Today, more than 50% of the customers are using real estate mobile applications to buy, sell, and search for their desired properties. This fact alone is the most important reason for real estate businesses to create a mobile app.
So, if you too have a realty business or intend to set up one, get a mobile app to multiply your revenue.
Here are 7 major benefits to building a mobile app for your realty business:
- Providing customers with the ease of mobility.
- Providing a real-time inventory of all the properties.
- Enhancing the user-experience to search & filter their desired property.
- Automating the process of buying, selling, and renting.
- Extending the audience’s reach.
- Capturing useful insights to make changes & grow your business.
- Building a brand for your business.
Now that you know about the great benefits of creating a mobile application for your business, you should go-ahead to hire an app developer and transform your idea into a reality.
But before you shortlist an app developer to get started on your mobile app development, you must first list down all of the essential features that your application must-have.
In this blog post, I have shared 6 such essential features for your real estate mobile application.
Let’s explore!
#1 User-friendly search
The search feature is perhaps the backbone of any real estate mobile application. It enables the users to find the property options that they want, in the shortest timeframe.
Let’s face it. Nobody likes to spend their time browsing categories & sub-categories unless they have a specific reason to do it.
The more time users spend on browsing different sections of your website, the higher could be their chances of getting distracted.
Providing an intuitive yet robust search on all the screens of your mobile application can enable your potential customers to find their desired property and make their decisions quickly.
Additionally, you could also ask your app developer to integrate auto-suggestions into the search bar of your mobile application. It will save the users’ time to type the whole name of the district, region, or zone.
They can simply start typing a street name or district name and your app can show all of the suggested options for them to tap.
#2 Property information
Showing detailed information for all the properties will help your app to gain more engagement & reliability. You can also show videos for each property so that the users can virtually walkthrough.
Perhaps, integrating 360° views of each property would be of great help for the app users to feel their presence inside the property without even being there.
An intuitive 360° video will give a ‘wow’ experience to all of your users.
Other than the images & videos, below are some of the important details that should be shown with each property:
- Property type
- Location
- Floor size
- Floor plan
- Dimensions of each room
- Developer name
- Tenure
- Key features
- Nearby amenities
#3 Add to comparison
With the overwhelming number of properties, your app users may get confused and delay their decision to buy or rent out a property.
Therefore, an “add to comparison” feature can come in handy for them to compare similar properties but with different criteria such as:
- Price
- Area
- Property age
- Proximity to important areas
- & more…
An “add to comparison” feature can also help your app users to refer to their shortlisted properties if they come back & open the app on their device after a few days of adding the properties to the comparison list.
#4 Loan calculator
Most of the realty mobile apps provide their users with the option to calculate the loan amount, tenure & EMIs in just a few minutes.
In order to avoid wasting time, having a loan/mortgage calculator feature handy in the app can instantly give your users an idea of how much they will need to pay according to the different criteria & parameters.
A loan calculator will help the users to shortlist those properties that fall within their budget. It will further enable them to make their decisions quickly.
#5 Documents collection
Buying & selling properties really require a lot of paperwork to be done.
Sometimes, it even becomes challenging to have all the documents in one place for each party involved in the property transactions.
Therefore, having a documents section in your mobile app will help the agents, buyers, and sellers to view & download the required documents in just a few minutes.
Not all of the real estate apps provide this feature. So, if you are planning to build one, you can request your mobile app developer to integrate this section for you.
#6 Paperwork processing
Other than the overwhelming amount of documentation, real estate deals also require a lot of paperwork processing.
The paperwork process could involve complexity to create a document, print it, sign it, scan it, and then email it back to the seller’s agent.
An app can help to solve this problem by allowing the users to create, sign, and send documents directly on your mobile device.
Although it can be quite challenging for your mobile application developer to integrate auto-processing features for all the deals inside your mobile app, it can really become a USP for your business.
As of today, not many real estate apps have the facility to process the documents online. You can have a competitive edge if your app can allow the users to process the documents online.