The house you’ve always loved is sporting a for sale sign. Is it as gorgeous inside as it is out?

You’re driving through the country, never wanting to go home, and you spot a cottage that’s on the market. Wonder how much they go for?


However, if you have Web access on your phone - and people increasingly do - you’ll be taken to a website designed specifically for mobiles that has the full listing and up to 10 photographs. You get an instant virtual tour standing on the curb.

Dessalen Wood, said she spends hours online checking out houses. But she found it an imperfect system. Sometimes she sees a house on the street but can’t find it online, though she might get distracted by other houses she does find. And when scanning the newspaper ads on Saturday, with the kids bouncing about, she’s not inclined to go start up her computer. But her mobile phone is always at hand.

"There’s a big impulse to buying, even a home," she said, but many of today’s tech-savvy buyers don’t want an immediate hard-sell from an agent. "They want information on their own terms, when they want it."

Once they potential buyer clicks onto the home they have a host of options, all within their control. They can asked to be updated on price changes and open houses or notified if the property has been sold, they can forward the information to family and friends for their input, they can engage in a text exchange with the agent, or they can ask the agent to call them.

It is the buyer who must initiate the direct contact with the agent, she said. Under privacy laws, agents will not have full contact information for potential buyers until the buyers decide to give it to them.
Three or four years ago, only 65 to 75 per cent of home buyers searched the Internet, he said. Today 90 per cent do. He suspects the phone service will take off as well.

It allows the client to contact agents directly, and agents will be getting calls from people who know more about the property and are interested. They’ll be good leads.

The technology might be challenging for some people. Younger people are experts, that in the next 18 months or so most people will be comfortable with text messages. According to the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association, Canadians sent 20.7 billion text messages in 2008, compared with 174 million in 2002, when it became widely available.

Though other companies also provide text services to realtors, Airborne Mobile insists its system is the most advanced offering the Internet hook-up. Right now, studies estimates 21 to 25 per cent of Canadians have phones capable of Internet access, but that number is expected to grow.

To use the service, buyers pay no charge, other than what their mobile provider would charge for text messages. Agents pay.