How Smartphone Apps Are Making Processes Like Property Buying Easier
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As cumbersome a process as looking for a house or other piece of real estate to buy is, like plenty of other transactions, it is being made easier by the continued advancement of smartphone applications.
Well into the digital era, it is not surprising how advances in communication and technology continue to shape the direction of media and commerce. In 2012, after just under 80 years of being published in print, popular news magazine Newsweek ceased publication and transitioned to an all-digital format. It relaunched in print in 2014, but it continues to thrive greatly in digital as well.
While this, and other similar occurrences, could not have been foreseen even in the presence of the Internet and websites, companies like Newsweek have been able to digitally break-away or add to their more traditional business models through the proliferation of mobile/smartphone applications. As the New York Times put it, “smartphone app development is the most powerful media ever invented.”
There is an app for almost anything nowadays, be it for booking travel tickets to ordering food, and no serious business would be complete if it did not use one of its own. As Lamudi Philippines mentioned in its annual Real Estate Report for 2015, “at 15 percent, the Philippines lags behind Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand in terms of smartphone penetration. However, this was forecast to leap to 50 percent in 2015, due to the increasing popularity of cheaper smartphones.”
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Citing On Device Research, the report discussed how the growth of Filipino “netizenship” will be driven by smartphone use, and among those who already own such devices, 44 percent are aged between 25 to 44 years old. This is the age group which has the highest spending power, with most having stable incomes, and is the market for businesses using apps to better reach and serve their clientele.
Lamudi Philippines is one of those businesses. Launched locally in the beginning of 2014, the growing property listing portal catering to average online users had experienced great gains in its users through mobile Internet. In the first half of 2015 alone, 32 percent of the site’s approximately 320,000 visits per month had originated from smartphones, while 15 percent were from tablets.
As such, the company’s Lamudi Philippines App continues to be a primary focus, with the real estate platform recently adding explore neighborhood functionalities that allow property-seekers to see which restaurants, shops, malls, are schools are near the properties they are interested in. An app for sellers is also being planned for the near future, one which would help them upload their listings via mobile device, as well as manage leads while on the go.
As Lamudi and other similar providers allow users to have a virtual real estate agent in their pocket, smartphone users can expect more out of the property listing portal in making the real estate process more seamless. While viewing a property is still best done in person, apps like those of Lamudi’s can help to narrow down options, and help buyers allocate their time to visit the ideal property options.
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