Portal for land agents on the move

The buoyant transtasman property market is proving a rich testing ground for mobile applications designed to keep track of the dealings of landlords, home buyers and tenants.

Australian application developer Echo Solutions has assembled a resource portal accessible from web-capable mobile phones, handheld computers and laptops fitted with wi-fi cards.

Now being tested with a number of real estate agents, Project-ITT is of most use to agents and landlords wanting to update property details on the move. Each agent pays to list houses for sale on the portal and can update the details of those houses from a mobile device. Invoicing and administration applications are also available.

House listings and property records can be updated with digital photos, which are uploaded from camera phones to the portal.

"If during a property inspection you found a hole in a wall, you could take a photo of that and send it through [to the portal]," said Echo Solutions' managing director, Tony Mulry.

For the house buyer, accessing property listings via mobile phone was a useful tool for receiving the latest listings in an area as they were updated, he said.

Location-based services offered by the mobile carriers might be included to arm house-hunting mobile users with listings in their immediate geographic area.

For tenants, the portal was a means of dealing with their landlord. Through the Commonwealth Bank of Australia's NetBank online banking service, tenants could make rent payments through the portal.

Mulry said most users accessing the portal would do so via hybrid phone-handheld computer devices, such as the Qtek 1010. Echo Solutions plans to commercially launch the service at the end of the year.

How to enter

Mobile application developers are invited to enter the Frontier transtasman competition run by the Herald and Ericsson.

The competition aims to find the best mobile applications in New Zealand and Australia.

See Ericsson for details.