As a realtor, you have a lot of small things that you do all the time—open lock boxes, measure rooms and furniture, consider mortgage costs, and more. Each of these things requires some time and often an additional tool. What if you could consolidate the tools required into your one ultimate piece of equipment—your smartphone? We’ve rounded up a few free and cheap apps that will help you have all the tools you need in one convenient place.
Flashlight
We’re sure you have been there, dealing with a difficult lock box after …

They say “a picture is worth a thousand words,” but sometimes you have even more to say about homes for sale than what an image alone will show. Imagine being able to call out special features of a home that might not be obvious from a picture by itself, such as finishes, room sizes, ceiling heights, appliance brands—features that aren’t easy to display in a picture. We recently found a free web tool called “Thinglink” that allows you to add hotspots to any image so users can click to find …

The folks who brought you the Open Home Pro iPad app for collecting buyer data at open houses have now launched a new iPhone app for $2.99 that makes it simple for realtors to create and post new listings online. Using the app, you can take pictures, enter standard information, and then share new listings on Facebook, via email, or post it to Craigslist. In the future, they hope to add Zillow and Trulia to the postings list.

The app is meant to help realtors create beautiful listings in addition to …

We are sure you have been there—you are showing a property, and the homebuyers have trouble envisioning how the space could look. It is difficult to see past old cabinets in a kitchen, a bad bathroom, and bright paint or loud wallpaper. Even in new houses, your clients may have trouble seeing how great an unfinished basement with a roughed in bath could be.
People who aren’t interior designers or remodeling professionals don’t often spend a lot of time checking out design industry magazines, so they may not know what drywall, …

As a realtor, you have a lot of tools at your disposal for building your connections—and I think most realtors would agree that being connected is essential to building clients. And no where can you put your social connections more to work than via social media. You might have a great Facebook page built and a lot of personal connections on your own Facebook, but how can you best leverage that to build further connections? It may be time to set up your own SocialBio page.
SocialBios allows you to create …

As a realtor, it’s very likely you have realized the marketing potential of a Facebook Page. Facebook is a great place to build connections and share listings. It’s also a great place for professional development and to help stay current on the most recent real estate news and trends. So we have rounded up a few realtor “must follows” on Facebook–either for your own interest, or for articles that are worth sharing with your own page’s followers. You can also follow Crown Community Development of Illinois for Realtors for interesting …

When you have an iPad as a realtor, odds are that you will find yourself in need of a good stylus. A stylus will help you and your clients sign important documents within apps like Docusign. (It will also help you vastly improve your skills within DrawSomething when you are playing on the iPad for fun.)
We picked out a few well-loved (and highly rated) iPad styluses that you may find useful in your professional (and personal!) iPad use.
Bamboo Stylus for iPad
Cost: $29.99
Unique feature: 25% smaller tip versus other models
Reviewers like …

Of all the iPad apps for realtors we have written about, none seems to be more useful than Open Home Pro. This app will make your iPad a necessity to do your best work as a realtor. It turns your iPad into an organizing, home-selling tool.
With the free app, realtors can:

Manage leads, including having leads enter their own information at open houses, saving from difficult to read handwriting or data entry error
Figure out easily which leads are hot, since the app analyze who is most probable to buy
Create property listings …

Great news! We’ve extended our Sell a Home, Score an iPad promotion to run through June 30, 2012! We’d like to thank you every time you sell a home at Highland Woods- with an iPad!

As a reminder, simply fulfill all of the following and you can earn an iPad!

Accompany a new client on their first visit to Highland Woods and fill out a registration card.
It must be during the “Sell & Score” promotion period, which ends June 30th, 2012.
Your client must close on the home before 5 pm on June …

We’d like to thank you every time you sell a home at Highland Woods—with an iPad! Yes, it’s that simple—and there is no limit to how many iPads you can get.

Fulfill all of the following to earn your iPad:

Personally accompany a new client on their FIRST VISIT to Highland Woods and fill out a registration card.
The visit must be during the “Sell & Score” promotion period, which runs from April 19, 2012-June 30, 2012.
Your client must close on the Highland Woods home.

And that’s it! Pick up your iPad after your …