Redfin has released an iPhone app. I’ve been waiting for a good IDX-based mobile home search app for a long time and this, with some caveats, is it.
Except it’s not a home search app.
As Glenn Kelman states in the company announcement, this is a “home buying” app. This means that you get listings – indeed, FSBO’s and foreclosures along with the MLS data – but also tools for saving, making notes on and taking photos of those listings. Everything you do on your phone syncs with your account at redfin.com and vice-versa. This makes organizing your own search effort simpler and, more importantly, makes collaborative searching more powerful. In fact, the company has bought all its employee agents iPhones so they can post information and photos of listing to clients’ Redfin accounts.
That’s pretty cool.
Now, to do all this cool stuff, you do have to register for a Redfin account. On the one hand, being prompted to create an account just to favorite a listing is bothersome. It may cause a few users to bail. But what I like about this app is that it’s built for a purpose. By that I mean it’s created specifically for Redfin’s target customer – the serious, tech savvy home buyer – and those who serve them, Redfin agents. If the casual user bails, so be it.
This can be viewed as something of an advancement for mobile real estate apps, for rather than functioning as a fuzzily conceived “mobile play” whose success is measured in downloads, it’s actually a focused complement to the existing business strategy. I think this is an indication of things to come.
I do have a couple quibbles:
First, I think the start screen is too complicated. In my mind, the mobile platform should feel sort of like Europe, where everything is smaller, but characterized by an economy of design that makes that a delight rather than a problem.
So instead of the screen below, I’d like to be taken directly to homes around my location, then permitted to refine or expand my search from there. The Zillow iPhone app does this well.
Second, I don’t like the clustering of homes on the map as seen below. I may be a little slow on the uptake, but I actually had to stop and think about what these numbers meant. Stopping and thinking is bad. It seems unlikely to me that at the default view there would be many cases where listing density makes these markers absolutely necessary.
These things notwithstanding, this is an excellent app. Congrats to the Redfin team!
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Brian,
Sasha from the Redfin iPhone team here.
Thanks for the kind words! We put a lot of work into this app, and I seriously want to thank you for bringing a careful, critical eye to your review.
I totally agree with your first piece of criticism about the home screen. It is a bit busy, and it probably needs to be rethought. I’m not sure going to the map immediately is the right answer, though, as that would significantly slow down users who wanted to, for example, go to their faves or to a non-current location search. We’ll play around with a couple solutions and hopefully improve it in the next version.
As to the clusters, I’m quite fond of them, but I’m as biased as you can get, as I wrote a large part of their code. I agree that the clusters’ numbers may not be understood immediately, but I think you’re wrong that the clusters won’t be useful in the average case.
As a test, I turned off clustering on my machine and ran a search in the iPhone simulator. Even in relatively suburban Cupertino, only 20 of the 50 results were fully visible without clustering, about 10 were partially visible, and 20 were completely obscured. And even the ones that were totally visible were very close to each other and hard to tap individually without mistakes.
There’s a tradeoff to be made on this feature between initial understandability and long-term usability. I think we made the right call, but we will certainly be watching more people use the app and working to correct the (almost certainly numerous) things we got wrong.
Thanks again for your review, and we very much hope the app will get even better in future versions!
Sasha:
I take your point on clustering at city level, where it does get crowded. I still would default to a tight-in view of listings around the user’s location (where clustering would not be necessary) and allow users to change their start screen in preferences.
Perhaps my main issue with the cluster markers is that they are circular, which suggests to me a single point on the map even with the numbers. Maybe a house icon with the number would be better – or simply adding the word “listings” next to the number. Of course, my preferences may be indicative of nothing useful, but there they are.
I like the Europe comparison. When Verizon has access to the Iphone I will get one and try out the app.
Aloha,
Keahi
@Keahi I too love the Europe comparison; I immediately forwarded it on to the rest of the team.
@Brian Some good ideas you’ve got there; we’ll play around with it and see if we can make it better.
As a side not, we actually made the clusters circles with a semi-transparent halo exactly to suggest that they aren’t a single point, as opposed to our house markers that have a little tail that points to an exact place on the map. Clearly, we didn’t convey their non-point-ness completely. One small tweak that may help and which I’m considering is drawing a true gradient fading out from the center instead of the (admittedly slightly cheesy) two-tone transparency we’re using right now. I didn’t know how to draw gradients when we wrote this part of the app, but I’ve learned since.
Again, thanks for the wonderful feedback, and know that it’s very much a part of our discussion about what comes next for the app.
I’m downloading now. I actually think the new Coldwell Banker app is pretty nifty, and it certainly beat my expectations. The UI is very smooth and it’s fast as hell. Thanks for pointing this one out, Brian.
Great app! One suggestion: Under search options, why o “search within x distance” field? I may be missing something, but with an area like Marin County (my home “town”), if I search for homes in Fairfax, CA, I should probably see homes in San Anselmo as well. I’m assuming the red lines are the boundaries of the city or zip one is searching within? I like that idea, but it show homes outside of the boundary as well. This would be especially useful in a place like Marin, where the boundaries are pretty soft, and the towns are tiny, if they’re even incorporated.
Edits to above:
“…why *no…”
“…it *should show homes…”
@Ian The Coldwell app certainly beat my expectations too, but at least in Seattle, they only show their own listings which I find completely baffling!
And yup, the red lines are city/zip/neighborhood boundaries. On our website users have the ability to remove the boundary and see what’s outside of the city but that feature didn’t make the first version of the iPhone app.
App aside, I have a question about the consumer need for this. Do you really think a buyer will be sitting at a coffee shop or wherever looking at homes on the iPhone?
Many companies do this stuff to pump out a press release.
I wonder how many people use Trulia’s app. Really. I mean REALLY use it.
@Kevin
Yes
Hi Kevin,
We think a lot will use it.
Looking at our Google Analytics numbers pre-iPhone app release 1% of our traffic was from people browsing our site using their iPhone, and our site doesn’t even really work in iPhone’s browser!
We think a lot of buyers will use the app on the weekend as they go to open houses or tour with their agent.
We didn’t do this to just put out a press release.
We had a large portion of our dev team working on the app for months and are equipping our real estate team with iPhones. There are much cheaper ideas to base a press release off of!
Once the app has been out we’ll blog about its usage. Stay tuned to http://blog.redfin.com if you’re interested.
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Someone told me that the Coldwell Banker app only has their listings, not other brokerage listings. Could that possibly be true!? I haven’t had time to check yet.
@Matt, @Spencer –
I’m happy to hear our app beat your expectations and we’re already working on including all IDX listings from across the country into our app. Of course working with hundreds of MLS’s across the country to get agreements/feeds/etc is a process that takes some time to implement but it’s a work in progress.
We’ve received a lot of good comments and feedback about updates to our app & have already submitted an update to Apple that should address a few issues.
Congrats @Matt on the launch of your app. Very sharp and I’m sure your agents are excited about it.
@David,
That makes more sense! I figured it couldn’t just be CB listings in the long-run. Congratulations on the launch, and good luck with the next batches of improvements.
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To Kevin’s comment above … build a usable app for the mobile consumer and yes it will be used. Think this applies to any industry.
Problem is most mobile apps are not mobile, just their corporate website viewed in a mobile browser. Very poor user experience.
Jeff
[...] user interface is fast and clear. One of my beefs with the Redfin iPhone app (which is generally excellent) was its clustering of properties, which I [...]