The real estate chain Coldwell Banker, the iPad is the perfect tool. Soon after the first iPad was unveiled, the company ordered the tablet for both its company and the many field personnel selling home across the country. Today, there are about 50-75 iPads in use internally with every field office using the iPad, along with a customize app displaying videos of available homes.
“The iPad is perfect for luxury upscale clients,” Anna Visioli, Director of Interactive Production at Coldwell Banker, recently told us. Discussions with prospective home buyers often happen on the hood of a car or at a coffee table, making the iPad just right for showing videos and its touch-screen capability is more approachable than the traditional laptop. Additionally, with apps such as DocuSign, clients can sign electronic papers on the spot.
“The iPad is a very visual device. We saw it as a mini TV,” said David Marine, Coldwell Banker Senior Director of Consumer Experience. Although the tablet has seen amazing early adoption, the company has to deal with customers who aren’t at that leading edge. As one example, the company gave an iPad to an older agent who was having a run of bad luck turning prospects into sales. Following the device, the agent sold 7 out of 7 properties, Visioli said.
Although the iPad broadens the possible uses of tablets in business, the Coldwell executives urge a take-it-slow process. “You cannot look at the iPad like a mobile phone,” Marine advises. While it is often thought adopting an iPad means you’ll need to create your own app, that isn’t so, according to Visioli. She suggests using the basic Keynote app to create simple presentations. From there, start small and learn what is capable with the iPad, she adds.
Marine chuckled when he read a rival real estate firm promoting its introduction of an iPad app. “What took you so long?” he asks.
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
8 responses to “Coldwell Banker: iPads ‘Perfect for Luxury Clients’ [iPad @ Work]”
Wonder why their iPad is all curvy like an old tube TV? My guess is that have to tell their more technophobic agents to think of it as a mini TV rather than, you know, technology of today.
“The iPad is perfect for luxury upscale clients,” Anna Visioli
Newsflash, they hand iPads out in public schools now and all the kids with the pumped up kicks have ’em. But how would a miserable real estate “agent” with probably a high-school education (maybe not even in 4 years) and no passion for anything but running to Vegas with the infrequent commissions off home buying ignorance know this? We do need an iPad app though, one to eliminate the need for real estate agents and mortgage brokers and to allow for the direct sale, property inspection, finance and online escrow between home buyers, sellers, lenders and the county recorder. The (very) few real estate “agents” who truly do add value can invest their knowledge in databases used by such an app and be rewarded for those premium features.
Help the People ~ You must have really selected the wrong real estate agent, should have gone to Coldwell Banker and interviewed a Pro!
iPads may be perfect for real estate, I’m doubting the usefulness of an app within real estate. The problem with useful data is that it resides in many locations (and many applications) so any RE brand trying to create or promote an RE app is by default creating a wall garden of information and process control.
Having developed many apps and having been on the training side, I think the Coldwell model of building an app is exactly the wrong way to go. Teach your agents and support team to have familiarity and expertise going through 10 to 20 sites, how to immediately answer questions, and how to care for leads properly and you are ten times better off.