Saved Searches Come to the iPhone!

Ahoy Redfinnians! We just got word from Apple that an update to our iPhone App will hit the store in the next hour or so. The big new feature is the ability to run saved searches from Redfin.com on your iPhone:

You can also save searches run on your iPhone, for later use from either the iPhone or a web browser:

Our goal is to build a home-search application that easily moves from your computer to your mobile device and back again. Since we first released an iPhone app, we’ve shared users’ list of favorite properties between the iPhone app and our website, and allowed an iPhone user to photograph a listing and upload the picture to our site.  Saved searches is the next step.

We also want to make it easy for people to move from the virtual experience Redfin offers to actual service from our real estate agents. Some day, the iPhone app will let people schedule tours or contact a Redfin agent about a property.

Even we have been surprised at how important the iPhone app has become to our business. Last Saturday, when we assembled a dozen Redfin users to hear what they had to say about us, one attendee was shocked to learn we even had a website. Her entire Redfin experience had been limited to our iPhone app.

This just puts an exclamation point on Fred Wilson’s thesis that companies should build for mobile  first, and the web second.  There are few activities more mobile than a real estate search, and few that engage users so deeply. Next up for us are Android and iPad apps.

We’ve been promising to support other devices for a long time, but when each device is a side-project, we end up putting it off. So now we’re building a dedicated mobile team. Before anyone asks when we’re supporting Android or the iPad, can I direct you to the Redfin jobs page? If you know a pioneering engineer in San Francisco, have her send me a resume: glenn (at) redfin (com). It’s a very, very sweet gig.