With spring house-hunting season round the corner, home buyers have yet another source to assist them in their home search – the smartphones, which of late have been boasting an increase in apps that provide all the home-hunt-related information!

Most of the real-estate companies, which have thus far been competing with one another through the ‘online’ route to attract home-hunters, are now viewing the smartphone apps as the new tool to facilitate the home-buying process.

Noting that the brokers are offering these apps for free, Glenn Kelman, CEO of Seattle-based broker Redfin Corp, said that though smartphones apps are necessarily not driving revenue for the brokers, they are “making customers happier.”

By and large, most of the smartphone apps centered around home-hunting essentially function like the traditional home-search Web sites – they list all the necessary details including information about nearby homes for sale; recently-sold homes; and fetching price of the homes.

Furthermore, the smartphone apps combine the elementary home-search functions with the global-positioning technology; thereby providing users the requisite information about their immediate surroundings, without having to type the address or zip code.

Commenting on the convenience factor associated with the smartphone apps, Rachel Ashby, a marketing manager in Seattle who is using Redfin’s app to search for a house, said: “It's like having your laptop with you on the ride.”