RPR Mobile: Why It's the Must-Have App for REALTORS

Thank you to RPR for sponsoring this article on RE Technology:

We hate to sound like a broken record, but the mobile application provided by RPR® (Realtors Property Resource®) should be on every REALTOR's phone.

The RPR app is akin to carrying around the entire RPR website in your pocket or purse: it's jam packed with property data, reports and tools. With it, agents are as equally productive as when they're in the office at their desktop.

In this article, we're going to highlight all the tangible features and capabilities of real estate's most powerful app — and put a spotlight on all the intangibles that make it an indispensable tool.

The RPR app: your go-to when you're on the go

The RPR app is a convenient and comprehensive resource for REALTORS®, which can be especially helpful when agents are out in the field with clients, hosting open houses, door knocking, etc. It can also be used for commercial property research, trade area analysis and transaction based tasks.

The app gives real estate professionals instant access to a wide range of real estate data and task-completing tools. Here's a list of what can be tapped into and utilized by REALTORS® with the RPR app and why it's considered a "must-have" for their business:

1. Property Information: RPR's database is the largest in residential and commercial real estate, and includes details on over 160 million properties in the country. With the app in hand, a REALTOR® can get instant property information, including tax records, assessments, transaction history, ownership details, and more. It's the perfect tool for researching properties and providing accurate data to clients and prospects.

2. Client-Friendly Reports: Use the app to generate professional-looking, branded reports for clients. Property Reports, Seller's Reports, School Reports and Market Activity Reports can be created on your phone and shared in just a few button taps. They're especially handy at open houses or canvassing a neighborhood. Clients and prospects will be amazed at how much info you can share in such a short amount of time.

3. CMAs: RPR offers Comparative Market Analysis (CMA) tools, which allows REALTORS® to build an accurate CMA even when they're out in the wild or away from their desk. The ability to use pricing tools and send the results to clients in minutes can definitely leave a favorable impression.

4. Shareable Market Trends: Real estate is local and homeowners and potential home buyers crave up-to-date market stats for their particular area. You can deliver these hyper-local neighborhood insights with RPR's Shareable Market Trends. Just look for the "Market Trends" tab at the bottom navigation bar and tap into a world of revealing market stats, charts and graphs for a specific area. Better yet, you can share these numbers with clients, or out to your social sphere, with just a few "taps."

5. New Pricing Tools: Recently added, the RPR app now boasts two new features: an Equity Calculator and a Mortgage Calculator. For homeowners who aren't completely clued-in to their home's equity figure, the easy-to-use Equity Calculator can be a real eye-opener and a great conversation starter. For your buyer clients, the Mortgage Calculator provides a ballpark, big picture on how much home can be afforded. This can aid in realistic budget discussions, narrow down home searches, and ultimately help your clients make better informed decisions.

6. Mapping and Geo Data: The maps in the app are powerful! The mapping features allow the user to overlay various data layers onto a map area. This can help in identifying trends, understanding neighborhood demographics, school searches, searching from particular points or within a certain radius, and assessing market conditions.

7. The Buyer Tour: Currently an app-only feature in RPR, the Buyer Tour easily allows agents to select properties and determine an order to tour them. Then they can create a colorful, client-friendly report to share with their buyers. It's a great way to set up a schedule and keep a record of what was viewed, and what was liked.

8. Commercial capabilities: RPR also offers a commercial version of its app. In fact, it's the exact same app, you simply toggle over to "Commercial" from "Residential" (this can be done from the login screen, or on the home screen by tapping the gear icon in the upper left corner). Commercial practitioners can use the RPR app to access commercial property information, keep tabs on market conditions, research properties, search listings, assess investment opportunities, identify optimum sites, and create commercial property and Trade Area reports.

9. NAR Member Benefit: RPR, and the RPR Mobile™ app, are provided as a member benefit by the National Association of Realtors. This means the app is built exclusively for REALTORS®. If you're a member, your dues are paying for it, so you should be using it!

Want to impress clients? Get a grip on any situation with the RPR app

As you can tell, the RPR app offers a laundry list of features and offerings. Agents can use it to solve or service almost any real estate situation. However, using the app also checks some intangible boxes that can really foster the agent-client relationship. For example, using the RPR app sets you up to:

• Conveniently respond and deliver in minutes: Emailing and texting reports, CMAs, Market Trends and answers to questions from your phone is a sign that you're dialed in and know your stuff. That last thing clients want to hear is, "I'll figure that out when I get back to the office tomorrow." With the RPR app in hand, you'll answer that question on the spot.

• Build confidence (in your clients and in yourself): If you're out with a client looking at a home, and they ask you a question about the place across the street, and you have an immediate answer? That's an immediate confidence boost. The RPR app can help you handle these curveball questions and hit them out of the park. One RPR user describes this type of app-assisted knowledge as "listing intel," and we couldn't agree more.

• Build trust: Providing your clients with up-to-date housing market information goes a long way in building a rapport and positioning yourself as a local market expert. Your clients may know a little, but they look to and lean on you for experience and guidance. The ability to discuss what type of market we're in, and how the inventory shortage is affecting sales and prices, what the listing to sales percentages mean and so forth, is trust-building knowledge that you can deliver, even when you're out and about.

The RPR app can be the foundation of your tech stack

If you have the app and haven't used it in awhile, it's time to take another look. RPR has added a ton of new enhancements that can have an immediate effect on your response times, skill-building and your bottom line.

And if you don't have the app on your phone, it's time to download it and add it to your tech stack.

To view the original article, visit the RPR blog.