Seattle online real estate beginning Estately is releasing a mobile app today.
Normally that will be unremarkable.
Apps are a penny a dozen, particularly among consumer startups like Estately.
But Estately stands out for waiting around so long to join the party. The company has been running an online real estate search service since 2007 — steadily growing through and beyond the recession, carving out a niche in the online real estate world that’s mostly centered in Seattle — all without an app.
Co-founder and Chief Executive Galen Ward said the company did pretty well with a mobile version of its website that people gain access to from smartphones and tablets. General the 15-person company has seen sales more than double every year for the past few years, and Ward believes it can become the next $1 billion company in online real estate.
You can only put off the unavoidable for so long, though, especially when customers are begging for an app. Investors who have put about $1 million into Estately also considered it was time.
“We’re definitely the last big online real estate company to develop an app,” Ward admitted. “But you understand, a lot of our competition has built an app because people told them to create an app and not because they knew an app could change their business. We don’t do things lightly — we wanted to be sure it was the most effective real estate search app.”
It is a pretty nice app, specifically for real-estate voyeurs in the regions — including the Northwest — where Estately has connected with Multiple Listing Services to give details on pretty much every home available. So far it’s working with over 60 MLS groups in more than 35 states and Ward hopes to have the majority of the country covered by the end of this year.
The app — for Apple’s iOS platform – contains a search service based on Apple’s Maps. Ward says the mapping has improved dramatically since its awkward debut. He has no instant plans for apps on other platforms.
When a home is chosen from a map in the Estately app, users are given the choice to save the home or search, or to get in touch with an agent to see the home. Estately works together with about 700 buyer’s agents and gets a share of commissions, if its recommendations lead to a sale.
Just in time for Valentine’s Day, the app utilizes a heart icon and heart animations. When you save a house to your watch list, a heart drifts across the screen, into just a little folder.
Most useful are the app’s alert capabilities. You can set the app to notify you if homes in a particular neighborhood are listed or have price drops, for example.
Ward said more than 25 percent of Estately’s site visits come from people using mobile gadgets, two-thirds of which are running iOS.
“The No. 1 query we get is, do you have an iPhone app?” he said. “With the advent of iOS7 we saw an possibility to make a best of breed app.”
The company’s mobile website is “a great encounter for users” but such sites just aren’t as good as apps today, Ward said. “Perhaps in 10 years it will change, but right now a native app has a lot more fluidity and power and push alerts. You can build a more extensive, sophisticated product on a native app.”
Normally that will be unremarkable.
Apps are a penny a dozen, particularly among consumer startups like Estately.
But Estately stands out for waiting around so long to join the party. The company has been running an online real estate search service since 2007 — steadily growing through and beyond the recession, carving out a niche in the online real estate world that’s mostly centered in Seattle — all without an app.
Co-founder and Chief Executive Galen Ward said the company did pretty well with a mobile version of its website that people gain access to from smartphones and tablets. General the 15-person company has seen sales more than double every year for the past few years, and Ward believes it can become the next $1 billion company in online real estate.
You can only put off the unavoidable for so long, though, especially when customers are begging for an app. Investors who have put about $1 million into Estately also considered it was time.
“We’re definitely the last big online real estate company to develop an app,” Ward admitted. “But you understand, a lot of our competition has built an app because people told them to create an app and not because they knew an app could change their business. We don’t do things lightly — we wanted to be sure it was the most effective real estate search app.”
The app — for Apple’s iOS platform – contains a search service based on Apple’s Maps. Ward says the mapping has improved dramatically since its awkward debut. He has no instant plans for apps on other platforms.
When a home is chosen from a map in the Estately app, users are given the choice to save the home or search, or to get in touch with an agent to see the home. Estately works together with about 700 buyer’s agents and gets a share of commissions, if its recommendations lead to a sale.
Just in time for Valentine’s Day, the app utilizes a heart icon and heart animations. When you save a house to your watch list, a heart drifts across the screen, into just a little folder.
Most useful are the app’s alert capabilities. You can set the app to notify you if homes in a particular neighborhood are listed or have price drops, for example.
Ward said more than 25 percent of Estately’s site visits come from people using mobile gadgets, two-thirds of which are running iOS.
“The No. 1 query we get is, do you have an iPhone app?” he said. “With the advent of iOS7 we saw an possibility to make a best of breed app.”
The company’s mobile website is “a great encounter for users” but such sites just aren’t as good as apps today, Ward said. “Perhaps in 10 years it will change, but right now a native app has a lot more fluidity and power and push alerts. You can build a more extensive, sophisticated product on a native app.”
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