Realtors launch their own free iPhone app

The Realtors are taking their listings to the iPhone. Realtor.com, the Web site associated with the industry's main trade group, just unveiled its free iPhone app.

I haven't tried it myself yet, but their online demo showed a couple of cool features, including access to about 4 million listings across the United States that they say are updated every 15 minutes. Like Zillow's iPhone app, and the Sawbuck mobile Web site (designed to work with every smart phone that can access the Internet) the new app uses the phone's GPS function to peg searches to your location.

The Realtors say the new app will allow home shoppers to search for open houses within a 20-mile radius, sorted by location or date. Users can take camera-phone photos of listings as they tour them, assign them star ratings, jot notes on the phone, and quickly post listings to their Twitter or Facebook pages--or e-mail them to friends, family and their buyer's agent.

Like Realtor.com, the app does have a handy one-click link to the listing agent, who usually is not the person a buyer should approach first for information about a house, because that agent is already committed to representing the bargaining interests of the seller.

The folks at Realtor.com wouldn't get into specifics about whether apps for other brands of smart phones would be coming soon. But they did say they hope "to launch other mobile initiatives" later in the year.

Once you manage a good tryout of this latest app -- or the ones from Zillow and Sawbuck--come back to the comments section and tell us all how it went.