Intero Cool Apps

Intero Cool Apps: Leave the Pen and Paper at Home with Open Home Pro

By John Thompson | May 18th, 2012 0 Comments

So you’re in the middle of setting up for your first open house of a property that just went on the market. You’re expecting at least 150 people to come through the house today. You’re just setting out the beautiful appetizer plates you had put together when it dawns on you; you forgot the sign in sheet. What are you going to do? You have 5 minutes to make a decision, do you flip a flyer over and scribble at the top Name, email address, phone number with the hope you’ll be able to read everyone’s handwriting? Or do you run out, put a sign on the door saying “Be Back in 5” to print out a sheet at the nearby kinkos knowing you may miss that first big wave of people who are always right on time? Absolutely Not! You open your iPad and simply download Open Home Pro.

Open Home Pro helps manage all of the leads you meet at your open houses. You no longer have to wonder if that email address is sallymay@gmail.com or sallymai@ymail.com. With Open Home Pro, each visitor can type in their information and with a few prompted questions, you will have all the information you need to do a well-informed follow-up. In fact, Open Home Pro will automatically send your follow up for you. This feature really comes in handy when a price reduction occurs or there’s a change with the property.

Open Home Pro will also help you qualify buyers and let you know which leads are worth following up with on certain properties. Your buyers will have the opportunity to view the property in detail on their mobile device without any issues. Open Home Pro’s listing feature allows for unlimited photos giving your leads the most information possible about their potential new home.

With all of these great benefits no wonder it’s the 1# most downloadable app for real estate agents.

Cool Apps: Floor Plans At The Click Of A Button

By John Thompson | May 11th, 2012 0 Comments

Now here’s an app you can really use. As real estate agents, I know you are always trying to set yourself apart from the competition, using different colors for your brochures, adding stylized photos, and changing up the location of information. Here’s another great one to add to your list that will definitely make you stand out.

When people pick up a brochure, they want to see the inside of the house. Why not give it to them with a full home layout. That’s right! MagicPlan can help you create full indoor floor plans of your home to use on your website, brochures, and other marketing materials simply by using your iPhone or iPad.

First things first, before using MagicPlan make sure you watch the intro video. It will be extremely helpful. When you’re ready to start your floor plan, simply stand in one spot in the center of the room, move the camera around tapping on the screen to label corners and doors. It doesn’t even matter if furniture is in the way. Floor plans can be emailed to you in PDF, JPG and DXF format or publish an INTERACTIVE FLOOR PLAN on the web.

Just think a professional looking floor plan without picking up a measuring tape, moving furniture, or drawing. Just point and shoot. The whole process takes only a matter of minutes.

The floor plans the app creates are available for free, but only for non-commercial use. For commercial use (and to remove the watermark), subscription plans are available, as is enterprise pricing.

So go out there and start creating your floor plans!

Cool Apps: Get things done when you want to with Seize the Day

By John Thompson | April 27th, 2012 0 Comments

If you’re anything like me you constantly have a to-do list running through your head. Walk the dog, pick up dry cleaning, prep for client meeting, put together presentation. Some of it has due dates and some of it doesn’t. A lot of my to-do list can easily get pushed off to another day while others need to be done now. Here’s an app that will help you prioritize and keep track of your to-dos simply and efficiently.

Seize the Day is a simple and easy to use task manager that helps you organize and stay on top of your busy life. Simply download the app and start adding tasks. For each task you can assign a due date, or you can leave it to be done at some point in time. I really like this feature because there’s always a task that doesn’t need to be done right away, but needs to be done eventually.

The app also allows you to add a tag which is nice if you’d like to categorize your tasks. The reminder selection is optional and customizable so you can choose when and if you receive a reminder about that particular task. The notes section allows you to go into more detail about the task. And lastly, you can view your tasks by day or all at once in priority order making it easier for you to see what’s important now.

Seize the Day is super easy to use and keeps your to-do list simple, uncluttered and organized. Just what you need when striving to stay on top of it all.

Cool Apps: Instagram – Easy, Fun Way to Share Neighborhoods

By John Thompson | April 20th, 2012 0 Comments

Little known fact regarding Intero Real Estate and Instagram: We brought it to you here on Cool Apps back in 2010. Yep, that’s right, we were way ahead of the curve.

