High-Tech House Hunt

When my wife and I shopped for our first home outside Boston nearly a decade ago, we relied on the hottest technology of the time: Our agent sent us listings by fax machine. I'm sure there were Web sites that contained listings back in those dial-up days, but we never thought to use them. Like most buyers, we relied on our agent to find suitable houses for us. After all, that's a prime part of how he was earning his commission. And when it came time to visit properties, we didn't worry about directions—we just hopped into the agent's backseat and let him do the driving.

When my 30-year-old, tech-savvy brother-in-law bought his first home in Washington, D.C., earlier this year, he went about the process totally differently. He located most of the properties he wanted to see by himself, using real-estate Web sites and Google Maps. And instead of printing out listings to take on his house-hunting excursions, he put his laptop (equipped with a wireless card) in his passenger seat and drove around his preferred neighborhoods. When he found a for sale sign, he'd search for details online.

Just when I thought using a wireless card to engage in on-the-go house hunting was a clever strategy, now, a host of real-estate Web sites are offering an even easier way to do it. They're creating special applications designed for smartphones like the iPhone or BlackBerry that will help house hunters find properties when they're far from a PC.

And there are signs that there may be more buyers ready to use them. This week's housing data, while hardly a cause for celebration, did contain some hints of good news for observers wondering how much longer the housing slump might last. Sales of both new and existing homes rose slightly in July, as prices fell—a sign that more sellers are willing to accept more realistic offers for their homes. On Tuesday, the S&P released the latest data from its Case-Shiller index of home prices; while it showed national prices dropping by 15 percent in the last year, the rate of the fall has decelerated lately, and a few cities (including Boston) showed slight upticks in home prices. While economists note that a housing recovery still faces stiff challenges, due to the credit crunch and soft economy, this week's data has ignited talk that the housing market may soon bottom out, and some brokers are optimistic. Says Glenn Kelman, founder of the real-estate Web site RedFin, "We're starting to see buyers emerge from their caves, hungry for deals."

When it comes to mobile tools to help these buyers, the latest offering is from Trulia, a real-estate Web site. Sitting in a hotel lobby in Manhattan last week, Trulia co-founder Peter Flint touched the screen of his iPhone and a map of New York's Upper East Side popped onto the screen. Red flags appeared on properties for sale, and when he clicked another button, he saw a list of all the nearby apartments that would host open houses on Sunday. (The company's iPhone application, which launched this week, has a companion offering, for users of BlackBerry, which functions in much the same way.)

But as you'd expect on a mobile screen, the information given on each listing isn't as rich as you'd find on a full-sized PC screen: If you're hoping for a dozen photos of a home's interior or a 360-degree virtual tour, you'll be disappointed. But with the new iPhone's GPS functionality, the slick interface allows users to dispense with carrying around printouts of listings; provides directions to listings; and makes it easy to call or e-mail the listing agent. This is a case where convenience trumps detail.