Want to know how much houses are going for in a neighborhood? Pull out your cell phone and start tapping.
Calling all real estate gossips: Hot stats are just a few phone clicks away, thanks to a new service from a tech company called Smarter Agent.
Smarter Agent's real estate gizmo, dubbed Recently Sold Homes, lets you retrieve home sales data while you're on the go. Don't even bother to type in an address, the service automatically knows where you are.
Stand in front of a property you like and Smarter Agent beams sales data - such as address, type of home, price and date sold - on the 10 closest homes sold within the past three years.
"It's like having an agent in your pocket," said Smarter Agent CEO Brad Blumberg.
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Emmy Anderson, a Sprint representative, uses a Samsung Sprint A900 cell phone to get information with Smarter Agent's Recently Sold Homes service in front of building at 440 W. 34th St.
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The Smarter Agent service is made possible by Global Positioning System technology or GPS - the same "location-aware" satellite system being used by parents to keep tabs on their kids via cell phones.
Sprint and Nextel offer Recently Sold Homes exclusively for now, though Blumberg said he is in talks with other cell phone carriers. The cost of the service is $4.99 a month and is available to Sprint customers who pay $15 a month for its data service plan.
The at-your-fingertips real estate information service is debuting at an important time for New York City apartment buyers. A law just passed that for the first time makes public the information on co-op sales. That makes up 80% of the city's apartments.
This means New Yorkers finally will have access to names of buyers and sellers, sales prices and dates of sales after years of being kept in the dark. The data is already available on the city's NYC.gov/html/dof/html/jump/acris.shtml site and on PropertyShark.com.
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Smarter Agent does not yet have access to the New York City co-op numbers, but is in talks with the city about getting it. The service does provide stats on New York City condos, single family homes, and multifamily homes.
"The city just made [co-op data] available," said Peter Goldey, a partner in OnBoard, Smarter Agent's New York content partner. "We've been working to get our request processed."
Blumberg sees a bigger audience for Smarter Agent than just home buyers. "I guarantee 50% of the downloads are the curious," he said. "Real estate is a national pastime."
He's also hoping real estate brokers will sign on. "They'd be pretty embarrassed if their buyer whips out the phone, but they would have to go back to their office to get the information," he said.
Prudential Douglas Elliman broker Richard Ferrari said he'd pay for the service, but only if Smarter Agent provided data on homes sold within the past six months.
"I would take it for $50 a month, I'd probably even take it for $100 a month," he said, adding, "if it's two years ago sales, it has no bearing on today."
Jonathan Miller, president of real estate appraisal firm Miller Samuel cautioned buyers to be careful about making snap judgments based on sales data.
"So much of public [data] is wrong or incomplete," he said. "If misused it can be misleading."
The service, he said, "will satisfy people who want immediate gratification, but it won't replace a broker."
The service currently provides addresses and price information, without offering square footage, taxes or other specifics.
Home buyers seeking more instant gratification should stand by for two more services in the works from Smarter Agent. The company plans to offer real estate sales and rental listings by the end of the year.
Forging into those areas in the city depends on Blumberg's ability to sign agreements with New York's major brokerage firms. Blumberg said he's now in talks with big real estate agents in hopes of gaining access to their listings.
How big of a market there is for any of these services remains to be seen. Since launching last month, Smarter Agent has signed up "hundreds" of customers Blumberg said, but he declined to be specific.
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