iPhone rental app proves popular home and away

In the space of one month 27,000 people have downloaded Realestate.co.nz’s upgraded iPhone app which allows users to search for rental property.

Thursday, September 29th 2011, 12:00AM

by The Landlord

Chief executive Alistair Helm said the amount of people who have downloaded the app - plus the 40,000 downloads of the original version - demonstrates its popularity among home buyers and people looking for rental property.

Helm said usage of the app was consistent with the ratio of usage of the company's website, with around a third of users looking for rental property and two thirds for property to buy.

"On the weekends three or four thousand people are using it, and in a month you've pretty much got everyone using it at some stage," Helm said.

He also said the app was being used to view property across the country, not just the main metropolitan centres.

"It's almost every property gets viewed at least once in the month, and that's pretty amazing when you consider the extent of properties both for sale and rent."

Helm said one aspect of the apps use that had taken him by surprise was the amount of people using it overseas.

"All you need to do is locate it geographically and move it to New Zealand and start looking as if you were in New Zealand, so Australia, the UK, US, Asia, [people in] those kinds of countries are using it. In the hundreds, not in the thousands, but significant enough that it's not just the odd person. It's Kiwi's abroad and probably people looking to move."

Helm cited the fact the app utilised "all the features of the iPhone" such as the geolocational map function and the ability to use photos for its success here and overseas.

"There's a lot of smarts which play to the advantage of this over anything else in the market today."

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