If yes, they can choose to upgrade the subscription for a certain payment.

• Sell ads to mortgage lenders and other third-party businesses

Your real estate website can also sell advertising space to different businesses such as mortgage lenders, interior designers, contractors, retailers, and insurance specialists. Zillow, for example, takes money from mortgage lenders based on cost per click or cost per thousand impressions.

• Take a fee for additional valuable features

Another option is to take a fee for such additional features as analytics for realtors, notifications, online booking, etc.

• Crowd-source content

That’s actually how Trulia used to make money. Realtors spent a lot of time to create high-quality content. Then Trulia decided to monetize all the traffic that was coming from the content. It started to sell ads next to the content and it was a great way to make a profit.

• Hire virtual agents

Virtual agents are people who promote the services of your real estate website with the help of different tools. Virtual agent’s responsibility is to submit the names and phone numbers of property owners.

After this, the special consultants contact them. If these people are placing their listing on your website, the virtual agent who brought them receives a commission. This is an interesting strategy for those who want to generate more leads.

To stay competitive, you have to keep pace with the rapid changes in technology, focus on the right business strategy, and useful features. Only in such way your users will buy real estate online via mobile app effortlessly.

Top 10 Best Apps For Real Estate Agents

Being a real estate agent is exciting, interesting, and potentially very lucrative.If you’re a go-getter and make the most of leads, seize opportunities, and are able to sell, the rewards can be huge.

However, whether you’re a roaring success or just getting by, real estate agents can quickly start to crumble under pressure if they aren’t supported by great workflows that make life easier.

In your busy season, you’ll be juggling meetings, documents, listings, and leads all at the same time.

If you’re solo or have a small team, it can be difficult to keep up if you aren’t incredibly organized. Once things start to get hectic, you’ll start to miss leads, drop the ball with follow-ups, and cause delays in the closing process.

No successful real estate agent wants any of those things to happen.

Thankfully, with just a few easy apps and programs, you can make sure you never miss a thing.

Hubstaff

Hubstaff is a time tracking tool with a whole host of features that make it incredibly powerful for real estate agents. If you work with virtual assistants or manage different properties, Hubstaff can track hours and GPS location with the click of a button. You can even send payments for hours worked, taking one more task off of your plate.

By tracking the time you spend on all stages of the real estate process, you’ll be able to see which areas are slowing you down, and which ones you can save time on. The lightweight mobile app makes it easy to track time and location as you and your team go, giving you more insight into how your business operates.

Contactually

Ever lose track of parts of your conversations with buyers or sellers? Contactually is a CRM built for real estate brokers and agents. It helps you manage all communication by syncing your phone, email, and other communication channels so everything’s in one place.

Contactually makes it easier to stay on top of current clients and make it easier to check in with old ones.

CamScanner

CamScanner is a great app that lets you scan documents on your phone or tablet. It turns your scans into living documents you can annotate, edit, and send out. That means when you need to send over closing documents, contracts, or other details, you can do it professionally and quickly.

No need to say, “I’ll send that once I get back to the office,” anymore.

DocuSign

Speed up how quickly your documents are signed with DocuSign.

With over 200 million users, DocuSign is a leading choice for signing documents. Having your closing documents or other contracts signed quickly helps you speed through deals. Ultimately, letting you get more done in the same amount of time.

Dotloop

How do you manage the legal documents that come with being a real estate agent?

If you’re anything like most agents, you’ll use a system of paper docs, online resources, and other things that don’t make for a very efficient system.

Thankfully, Dotloop offers a completely paperless document system that keeps all your contracts and declarations in one place. Centralized documents mean it’s easier and faster to get things signed.

BombBomb

Using videos for your listings?

If you aren’t, you’re likely missing out on potential leads and sales.

BombBomb makes it easy to produce, publish, and track marketing videos advertising properties. Adding video to your listings can dramatically improve not only your sales but also the number of listings you receive. 73% of homeowners say they’re more likely to list with an agent who uses video.

FreshChat

Ever wanted to convert the leads that visit your website? FreshChat offers a great live chat service that lets you talk with potential buyers and sellers right when they visit your website. This means you can turn browsers into buyers and searchers into sellers.

Read Also: What Countries Are Good to Make Money in Real Estate

It gives prospective clients an easy way to connect, without much hassle on either side.

Evernote

Ever find yourself losing your notes after a tour or meeting? Evernote stops this by keeping all of your notes in one location. With Evernote, your notes are stored safely, and you’re able to add images and links and collaborate with other members of your team. Access your notes from your mobile or desktop as everything is synced behind-the-scenes.

Waze

If you’re stuck in traffic, you’re not selling houses!

Thankfully, Waze is a leading navigation app that helps you move through jams and closures without problems. That way, you’re able to make your appointments on time, every time. Waze also helps find you faster routes from appointment to appointment, so you can save time and be more productive.

BoxBrownie

Not a professional photographer?

Don’t worry.

BoxBrownie is an incredibly useful photography tool that provides virtual staging to help your properties look fantastic. Furnish empty rooms, remove mess and clutter, and turn plans into full mockups. BoxBrownie offers a full suite of services that help take your photos to the next level.

Their team turns images around in 24 or 48 hours depending on the complexity of the service you pick.

If you find things get complicated and disorganized quickly, these apps will help streamline your life and make things a little easier.

Whether you need help with centralization or staging, the apps above can transform any real estate agent’s business for the better.

What’s more, if you use Hubstaff for example, you’ll be able to dramatically increase your productivity and spot time killers that might be preventing you from winning future deals.

Finally

There are lots of real estate companies out there, and it’s becoming harder to attract new clients because the deal cycle is usually rather long and the competition is growing.

Making offers and creating an easy process of choosing a property is what makes a real estate company stand out. As current millennials are already becoming a big part of the audience for real estate companies, you need to start speaking their language. And it’s mobile.