Growing Mobile in the Real Estate Industry

As outlined in a recent article by Venture Beat, the real estate industry has yet to see the full capability of new technology implementation in its market space. With the real estate industry being a $1 trillion asset class, it is second only to corporate debt. With 2.8 million real estate agents and 500,000 construction professionals, the industry contains a large segment of the national population. Note that these numbers do not take into consideration the millions of individuals who access this market each year when looking for new homes, apartments, and office space.

With the average age of a realtor being 57, the adoption of new real estate technologies has waned in recent years. In fact, most of these professionals are using overly complicated technology that is 10 to 20 years old. Therefore, it is extremely important for technology to not only be mobile for additional accesibility, but also easy to use. This applies in various aspects of the real estate lifecycle. For one thing, agents need to be able to market their properties easily when they’re away from the office. Buyers and renters want to view properties on their phones and tablet, seeing pertinent information such as pricing and photos. Lastly, property managers want to be able to manage their properties regardless of whether they’re sitting at their desk, including important tasks such as viewing work requests and  taking rent payments.

Many companies have already begun to take their software mobile, in an effort to streamline their process. MRI Software is working to help shorten the disparity in technology and the real estate industry by creating solutions designed for the real estate professional that is constantly on the move:

• VaultWare Apartment Marketing Mobile Websites make it easy for smartphone and tablet users to rent from you.

• MRI VaultWare Leasing Tablet enables on-site property tours with available inventory, property photos and videos, and aerial siteplans available on your tablet.

• Workspeed Property Operations Mobile Support allows Workspeed functionality to be accessed from any iPhone®, Android™, BlackBerry®, or simple text messaging phone.

There is no avoiding the push to make software more mobile. As one of the largest industries, real estate and property management software must keep up with this trend in order to keep the industry lucrative. As the “older” realtors are buying iPhones and iPads, the creation of more flexible and accurate mobile software solutions will help keep the property management software industry as mobile as the high achieving social networking, banking, and shopping industries.