Australian startup, Insqribe has partnered with the St George bank to release the first Australian real-time, augmented reality property app for iPhones.
The free app gives potential homebuyers and renters access to real-time property information, through the camera view of their iPhone.
“Housefinder is an innovative new mobile tool that arms homebuyers and renters with vital property information, right at their fingertips, for free,” St.George Bank Managing Director, Southern NSW and ACT, Andrew Moore, said.
“With this new App, you can point the camera on your iPhone at a house or apartment in which you are interested and the screen will display current for sale or rental information, as well as data on what nearby properties have sold for recently.”
Research firm Australian Property Monitors is providing real-time property data for the App, making publicly available information on homes that are currently for sale or rent more accessible.
Insqribe Director and co-founder, Danny Housseas, said the Housefinder App took mobile property searching to a new level for buyers as well as renters.
“Housefinder uses cutting-edge augmented reality technology, which overlays detailed property information on to the ‘real world’ view of your iPhone camera,” Mr Housseas said.
“The App also lets you search for properties available for sale or rent by suburb, or by your current location, using your iPhone’s GPS technology. You can even filter your search based on price range, property type, recent sales information and suburb. All the essential property details are available at your fingertips including the contact details of the real-estate agent.”
It should be noted that Housefinder’s augmented reality function is only supported on Apple iPhone 3GS devices, i.e. if you have an original iPhone 3G you won’t get the AR functionality, but there’s still a pretty neat search function based on Google maps that is available for everyone.
I’ve watched jealously for years as homebuyers in the US have had open and free access to home pricing info. Housefinder looks like it might eventually have gotten us back up to speed with the rest of the world.
You can check out a video of Housefinder in action below:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViaLQ9ADMA0[/youtube]
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