The real estate industry is constantly evolving. Property companies are continuously finding new ways to make the daunting ordeal of searching for and purchasing a house easier, faster, and more tech-savvy. One popular way of accomplishing this is with user-friendly apps.
OnlineMarketplaces.com had a closer look at 14 widely used portals around the global real estate industry to find out what they're doing well, what could be improved on, and how portals can take the next step towards the perfect real estate listing.
Zillow is one of the most powerful real estate companies in the world and has the most popular real estate app in America. With its popular and trusted valuation feature, Zestimates, it's the go-to app for the average American... but it isn't quite as high-quality as some of its rivals.
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Trulia is a subsidiary of portal giant Zillow. While Zillow has its own app (which is only available to users in the United States), Trulia is a popular alternative that is also available to international users. The app holds an average rating of 4.75 across the Google and Apple Play stores.
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Simply put, Redfin is faster and more accurate than Zillow. Redfin's portal tends to be more up-to-date and sensitive to, for example, changes in asking prices—this is reflected on its mobile app.
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Realtor.com was one of the first major portals to introduce augmented reality with 'Street Peek' and 'Sign Snap', two features launched in 2017 that took smartphone technology and property transactions to a new level.
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Despite being Canada's number-one portal, a 3.2 rating on the Google app store is a bit disappointing, probably because some basic functionalities are missing or unoptimised.
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Quinto Andar has raised the best part of $1Bn since its inception in 2012, and has blown past unicorn status with an astonishing $5.1Bn valuation in 2021.
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Rightmove is the UK market leader and its app is clearly well-liked, with an average rating of 4.75.
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Particularly more popular with Android users than Rightmove’s app, Zoopla’s app has an average rating of 4.6. The app has a tracking feature that keeps tabs on a user’s home price and offers real-time notifications for property updates.
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One of OnTheMarket's core offerings is the 'Only With Us' offer that publishes listings a full day before competitors Rightmove and Zoopla. If you're actively looking for a property in the UK, this is enough of a selling point to attract users to the app independently of any in-app features. However, a 4.3 average rating across both major app stores is lower than Rightmove and Zoopla.
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There’s a very good reason that Idealista is at the forefront of Spain and Portugal’s real estate markets, with further coverage in Italy. The app is straightforward and offers 3D floor plans, Google street-style walk-throughs, and a special feature that allows users to peruse house prices wherever they are.
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SeLoger is France’s premier property portal, with an average rating of 4.65 across Google's and Apple's app stores.
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*Note that SeLoger isn't the only app to be in its native language. For example, Quinto Andar (Brazilian Portuguese), Hemnet (Swedish) and Anjuke (Chinese) also lack English options.
Domain is one of Australia’s biggest portals, and the app offers nice Inspector Planner feature, a calendar for scheduling property inspections quickly and easily.
Through the Domain app, you can find listings by highlighting an area on a map by drawing the shape with your finger with the Map Search feature. Another feature that sets it apart from the rest is its use of QR codes. Find one in a Domain magazine and snap a picture of it to connect with its corresponding listing.
Bayut is a leading Asian portal operating out of the UAE. It is a modern app with a nice UI, with an average rating of 4.7 across the Google and Apple Play stores. Interestingly, users can sort their search results with 'TruChecked' properties (the highest level of verification) shows the value of guiding users towards listings they can trust implicitly.
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Over in India, the Magicbricks app unfortunately fails to match up to major portals worldwide. The biggest disappointment is that the app has a slow response time, and took us to a web browser instead of being a full app experience in and of itself. Not only that, but it restricts basic information to everyday browsers...
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With an average rating of 4.6, Property24 is a highly trusted real estate app for buyers and sellers in South Africa. Though lacking some ultra-modern features, Property24 does bring some ideas of its own to the table.
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There are so many excellent features around the world of property portals. There are two key factors that make apps stand out: the inclusion of 'basic' industry features that users need, and the addition of supplementary features that users want.
While the inclusion of photos and prices remain ubiquitous worldwide, other key information like commute distances and local school options are becoming much more common on real estate listings, especially in the U.S.
It's difficult to judge what features users want on an individual basis, but transparency in all forms is welcome. The "What Locals Say" section on Trulia was a particular highlight, while the "Local Demographics" information on Realtor.ca was an unexpected perk.
In short, the more information you can pack into a property listing, the better.
Virtual tours are definitely becoming more common on portals worldwide, but there is still some work to be done on integrating virtual tour technology, especially in Australia, where users are instead recommended to book viewings from apps.
Meanwhile, video tours continue to underwhelm worldwide, with limited portals integrating them into listings. Of the portals that do use video tours, low production values limit their usefulness, with slideshow-style compilations of images the most common form.
Spanish mid-term rental platform Spotahome is the best example of setting an industry benchmark. The live, explanatory tours by "Homecheckers" offer a digital, guided experience that shows off all angles of a property—any portal seriously considering video tours should use these as the natural starting point.
Portals worldwide appear to struggle to write user-friendly property descriptions. A lack of scannability is rife on portal apps and should be addressed on a case-by-case basis.
It may sound simple, but a paragraph break makes a big difference when reading about a property, especially for longer descriptions. Use them!
Meanwhile, market leaders like Rightmove and Zillow have thousands upon thousands of agents listing properties on their portals, and this means a lack of standardisation—specifically when individual agents write property descriptions differently from their peers. It's difficult to control, for sure, but our inner stickler for details would like perfectly homogenous listings everywhere!
Having an English (or other second-language) option should be a priority for any app where international buyers are concerned.
European portals Hemnet (Swedish) and SeLoger (French) are only available in their native languages, as are Asian portals including China's Anjuke.
On the flip side of the same coin, Idealista offers no fewer than 18 languages—the perfect international real estate app.
MagicBricks in India is an unfortunate example of a portal app that heavily restricts access to users who don't want to share their personal details (email and phone) in the first instance—including not showing photos to browsers who don't enter an email address.
We noticed more apps offering a "discard" option for listings users no longer want to see. An excellent quality-of-life offering. This would be a nice-to-have option on more apps.
