Property search and valuation site Zillow expanded its suite of mobile applications today with the launch of an app for Research in Motion’s BlackBerry smartphones.
Zillow also has apps that run on Apple’s iPhone and iPad devices and on smartphones and tablets that run on Google’s Android platform. The launch of the BlackBerry app means that Zillow is now accessible for more than 90 percent of smartphone users, the company said.
According to the latest figures from comScore, 30.4 percent of smartphone users have BlackBerrys, a bigger share than those who have iPhones. That figure has been steadily declining, however, ceding market share largely to Google’s Android.
"Many of our fans — including significant numbers of real estate professionals — have asked us to bring our … mobile experience to the BlackBerry platform, and we’re thrilled to give them this option," said Spencer Rascoff, Zillow’s CEO, in a statement.
Zillow attracts about 23 million mobile visits to home detail pages each month, the company said.
The BlackBerry app’s users can search homes nearby or in a user-specified location. These include homes for sale, rentals, recently sold homes or homes where the owner has set a "Make Me Move" price. Users can also see home value "Zestimates" for more than 100 million homes nationwide.
Users can filter search results and see them in list or map view. On a listing page, users can scroll through photos, read a description, chart a home’s value over time, see when it last sold, view tax information, call or email an agent, and consider recent, nearby comparable sales.