Crafted by an agent for fellow agents, Quitchet was built by a South Carolina-based agent. It uses home search to capture buyers and help agents manage the buying process.
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Quitchet connects and powers the home-search process for consumers and agents.
Platforms: Browser with iOS and Android apps
Ideal for: Consumer home shoppers; all agents and brokerages
Top selling points
- Local multiple listing service (MLS) integration
- Developed by practicing real estate agent
- Showing time frames with safety monitor
- Home comparison tool
Top concerns
The app’s user experience functions more like a responsive website than a stand-alone app, using hard-to-tap drop-downs and radio buttons, among other user interface (UI) concerns.
What you should know
Quitchet aims to connect homebuyers with agents and offers tools to support agents’ workflow, such as a showing timer with a safety mechanism and per-property home chat.
Buyers can download it to search for homes, then find an agent when it’s time to tour. Or, an agent can sign-up and ask his or her clients to download it, search for them and link them to the account.
The agent-buyer link-up would be significantly easier on the buyer with a direct link that automatically loads the app with the agent’s profile.
Once connected via the localized “Find an agent” feature, buyers will be able to share homes with their agent, create favorite lists, message back and forth, compare homes and arrange showings.
Linked agents work in tandem with their clients on either the browser or app version. Quitchet immediately notifies them of new messages, every new-home favorite, saved searches and other forms of in-app activity.
Buyers can search for homes via map by drawing a line around color-coded listings fed by its internet data exchange (IDX) connection. They can also manually input and save home-search parameters.
Available homes on the map are indicated by a green dot, which doesn’t scale larger as the user zooms in the map, making a select-tap strangely challenging.
Details reflect a listing’s MLS input, and each category is reviewed via a drop-down arrow selector. There’s a print option for those buyers searching from home or their office.
Quitchet’s “home compare” tool is useful for juxtaposing specific rooms within listings, such as kitchens or backyards. But my version, loaded on an iPhone 7 with the latest OS, struggled to load the MLS-linked imagery for room-to-room comparisons during and three days after the demo.
There’s also an odd screen that loads in between launching a home comparison and its results page, as if its giving the app a breather. A more direct jump to the compare page would be more valuable than a momentary touch of aesthetics.
The issue of having to push through multiple screens between a feature command and result page comes up during chats too.
All chats are permanently connected to the agent and each subject property, good for scrolling back in time to uncover pertinent deal facts or client remarks.
The app has a closing feature that can link uploaded documents to the appropriate parties such as inspectors and lenders.
What seemed to be missing was a mechanism for including vendors in the app’s workflow. This could be partly a result of a listing’s status in Quitchet being linked to its source MLS, which doesn’t typically alert closing vendors to status changes.
In turn, this assumes there could be a communication breakdown when it comes to exchanging all information with each party.
In concept, Quitchet is quite similar to Homesnap in that it uses a home-search interface to “warm up” leads for waiting agents.
Therefore, Quitchet’s elevator pitch is proven. Its execution has a lot of catching up to do, however. (Homesnap’s use results in 500,000 home tours per year.)
There is a lot of credit to be given to an agent who ventures into the software development space with the goal of making business for their colleagues a little easier to transact. There are some solid features in Quitchet, such as its notification lists, agent safety feature and automated tour builder.
However, where things can go astray for non-software specialists creating technology is in the hiring and oversight of developers and designers. I believe that’s the case here.
Quitchet has potential, but it could benefit from remaining in beta to iron out some user-experience drawbacks. It’s currently being tested by 40 agents in Greenville, South Carolina.
Have a technology product you would like to discuss? Email Craig Rowe.
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