Since the app seems to be taking the internet world by storm, we thought we’d take a trip down memory lane and reiterate how this very cool app can be of great service to you in the Real Estate world:

Looking for an app that allows you to be social and useful at the same time? One that’s easy and fun to use? That doesn’t require a ton of strategy or technical prowess to get right?

Check out Instagram – the latest iPhone addiction for folks who like to take photos and share.

As real estate agents, you’re selling neighborhoods just as much as you’re selling homes (if not more, in many cases). My first thought with Instagram was that it offers a fun way to show off the quirky things about a neighborhood that you really can’t stage.

Imagine this: you’re out touring houses in a neighborhood where you have a lot of listings. You didn’t intend to have a photo shoot today, but you do of course have your iPhone with you. You notice some fun things happening: a guy on the corner playing the trumpet; a bakery that’s gone wild with a new mural on the side of its building; two squirrels who seem to be posing in front of a home for-sale sign.

Using Instagram, you simply launch the app, snap a picture, add a cool filter for effect, add a title so people know where it was taken, and upload it to all your social media networks – Facebook, Twitter and Flickr, for instance. Do this often and your followers will start to see the world you live in – the neighborhoods you sell.

A picture is worth a thousand words, so do the math and you might find yourself subconsciously selling great places to live to folks who are looking for just that.

To test out Instagram yourself, you’ll need to download it from the iTunes app store. It is currently a free app and only available to iPhone users.

Snap it. Share it. See what happens!

Intero Cool Apps: Make your Address Book Smarter

By John Thompson | April 6th, 2012 0 Comments

Put all your contacts into one location with Smartr Contacts. Smartr Contacts connects with multiple email addresses and social media sites to organize all of your contact profiles in one place.

Just think, one click and you can see your entire center of influence. Now you might be thinking, “my phone already comes with an address book. What makes this one so great?” Well, does that address book include everyone you have ever contacted through social media or otherwise? And does that address book log every single communication you have ever had with that person? I didn’t think so.

With Smartr Contacts, you will have a historical log on an individual contact page of all interaction that has happened between you and that person making it easy to track the conversation. This contact page also allows you to view emails and calendar events for that person. You will no longer have to ask the question “Did I call Jane last week about that new property listing?” It’s all there in black and white.

By tracking the number and frequency of interactions, Smartr Contacts will also sort your contacts by importance. This makes it easier for you to find people at the center of your world at that instance.

Its simplicity makes it effortless for anyone to use. Smartr Contacts provides plenty of shortcuts to easily get in touch people in various ways. It allows you the option to search contacts by first, last, company name or phone number and you can edit or hide contacts you don’t wish to see right now.

The best part of all is everything is hosted on the cloud, so if you ever lose your phone, you’ll still have access to your contacts.

Smartr Contacts, a smarter, easier, more effective way to keep in touch.

Cool Apps: Blogsy Puts Blogging in Your Fingertips

By John Thompson | March 30th, 2012 0 Comments

Blogsy Puts Blogging in Your Fingertips

By: John Thompson
Executive Vice President
Intero Real Estate, Inc

Just in case you needed another reason to fondle your new iPad (or iPad 2 – because that’s still cool too), there’s an app that will enable you to create blog posts – and do it well – right from your beloved tablet.

Blogsy will completely challenge the notion that iPads are for content consumption, not content creation. The app enables posting to WordPress, Blogger, TypePad and other blogging platforms.

Blogsy has a built-in web browser that makes linking, photo, video and other content embeds simple. It’s real content creation right from your fingertips. Built with touchscreen interaction in mind, the interface is simple and intuitive to use.

Not blogging? This is a market technique that is well worth a try – even if you think you can’t write. There are plenty of online resources that can help you get started. (Try Copyblogger for starters.) Think about blogging as a way to answer or address all the questions you find yourself constantly answering for buyers and sellers. You can use it as an educational tool that helps market your expertise and therefore sell your services.

If you’re looking for an easy interface to use for blogging that’s simple, but gets the basic job done, test Blogsy.

