Home Finder app for iOS & Android features augmented reality

Rating: Grapple & Halifax get together for home buyers

A team of UX and visual designers; senior native Apple iOS and Android developers; and QA testers put together by Grapple Mobile has produced the Halifax Home Finder app. It’s already been named ‘app of the week’ by the Guardian newspaper and amongst its leading features is support for augmented reality (AR). Simply by holding up their smartphone and panning around the vicinity users will be able to view properties currently for sale in the surrounding area. The app also offers property search facilities; mortgage affordability calculators; local area information; and property buyer guides. The app is already available for free from Google Play and the Apple iTunes App Store. Bizarrely Grapple has created a page for mobile phone owners here which won’t display video on our Nokia Lumia 800 W7 Mango phone. So much for the QA testing.*

Grapple boasts it worked closely with the Lloyds Banking Group (Halifax) through the app delivery process releasing prototypes throughout the project, and supporting a Halifax internal distribution and feedback cycle with top executives and employees.

“With this new app we provide house hunters with easily and readily accessible information and guidance to help them make sense of the residential property market and make better-informed property decisions,” claimed Stephen Noakes, mortgages director with Halifax.

The Halifax Home Finder app was launched on May 8th 2012 will be supported by a high profile above-the-line campaign.

“Halifax had a very clear proposal to utilise the direct nature of the mobile channel to provide a genuinely useful app for their customers, whilst simultaneously positioning Halifax as a challenger brand,” explained Adam Levene, chief strategy officer with Grapple.

Grapple has also just launched the first Sky News Arabia app in the Middle East, as well as being nominated for Retail Week’s ‘Mobile Solution of the Year’ for its work with electrical retailer, Comet.

* UPDATE: Grapple tells us that Halifax themselves created the mobile page. Should have gone to [Grapple]savers! Grapple created the m.halifax.co.uk/finder page