Realtor-owned technology company Realtors Property Resource has rolled out its first mobile application, offering all 1 million-plus Realtors on-the-go access to its parcel-based property database at no additional cost.
National Association of Realtors subsidiary RPR and its database of the same name provide access to data on 166 million properties, including 162 million property deeds, 132 million mortgages, 130 million tax records and 7.3 billion property valuations, according to RPR’s website. RPR also offers school attendance zones, flood maps, demographic information and other data.
Like RPR itself, the new app is unavailable to consumers and non-Realtor real estate professionals.
Screen shots of RPR mobile app
Through the app, Realtors can search public records, and if their MLS has partnered with RPR, their own MLS data as well. They can also create customizable reports for any property right from their smartphone for their clients.
Over 180,000 agents in nearly 2,000 companies will be able to have their own company branding included in the reports they create for clients as a result of the companies’ participation in RPR’s “Broker Tool Sets” — tools RPR offers specifically for brokers at no additional cost.
So far, RPR says users have created more than 1.9 million reports, which include buyer reports, seller reports, market activity reports and mini property reports.
Realtors can add their own private notes and photos to any property through the app, which they can then opt to include in reports to clients.
They can also sync favorite properties, reports, recent searches and notes between the RPR website and mobile app, the company said.
The new app works on the Android platform. RPR says its iPhone mobile app has been submitted to Apple for review and will be available in the next few weeks. Versions for iPad and Android tablets are still in development.
In May, NAR’s board of directors voted to dip into reserves to boost spending on RPR to $21.9 million a year for the next three years, partially in order to support the release of RPR mobile apps. By the end of 2014, NAR will have spent $98.9 million on RPR since 2009, an amount that is projected to rise to $120.8 million by the end of 2015 and $142.7 million by the end of 2016.
In the four years since its launch, RPR has struggled to make money, generating a total of $586,270 in revenue from data analytics as of December 2013.