The app is available for $4.99 in the app store – well worth the cost if it helps you execute on a solid marketing strategy that moves you ahead.

Cool Apps: 5 Must-Have Apps for Your New iPad

By John Thompson | March 23rd, 2012 0 Comments

If you’re one of the 3 million people who snagged a new iPad last weekend, you’ve probably been busy drooling over the device’s ground-breaking retina display and also wondering which apps are the best for both personal and professional use in the real estate business.

This week, we’re highlighting the top five iPad apps that you won’t be able to live without once you’ve started using:

Dropbox (free) – Dropbox enables you to save and access files from your iPad from anywhere with connectivity. If you’re already using Dropbox on your desktop or laptop, then adding the iPad app is a no brainer. If you’re not yet using this cloud storage system, then you’ll want to create a free account right away. It’s a lifesaver for situations in which you need quick, remote access to important files.

Skype (free) – With the iPad’s camera, easy user interface and web connection, catch up with clients, vendors and business associates using Skype. You can do Skype-to-Skype audio and video calls for free, and also instant message other users.

iPhoto ($4.99)– Photos are essential for great real estate marketing. But why pay professional prices when you can create great-looking photos of your listings or purchase prospects with your very own iPad? The new version of iPhoto for iPad gives you basic photo-editing capabilities that are super easy to navigate and actually pretty fun.

Quickoffice Pro HD ($19.99) – This app may be the one that finally makes it possible for you to never have to leave the office or home carrying your laptop again. Quickoffice Pro HD enables you to open Office documents and PDFs, and make edits all from your iPad. Now you can tweak contracts on the go – saving time and impressing clients with your amazing response times and ability to get things done.

Tweetbot ($2.99) – If Twitter is part of your personal real estate marketing strategy, check out Tweetbot for iPad. The Twitter client has a unique interface that gives you a larger view of the context around your tweets (and tweets from others). Swipe to the right and see the full conversation surrounding it; swipe left and see replies to a tweet. You can also tap and hold a tweet, hashtag, username or a link to view contextual options that relate.

All of these apps are easily found by searching for them in the app store right from your iPad.

Cool Apps: Ban.jo Connects Your Offline and Online Worlds in Real Time

By John Thompson | March 16th, 2012 0 Comments

This week was the infamous SXSW Interactive conference in Austin – the venerable event that connects digital nerds and artists for a major tech and social fest. Some of the most talked about apps coming out of SXSW this year were those that pull location-based information to help you connect with people “in the real world” (aka, a world not seen through a glass screen, but rather right in front of us!).

These apps strike me as useful for real estate agents for a number of reasons. For one, we are the “local experts” in the neighborhoods we sell. And two, we’re also seriously mobile, rarely chained to a desk and almost always out and about, looking for places to get our work done between meetings and showings.

This week’s Cool App is Ban.jo, a social discovery app that collects the geographic data across all your social networks and displays it across a proximal app. So if you have fellow agents, past or current clients, vendors or friends who’ve supplied location-based input to Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare or Instagram, you’ll see who’s nearby right now and have the opportunity to connect.

This concept may seem a bit creepy to some folks at first. But again, this app only pulls the data that others have willingly offered up by checking in or updating their status on one of the aforementioned apps/networks.

I think these types of apps could be really cool not just for being able to catch those otherwise missed connections (Oh, you were in the area on Sunday? Wish I’d known that! I was there too and we could’ve met up.), but also for some “ear to the ground” local and social listening. Imagine the real-time insider information you can pick up about a neighborhood just by opening this app and seeing what folks in your network are doing/saying.

Banjo is available on Android and iOS. Go out and experiment!

Intero Cool Apps

Intero Cool Apps: Leave the Pen and Paper at Home with Open Home Pro

Cool Apps: Floor Plans At The Click Of A Button

Cool Apps: Get things done when you want to with Seize the Day

Intero Cool Apps: Make your Address Book Smarter

Cool Apps: Blogsy Puts Blogging in Your Fingertips

Cool Apps: 5 Must-Have Apps for Your New iPad

Cool Apps: Ban.jo Connects Your Offline and Online Worlds in Real Time

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