This app wants consumers to buy their home, pay for it through their app

There is no shortage of real estate search sites, from the big boys over at realtor.com all the way down to a lone agent’s IDX site in a small town. There is also no shortage of apps aimed at making the home buying process easier, ranging from electronic signature apps (which are useful) to one-off mortgage calculators.

In that environment, it is hard to stand out, as these apps tend to blur together. But our ears perked up when realtycloud launched a new app with a big red shiny “buy” button. For years, it has been said that consumers will never buy a home online, but realtycloud disagrees.

How realtycloud gets things done

But what is fascinating is that instead of simply offering real estate search and adding a “buy” button, they’ve integrated a suite of third party apps to make it legitimately possible:

• Home Junction to provide MLS or property data directly into an online contract
• DocuSign to electronically sign all contracts & addendum’s
• Mitek’s Mobile Deposit™ to deposit funds directly into an online escrow account
• TitleVest Services LLC for integrated title & settlement services
• Stripe for payment processing

They say the app is a “safe, simple and efficient way to execute real estate contracts for home purchases.” They explain that they’ve “mobilized” this complex process to nix paper.

“Today, the mobile realty solutions available lack integration making if very challenging for buyers to use a single mobile app to expedite the entire real estate transaction,” said Paul Doughty, Founder & CEO of realtycloud. “We integrated the best solutions into a single app that makes it easy for buyers to navigate through the home purchasing process from their mobile devices. Our next version will incorporate additional Partner capabilities, and other platforms, bringing together the transactional process even further.”

Is this a threat to real estate practitioners?

The realtycloud app is now available for a user in any state to quickly make an offer on a property. Users in Massachusetts, Florida, and Texas will have full functionality allowing for the execution of purchase & sales agreements along with other integrated capabilities. The company anticipates rolling out this full functionality app in other states in the near future.

They indicate that more apps are to come to help the transaction process, and it is a tool that sounds threatening to agents, but will be embraced as one of many tools in the practitioner’s tool belt. This proves that the agent’s value proposition is not in the transaction, but in getting consumers to the transaction with the best negotiated deal possible.