Home Remodel, (image source brekkeconstruction.com)
In our continued search to find our readers interesting apps on Real Estate we recently reviewed an app called House Plan. This new app called Remodel or Move might have been the inspiration for a HGTV series which explores the same dilemma some home owners have about remodeling their existing home or selling. The challenge with these kind of decision are the estimating the construction cost of your remodeling efforts. But unlike the House Plans which allows for designing Floor plans, this app allow for photos to be taken of your favorite room and then using a color palette your can add new shades of color to see the final finish of the room.
This is a FREE app which might be a decent replacement for iPhone’s plain old Notepad since it allow you to add photos and share them with along with your note. The app also offers a Cost Estimate tab which ironically takes you to the company’s website where they list about a dozen common remodeling projects. These projects include:
Bathroom Remodel, Bathroom Addition, Kitchen Remodel, Bedroom Addition, Garage Expansion………etc.
However, when the users clicks on any of these topics, they are forwarded to a Contact Request page where we suspect the user is put in touch with a local contractor! That’s not something I would have expected to begin with from a mobile app since the user can not develop a cost estimate on their mobile device. After all, the notion of having a mobile app is to be able to create valuable content on a mobile device, and not just a gateway to a website. In fact, we are now finding ourselves reviewing a Website and not a Mobile app.
The iPad version of the app was updated more than year ago in 2012 which is not a very good indicator of the developers commitment to add new features. Also, the app itself only creates the floor plans and can NOT be used to creating Lighting, Electrical, Mechanical or any other plans that can be incorporated into the users design. The app supports iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation), iPod touch (5th generation) and iPad. Requires iOS 5.1 or later.
But the app is lacking any design tool integration and we are not sure if you are lacking any other tools. We also don’t like the fact that the users can NOT create any Mobile content beyond what the are able to do using the standard tools that comes with a Smart Phone out of the box. All the other Estimating Tools that lead to a website offer very little valuable information. In fact, the Kitchen Remodel tab just displays the Average Cost of a Kitchen Remodel as $20,000 which might not offer a typical remodeling prospect how that $20,000 estimate was developed.
Therefore we will be removing this app from our iphone and can NOT recommend it since majority of the content is on the company’s website and there is no need to have a mobile app for it.
Have you used this app!? Let us know what you think?