Real Estate Mobile App Empowered with Augmented Reality

The solution developed by Iflexion is an iOS application that supports the end-to-end process of real estate buying and selling. The user can search for property, communicate with the seller/buyer, make offers, and close deals in one place. Intermediaries like real estate agents, concierges, etc., also take part in the negotiation process by communicating with buyers and sellers via an in-app chat.

Our team created an intuitive UI that allows for viewing property lists, marking favorites, and making offers in one click (see the screenshots below).

The AR-powered search for property is one of the real estate application’s key features. The users can search for realty in the app or on-site, when they are in the neighborhood they are interested in.

The in-app search starts with a query containing such data as the desirable property location, building details, floor space, etc. Then the user browses through the search results, marks the favorites, and makes offers.

The application works with several databases that contain unique data. There are three search types:

• Any address ― searching through random addresses
• Peer-to-peer ― searching through the app database on the server
• Listed ― searching through the Home Junction service database that contains the U.S. property data

Iflexion's augmented reality developers enriched the on-site search functionality with AR/VR elements. Passing by the building they are interested in, users can scan the QR code on the “For sale” sign and see all the property details, including the seller’s initial price, immediately on their smartphones. The QR code also opens the real estate app showing the property’s space, house interior, etc. The application allows the users to virtually visit the properties and see what they look like from the inside. To navigate, the users can turn around or touch the phone screen and see the building from any angle, inside and outside.

The mobile app is written in Swift, with MVC architecture. The display featuring geolocation and cartographic information is built with the help of Mapbox. As for the AR/VR reality elements implementation, we used the AVFoundation framework and UILabel for the augmented reality scenes display.

The application is integrated with the following services:

• Home Junction gives information about property in the U.S., including building details, neighborhood statistics, etc.
• Graphiq provides additional static information in diagrams
• Google Street View offers property images

The communication with the backend server is carried out through an API. The requests are sent via HTTPS and the responses come in the JSON format.