Just A Few Ways To Use The iPad For Real Estate

Michael Price had a great post the other day providing an overview on the new Apple iPad. Seeing as this blog has the word geek in the title, and seeing as I’m a geek myself, I thought I’d build off that post with a few ideas for potential real estate uses. Besides, I really want one and have to build the mental case for it first.

Open Houses:

• Build a fun, interactive signup sheet for visitors. You could let them choose to subscribe to various value add lists right there, and depending on what you use it could put their info right in your list/ database, no tedious transcribing later.
• Set it on a table and play your virtual tour and slideshow w/ music.
• Let visitors dig deeper with links to your website/ blog posts about the area.
• Show them all the awesome neighborhood places on Yelp (if it’s in your area of course)
• If the listing isn’t for them, search other open houses in the area and email it to them (I smell contact info…)

Listing Presentations:

• Michael touched on this in his post, and I agree there’s a huge opportunity to make stunning presentations.
• Integrate a video resume into your keynote (the mac’s powerpoint) presentation, make the entire presentation paperless, and email it to prospects right after you’re done.

Buyer Tours/ Showings:

• Plug one of the last remaining holes in the paperless transaction: just save a pdf of all the listing sheet’s you’d normally print.
• If your MLS works on Safari, then you can easily search listings on the fly in places too fluid for a laptop (walking down the street, crowded cafes, in listings, etc). This gives you something better to do than stand there like an idiot while your client searches listings on their Redfin iPhone app
• Take notes directly into your online CRM/ organization software, with no risk of losing them and no tedious transcribing later.
• Potentially in the near future, record your client’s feedback and have it automatically transcribed for you, just like Google Voice does now with messages (this isn’t here yet but it’s just a matter of time).
• Have all your client’s info (kid’s names, etc) always at your fingertips for those with less than stellar memories.

Again, these are just a few ideas, and just as we saw thousands of new apps appear for the iPhone, I believe we’ll see thousands of even more innovative apps take advantage of all that new screen real estate. The only question remaining for me is one that haunts many geeks… do we jump into the inevitably buggy first edition or be patient and wait for the second one?