I have to admit I have never been good at budgeting.  I have always had a sales job so whenever I spent more than I should have, I worked harder to sell more.  Not a good strategy for a Dad with a family of four, even though it worked ok in my twenties.

Knowing that I am not proficient at tracking my income and spending, I begrudgingly looked for an app to help.  Apps get me to do things that I normally wouldn’t do because they usually have a “gameification” aspect to them.  The motivation for a higher score, goal, badge, or some type of visual indicator usually keeps me going.  Well, I found a amazingly simple app that already has helped me become more organized.  You can set up your entire financial world in less than 5 minutes and it works automatically….. right up my alley!  Also, stick around for the end for my bonus app that you will love too!

HOUSE HUNTER

There are so many variables in comparing homes and House Hunter is a tool to help simplify the home selection process.

Sometimes your client’s can carry a lot of emotion into the home buying process and forget about what’s really important to them. That’s where House Hunter comes in with it’s weighted scoring system. First, your client will set the importance of each aspect of their dream home. If they would really like a nice finished basement. Set that to a 9. Also a large backyard, but maybe it’s not as crucial? Set that to a 6. After they are finished setting up their base scoring system, they are ready to go!

The app does the rest calculating the scores of each home based on the customized rating system that they set up according to their needs/wants. Now if a home does not have a basement or perhaps it’s a little subpar, that will weigh heavily against it! The app also allows your clients to take photos and store them into the record of that home with it’s score. Your client is then presented with a numerical value of each home to help them with their final decision! Cool!

House Hunter is available from Apple’s app store for $3.99. The app will be on sale August 5th, 6th and 7th 2011 ($2.99) for our Tech Savvy readers. This might be a great app to “gift” to a client or download yourself.

GREATSCHOOLS

Another app I want to tell you about is GreatSchools. It’s also going to come in handy for the average real estate consumer. Talking about neighborhoods and schools are really no-no’s as a real estate agent, so why not encourage them to find the school information on their own using a intuitive application? Here is a quick overview of the features.

• Search the latest school information for more than 125,000 K-12 schools in the U.S., including public, public charter, and private schools.
• Map and compare schools for any city, based on your current location.
• Filter schools by public or private, grade level, distance, GreatSchools Rating, Community Rating or, enrollment size.
• Browse parent reviews, recent test scores, and district info.
• Save schools to your personal list of favorites for quick retrieval later.

GreatSchools is absolutely free to download, so make sure you tell all of your clients about it!

HOUZZ

I just learned about the Houzz iPad app at Agent Reboot and it is amazing for a potential home buyer or home owner. It makes finding and organizing ideas for your home simple and dare I say, fun. My wife and I played with this app all night the first day we got it and have really enjoyed “clipping” all of our favorite ideas for our home.

Rather than looking through magazines for design ideas, Houzz has the most comprehensive database of home photos anywhere. Want to search for patio design ideas? The Houzz iPad app makes it simple by allowing you to type in your search and even an area of the country you would like to search for ideas in and then shows you (most likely) hundreds of photos. Like what you see? Tap on the button and you are linked right over to the designers website to get more information. The coolest part is that it makes an Ideabook, for your home, where all of your “clippings” are kept to keep your wish list in order. I already feel broke

If you don’t have an iPad, the Houzz website is pretty cool too and allows you to do similar things, all you need is a free account. Check out this video of all the features on the iPad app.

About Stephen Pacinelli

QR Codes, Augmented Reality, Google WalkAround Jack, Tracking Expenses, Cloud Documents and more were all discussed. Your life as a Realtor is becoming more mobile, is your marketing? We hope you enjoy this awesome show hosted by Chris Smith and Greg Grospitch of Tech Savvy Agent. For any questions or comments feel free to leave those below!

Over the next few weeks we will be disecting the iPad from a real estate perspective. It is always smart to look at both sides of the coin not just “is it worth it for me”?  How are people searching? What are the best apps and sites? Is my contact info there as well? Zillow and ZipRealty were first to the iPad with apps optimized for real estate search. If you are a Realtor that has the device(or not) it is important to know what technologies consumers are using to find real estate and thus you! Enjoy.

1.  Real Estate Apps that are optimized for the iPad not just big iPhone apps – you will be surprised at how few there are and why

2.  Content Consumption – Is this the game changer that puts the nail in the coffin of newspaper and magazine?  We say yes, let’s debate

3.  Email, Calendar, Contact integration – You could use AOL, Yahoo and Hotmail, but why would you after seeing Apple and Gmail’s versions of email done right!

4.  Real Estate Listing Presentations and why Keynote(PowerPoint on steroids) is a MUST HAVE for Realtors

5.  Social Media sites Facebook and Twitter were built for a device like this – Learn which iPad apps make them the easiest to manage daily

We look forward to your questions and feedback and thanks as always for being a part of our tech savvy community!  Register now and check Facebook 5 minutes before we go LIVE