A little more about the iPad

Over the course of the last few weeks there has been a great deal of discussion about the Apple iPad. Many offices of Coldwell Banker Hearthside are running an iPad giveaway program in conjunction with their open houses, and Mortgage Mobility is offering anyone who qualifies for a mortgage before April 1 (and who closes in 2011) an iPad at settlement.

A few people have asked me to talk more about the device itself, how it works and what the practical applications are for them. Because most everyone who reads this is in the real estate business, I am going to attack this from that perspective.

First let me say this is not going to be an in-depth device review. There are plenty of those out there already. One good one I found comes from Hubert Nguyen at ubergizmo - feel free to read his post as well.

In full disclosure I have to tell you I don't own an iPad. Many of my friends do, however, and I am going to base my post on my experiences using theirs and my thoughts about the real estate business. Feel free to disagree if you have one and feel differently.

So, in general the iPad is just a larger version of the iPhone many of you use. There are different versions - one uses just the wifi signal (the wireless in your office or the local coffee shop) and another uses the cellular signal to get to the internet. Obviously, costs differ between the units and the cellular one requires a data plan much like your cell phone does. If you are shopping, shop accordingly. [in case you are curious, the Mortgage Mobility and CBHearthside model being offered is the wifi one, not the cellular one.]

Because it is like an iPhone, the key to making it work is understanding just what "apps" are going to make your device ideal for you. Apple's iTunes library is enormous, and the number of iPad-specific apps is growing every day. That said, there are still some drawbacks of the iPad that need to be understood. The iPad does not run Flash, which (up until Apple said it wouldn't support it in their devices) was one of the building blocks of the internet. Without getting too techy, there is a big debate about how web sites are going to work without Flash (especially web video), so you have to know right away that your iPad may not do all the video/movie watching you want it to do. [Note, I just read that a Flash-enabling app has been released in the iTunes store but since I haven't read any reviews yet I am not prepared to say much else].

Browsing the web happens via Apple's standard browser, called Safari. If all you have ever used is Internet Explorer, you may find some challenges changing browsers but not much. I used the iPad Safari browser to scan a few of the sites we use regularly, and with the exception of ToolKit CMA (which only works on Internet Explorer) things seemed to work pretty well. Of course anything that requires you to save data to a hard drive isn't going to work as well, because the iPad isn't designed for sophisticated file storage. [it does have plenty of SD card memory but the file tree isn't that deep (in other words, there isn't a "my documents" folder with subfolders, etc)].

The other thing to be considered is that the iPad doesn't have a disc drive or even a USB port for inserting a flash drive (another function of the way the memory is designed) so you need to use a service like SugarSync to move data between your devices (don't know SugarSync? Check out this video Stefanie did just last week highlighting how it works).

So why is it so great? Think about the upsides for the real estate business. You can turn it on quickly (there is no "boot up" time for an iPad), you can access the internet pretty quickly and you can move between apps quickly. It is great when you want to just jump on quickly and answer a few emails or post a quick facebook status update - especially if you find the font size of your smart phone a challenge. With the Keynote app you can present Powerpoint slides easily (which is an even bigger hit if you are using a powerpoint listing presentation like the one offered from the revised ToolKit CMA program) and you can write contracts (with the exception of the soon-disappearing RealFast program) on the fly. As a mobile real estate professional I can see many features that can justify the cost.

Like I said earlier, however, I am interested in how the rest of you use your iPads, or the questions you have about how you could use them. Let's make this a discussion! I look forward to your input.

Why do we always forget Realtor.com?

You probably didn't know this but our company-wide contract with Realtor.com is getting ready to expire. No worries, the commitment has already been made to renew - but as we were talking to the reps from Realtor.com they threw some amazing stats our way...stats I want to share with you here.

Did you know?

That during the period from February 1, 2010 to January 31, 2011:

Our listings were displayed in Realtor.com results 17 MILLION times?

That consumers "clicked in" to view the details on our listings just under 1 MILLION times? (975,299 to be exact)

That more than 5,000 actions were taken by consumers to either 1) email the listing agent, email the company or visit the agent's web site?

That's pretty powerful in my opinion. I know for a fact (since I get a copy of most every email that comes in for property info) that no other channel we use produces this kind of result.

So why do we take it for granted all the time?

I am going to share a bit of a secret with you from our contract discussions. Don't tell anyone else, ok? I asked Realtor.com to tell me what it would cost if every CBH agent had to sign their own agreement with Realtor.com instead of us buying it for you as package. Want to guess? $257,669.44. Even if I do the most basic of calculations and divide by 500 people (our number fluctuates around there all the time) that means it would cost every agent $500+ for Realtor.com service.

17 Million views....5,000 actions....$500/person. Don't sleep on Realtor.com

Instead, please use the time to leverage the investment we are making on your behalf (yes, even when we renew the contract Realtor.com will still be free to you). Go in and make sure your profile is complete. Add your picture so people know who you are. You will be very glad you did throughout our new 2-year Realtor.com deal.

What is the story with RealFast?

So Tuesday afternoon I received the same email you did from RealFast CEO John Mayes. I know it has left many people confused about is happening with the company, and where we stand as RealFast clients. I know I sent a brief email to managers back in November when the news first broke explaining what I knew (which wasn't a whole lot at that point) but now I want to try to give a bit more insight.

First, some background. In PA the job of managing and approving the standard forms we use falls to the Pennsylvania Association of REALTORS (PAR) and their Standard Forms Committee. Careful scrutiny is paid to every nuance of the contracts to make sure the practitioners who use them are legally protected. That is why the legal hotline reports to PAR - as it is important that the legal rights of REALTORS in PA are protected.

Once the forms are approved, there is only one entity that is responsible for distributing them to REALTORS. That group is known as BSRE (Business Services for Real Estate). BSRE is the company who sells the printed forms some of us continue to use in our offices, and also contracts with the firms who are permitted to sell electronic contract software to us.

Currently there are four vendors authorized by BSRE - RealFast is one of them. At the Board of Directors meeting for BSRE the decision was made to drop RealFast, specifically because they continue to lose market share in Pennsylvania and because their technology does not allow for files to be moved between systems. Having considered leaving RealFast last September, I know how hard it is to move files in their current setup (it is impossible, BTW).

So BSRE decided not to renew RealFast, but realized that it could not hurt its own members by forcing RealFast out before they had earned the money already spent by firms like ours. So they said that RealFast can not sign up new contracts after March, 2011 and that all contracts must be completed by March, 2012.

For the record, Coldwell Banker Hearthside's contract with RealFast expires in September, 2011...well before the BSRE deadline hits.

What that means is that you will see no changes in your RealFast service. They will continue to support our product until our contract expires, with no trouble from BSRE. Obviously we will not be renewing with them when September comes.

Because we know we have to switch vendors we are already in the process of reviewing the offerings from the other three vendors. Our plan is to have a vendor selected by May and to have training in place for all of you during May and June.

Once the system is in place and we have done the training we will push very hard to have everyone using our new system by mid-June. That way any drafts you have in place will be on the new system well before September comes (remember, I said there is no data mobility in RealFast).

I will have much more information as we go, but I wanted to give you some insight. Of course if you have questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to let me know.