Realtor.com Mobile App To Add Augmented Reality Feature

Augmented reality came on the scene in a big way this past summer with Pokémon GO. Now, other online applications are taking advantage of the technology, showing that it has the chance to develop some staying power.

Home-buying website Realtor.com recently announced it will be releasing two new mobile app features — Sign Snap and Street Peek — that leverage the capabilities of image recognition and augmented reality.

According to GeekWire, Sign Snap is currently available on Android, and Sneak Peek will soon be available on Realtor.com’s Android mobile app sometime in the spring, the home-buying website said, with an iOS version of the updates to come at a later date.

Sign Snap is a feature that takes advantage of image recognition technology and lets prospective home buyers and others curious about the housing market access information about a house listed as for sale by taking a photo of the for-rent or for-sale sign. The image recognition technology in the app searches the Realtor.com database and will then pull up the house’s dimensions, specs, photos, listed price and contact information for the real estate agent.

The augmented reality feature Street Peek shows Realtor.com mobile app users housing statistics for an entire neighborhood in real time, overlaying each house with information collected from the Realtor.com database, including listing price or estimated value, along with individual house specs, like the number of bedrooms and bathrooms.

Nate Johnson, chief marketing officer at Realtor.com, was quoted as saying: “In a market where actionable information can make all the difference between landing the home of your dreams or losing it, we are empowering consumers with quick and accessible property information in the palm of their hands.”

Realtor.com isn’t the only home-buying website looking to supplement its services with new technologies. This past summer, competitor site Zillow and AI-driven CRM Signpost joined forces to allow Zillow agents to automatically generate requests for user reviews of their services.