Real estate applications for smartphones: A market overview for Austria and Germany

Our research focuses on the appliance of real estate applications (RE-Apps). These productive small programmes on smartphones and tablets will be classified by their usage and analysed concerning their functionality. A sub-classification is made for the ability of Augmented Reality (AR) functions. Market analyses assume a rapid growth of the number of smartphone applications within the next years. The number of downloaded apps in Apples ëApp Storeí reaches the amount of 25 Billion downloads in February 2012. As we pointed out in our paper Looking for property via smartphoneí at the ERES conference 2011 the usage for real estate applications will sharply increase. This trend is supported by the growing numbers of AR applications presented at the PRRES conference 2012. AR means that a value for the user is created by enhancing the real picture through the smartphone camera by additional information turning real and virtual objects in a multi-dimensional relationship to each other. There are several RE-Apps concerning RE-search, architecture, buildings, real estate administration, refurbishment and housing renewal and even orientating in shopping centers. The field of applications for real estate is wide, but not explored. The paper analyses the usage of RE-Apps with special focus on Austria and Germany. The work is based on extensive literature research providing a methodical comparison of applications available. Based on the results of our research, the project covers the structural, technological and user related factors that facilitate or impede dissemination of RE-Apps. As a result it should be given a smart overview of the existing applications and the market potential of RE-Apps for real estate with a visionary conclusion of expected future developments especially in the field of AR.