Mobile real estate search is here, so you better get ready to deliver your listings over yet another medium. Are you reaching these home buyers on the go?

A growing trend among increasingly tech-savvy home buyers is to browse real estate listings from a mobile phone. For some, it's counterintuitive. "Why would they want to browse the Internet from such a small screen," you say. Well, you've probably never browsed on an iPhone or some of the other touch screen devices, have you? My first experience was on my son's iPod Touch, and I have to tell you - it's pretty slick. Since you can zoom in and out of a page quickly, it is fairly easy to navigate, and the browser screen is rendered almost identically to a Safari browser window on the iMac desktop machine.

What does that mean to the real estate industry, and you in particular? Well, it means that real estate searchers are increasingly browsing the Internet from their mobile devices, because the technology is now there to make it convenient and actually productive. No more clicking through text-only screens. It's a near-desktop browsing experience on the go.

Here's a little statistic for you. Did you know that 48% of all mobile web browsing in September 2009 was done on an iPhone? That's astonishing, but what are you going to do about it? With mobile real estate search on the rise, I'd suggest making sure your IDX website provider has an iPhone app available for your potential customers to download. If yours doesn't, This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or call me at (208) 249-8893 and I can help you out with a mobile real estate site of your own.

The benefit of offering an iPhone app is both obvious and exciting. You can do postcard campaigns and other advertising promotions to draw people to your site to download it. Once they do, they'll have a slick interface for searching properties in your area. They probably won't delete the app once they install it, either, so it's a great way to build a long term relationship with them. The best part is that all the leads come to you...on your mobile device, no doubt. How's that for mobile real estate search?