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Location-based mobile services to change real estate: Redfin

Redfin, an online real estate broker, debuted the Redfin application for iPhone and iPod touch users in an effort to improve customer service.

The application lets users view homes for sale on multiple listing services and upload photos and notes from home tours. Using location-based services, users can locate nearby listings or open houses.

?The iPhone app is a component of a home-buying service intended to guide consumers through every stage of the home-buying process,? said Glenn Kelman, CEO of Redfin, Seattle. ?Unlike media sites, we?re a broker that represents clients in the purchase and sale of homes.

?So this app has to improve our customer service, as that is how we judge the success of virtually every initiative at Redfin,? he said. ?The other components of our home-buying service are our agents in the field ? whom we are equipping with iPhones ? and our Web site, which shares data with the iPhone app so that iPhone users can upload photos to the site, and the site can share homes that the user has bookmarked or asked to tour.?

Redfin is an online real estate brokerage, with services available in areas of Boston, Chicago, Seattle, Washington DC, Baltimore, Long Island and Westchester County, the San Francisco Bay Area, Southern California and Sacramento.

Besides using the location-based services, users can search neighborhoods by name or postal code and filter their search a variety of ways including property type, square footage or number of bedrooms and bathrooms.

The Redfin application uses Google Maps to display its listings and includes every photo and feature of the listing.

Mr. Kelman said the iPhone application addresses the challenge that most home-buyers need a device they can take with them while they tour homes.

?The target demographic is the serious home buyer, using our Web site and our service to buy a home,? Mr. Kelman said. ?Other iPhone apps were built as entertainment or distraction. Ours was built for the hard-core addict engaged in a serious home search.?

The Redfin application has no ads. Mr. Kelman said the company makes money when the application helps clients work with Redfin on a home purchase or sale. Redfin is using Twitter, press releases and the company?s official blog and site to spread the word about the application.

Mr. Kelman said home-buying is naturally a mobile activity.

?It isn?t easy to bring a laptop and a camera and a GPS with you on a home tour,? he said. ?This solves that problem.?

Redfin isn?t the first time real estate and mobile have mixed.

Realogy Corp.'s Coldwell Banker Select real estate franchise has launched a free-to-the-buyer mobile Web site.

Coldwell Banker tapped mobile Web development firm mobiManage to create the site. Other mobiManage clients include dotMobi, the ICANN conference, Park City Utah Conventions and Visitors Bureau, the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, the Tulsa Zoo and McNellies Irish Pub (see story).

 According to Mr. Kelman, location-based services will change real estate.

?Well, location, location, location are the three most important things in real estate,? he said. ?So being able to give people immediate context on the home they?re evaluating and allowing them to capture that context to their account on a search site and incorporate into their overall home-buying process is a huge leap forward.

?We think this is one of the most powerful mobile apps ever built, using the camera, the location-based technology, the Internet, the large screen, the keyboard. We certainly invested a lot of time in it.?