The real estate market is on the top of the hype curve, arising with new technology innovations. Given that the average home price in the United States spiked to $374,900, the housing market is now considered the new gold rush. Legitimately, the real estate market hype appears to be quite understandable.
You may think about what this has to do with buying & selling home app development. So, the housing market has been the most critical sector in the US economy. Hence, it makes it a very lucrative industry for real estate agents. But we have seen realtors facing challenges that include costly lead generation, low inventory, and not cultivating a database.
Now, when things are getting back on track, why are some agents and brokers still struggling? Actually, the problem is not in the market but negligence. Apparently, since the pandemic, many industries have pivoted their business online along with real estate. And it didn’t take long for consumers to adapt to online culture.
The situation implies real estate firms that are yet grappling in the post-covid world are: One with poor real estate websites or lack of mobile experience and another with no digital presence.
Online presence has become more crucial than physical. Whereas, since mobile devices make everything accessible on fingertips, the majority of people even access websites on their smartphones. Thus, having sites isn’t enough. You need to offer an elite user experience on mobile devices. And right there, real estate app development comes into the picture.
We have already discussed business models and the cost to develop real estate apps like Zillow and Trulia. In this blog, we’ll discuss developing a Buying & Selling Homes App like Redfin.
Why develop an app like Redfin?
Redfin, a Seattle-based real estate brokerage, was founded in 2004 by David Eraker, Michael Dougherty, and David Selinger out of their own misadventure. The business model of Redfin focuses on upending the traditional brokerage system and capitalizing on emerging technology. Thus, there are Redfin Android, iOS, and Web apps.
The USP of Redfin is that it offers a discount brokerage. Redfin makes money when users buy or sell homes via its real estate agents. Meaning, Redfin doesn’t serve end customers directly but through a referral network of over 3,100 local agents.
Nevertheless, buyers can see new listings and book home tours on demand. On the contrary, sellers sell their homes through better marketing on the Redfin platform. Ultimately, end consumers have to pay a 1% listing fee when buying and selling with a Redfin Agent, saving thousands.
Well, if you make an app like Redfin, first understand the operations of each user. Because that helps you define the suitable feature set of your real estate app in the project requirements.
App Features To Make Real Estate Buy-Sell Easy Peasy On Mobile Devices
In mobile application development, we often hear that app features are paramount, and you must have this and that feature, blah…blah…blah… But we’ve seen many apps start with fewer features and add cutting-edge functionality as they scale or as per trends.
So, it’s not a race about how many features you add. But it’s about the balance between functionality and usability. Not to mention, complex features contribute to intricate UI/UX design and a high development cost. On that note, let’s analyze features proven and tested by Redfin real estate app.
- Home Search
- Instant Update
- Favorites Home
- Tour Insights
- Add To List
- Notes
- Open Houses
- Share
- Ask an Agent
Apart from the above Redfin features, you can also plan for distinctive features for your real estate buy-sell application. For example,
Automated Valuation Model: an AVM is an efficient and constant software-based pricing model that combines statistical modeling with property databases and transactions to calculate real estate values. With such technology, you can provide home value estimates to home buyers and sellers with numerous comparisons in seconds.
Image Recognition: It is a total fun feature that you can develop in your real estate app combining AR, GPS, and image recognition technologies. So, whenever a user looks at a property in the camera view, it displays its price as an overlay.
Geofencing: A location-based mobile advertising technique has become a standard in many industries that triggers predefined actions. Your real estate app can help promote properties and attract buyers from neighborhoods with geofencing.
Multiple Listing Services: Integrating MLS boosts property listings on your app with up-to-date data. In fact, Redfin also uses MLS. All you need is a membership of an MLS, and they will supply you with data about properties for sale.
How To Estimate The Cost To Develop An App Like Redfin?
Infrastructure, durability, amenities, demand, supply, location, and other factors affect a real estate property valuation. Similarly, some factors impact the cost to develop a property buy-sell app like Redfin. In addition to the number of features, the complexity of UI/UX design, the below aspects alter the cost to an extent.
- The number of iteration during prototyping;
- Third-party APIs such as Payment gateways, GPS;
- Platforms to build an app for, i.e., Android, iOS, Web;
- Database system;
- Backend & frontend development hours;
- Location of the development team.
It would be good for you to discuss all the above elements with your co-founder/s before starting app development. You must understand the way developers work to avoid being deceived. Because when you hire developers from a different part of the world, you need to be careful.
However, analyzing work experience, domain expertise, and client feedback will help you find the right app developers. Nevertheless, their rate may be as high as palm trees. So here, you can choose a country like India where the development rates are reasonable, and expertise is of a high level.
If we were to ballpark, Redfin-like buy-sell home app development could cost somewhere between $10000 to $25000 in India.
Rest Up To
So far, we have understood the successful invasion of mobile app development in real estate and how Redfin and other digital realtors leverage the same. And now, it is time for you to offer an innovative solution for your targeted real estate market.
For any kind of support, from validating your idea, defining project requirements, projecting the cost to carry out development, you can totally count on us. We have special abilities to serve all sorts of software development and make them competitive. Connect us; you’ll, too, start bragging about our services!