10 May 2010

Augmented reality comes to Canberra realty

| johnboy
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The Canberra Times has a story on St George’s new “housefinder” app for the iphone which is now operational in the ACT.

Launched by St George Bank and mobile platform specialist Insqribe, ”Housefinder” allows users to simply point their iPhone’s camera at a property that interests them to find out free real estate information.

St George Bank managing director for southern NSW and the ACT Andrew Moore said the Australian industry-first application would be a useful tool for people hunting for a house.

”With this new app, you can point the camera on your iPhone at a house or apartment in which you are interested and the screen will display current for sale or rental information, as well as data on what nearby properties have sold for recently,” Moore said.

The only problem appears to be that the data is reliant on Australian Property Monitors.

But for you real estate mavens who make a lifestyle of looking at houses I can see it being a bit of a must-have.

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shaneo said :

@coach

You clearly didn’t read or understand the article?????

The APP is free and is not trying to sell the consumer anything…it is merly providing the user with as much information as possible so they can make an informed purchase decison.

Put the pitch fork down don’t burn the witch and re-read

Maybe, but I read between the lines and it said.

“Get people hooked on this new service, and sellers will have to pay us to have their house listed with us, or it won’t appear on this magic new gismo”

When Allhomes started, they told everyone it would always be a free service, and that they would make their money from advertising. Now they are charging sellers $600 to list with them.

Same principle.

It’s is a good business model for the person running the business. So is the current real estate business model……it makes a shitload of money for the agency. I just question whether sellers are really getting value for money?

Most of the money spent on advertising in real estate is a total waste….and unnecessary in a market overloaded with buyers, but only if you have an honest and competent agent working for you.

georgesgenitals6:48 pm 11 May 10

2604 said :

OYM, you must be living in a second, parallel Canberra where realtors aren’t a bunch of cheesy, smug goons.

Coach, the next time you’re selling I’d encourage you to DIY. Pay a solicitor $1100 to prepare the contract. For $50 you can get 30 A4 flyers, in colour, at Officeworks. An ad on allhomes costs $895 and you can take the photos yourself.

I did it and exchanged contracts in less than a week. Total cost just over $2000, compared to $15,000+ if I’d gone through an agent. As an added bonus, about half the people I showed through the place commented on how nice it was not having to deal with a real estate agent!

You make the process easier for yourself by reducing the price by, say, half the cost of the agent (eg $7500 for a $400k property), which will help drum up demand. Having lots of willing buyers means you can push the process through more quickly.

@coach

You clearly didn’t read or understand the article?????

The APP is free and is not trying to sell the consumer anything…it is merly providing the user with as much information as possible so they can make an informed purchase decison.

Put the pitch fork down don’t burn the witch and re-read

OYM, you must be living in a second, parallel Canberra where realtors aren’t a bunch of cheesy, smug goons.

Coach, the next time you’re selling I’d encourage you to DIY. Pay a solicitor $1100 to prepare the contract. For $50 you can get 30 A4 flyers, in colour, at Officeworks. An ad on allhomes costs $895 and you can take the photos yourself.

I did it and exchanged contracts in less than a week. Total cost just over $2000, compared to $15,000+ if I’d gone through an agent. As an added bonus, about half the people I showed through the place commented on how nice it was not having to deal with a real estate agent!

OpenYourMind5:18 pm 10 May 10

Coach, you are probably going to the wrong agent. I’ve bought and sold a number of properties (in the good old days and more recently) and have always found the Canberra agents I dealt with to be excellent.

As for your comment about a scheme to milk more money out of the property market. The iPhone application is free and it simply gives information about properties. The app is not too bad and would certainly be very handy if you were out shopping for houses as it shows a map of all the houses for sale around your current location.

We are quite spoilt here in Canberra with the likes of AllHomes. AllHomes provides all sorts of information on past properties sales, the property market, zoning, you name it. As a buyer or seller, what’s not to like?

If we had real estate agents who actually did their job, and actually provided buyers and sellers with some old fashioned service, we would not need such hair brained schemes. More frustrustration for the buyers, more cost for the sellers, more lies and more broken promises.

Another scheme to milk more money out of the property market. What buyers and sellers fork out wasted money for is astounding.

Progress is good, but only when it serves us. Most of the progress in the property industry serves the agents and the advertising mediums, not the buyers and the sellers.

Give me the good old days when an agent found a seller, found a buyer and matched the two. That deserves a commission.

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