Pocket full of change

Three Hawaii friends launch
a product in use by Realtors
nationwide

In 1998, three Prudential Locations Inc. staff members met at the Waikele home of Scott Kimball and popped the cork on a bottle of champagne.

The occasion? Their decision to forge ahead on an idea for a software program that would make real estate listings and other data available to on-the-go brokers via hand-held devices.

"It seemed like a good idea to get things off on a positive note with a little celebration," Kimball said.

A bit premature perhaps, but their high expectations have been borne out.

Pocket Real Estate, the brainchild of Kimball, Everett Kaneshige and Rich Jackson, has grown from its bubbly beginnings in Kimball's home to become the market leader in its field.

The software allows Multiple Listing Service data to be downloaded into a handheld by hot-synching with a computer. Using the browser-based interface, brokers can huddle with clients anywhere to search for properties by location, price, number of bedrooms and other criteria and access other data, such as contact information for a property's listing agent.

So far, it's a hit. Pocket Real Estate, which is offered in Honolulu at a one-time fee of $199, today has a presence in 90 percent of the more than 1,600 Realtor boards in the country and has an estimated 50,000 users, Kaneshige says.

Through their company Hand e Corp., the trio has just released a wireless version of the software available for $145 a year that it hopes will find even more adherents by eliminating the need to hot-synch. The wireless service already is being used in 40 Realtor boards.

The company's three founders brought different skills to the table. Kaneshige has a law background, Jackson is a Prudential agent and Kimball worked in the real estate brokerage's information technology department.

But they agreed from the start on one point: making the software compatible with any of the different MLS formats and handheld devices now in use.

That's been a key to their success. By a stroke of luck, few of their potential competitors across the country have taken the same approach, usually opting to design software for a specific region or MLS system that limits the product's growth.

In the meantime, Hand e Corp. has steadily built up a critical mass of business that is increasingly working in their favor.

"Realtor boards start to look into building their own software for their region but we're getting enough name recognition now that many just say, 'why spend the money on that when Pocket Real Estate is already ready to go?'" said Kaneshige, Hand e Corp.'s president.

Kimball acknowledges the software was originally intended merely as a "conversation starter."

"Our original vision was that a broker and his client would sit in a Starbucks and use it to scan what's out there and sort of strategize," he said.

But he said that users, facing growing pressure to stay on top of an increasingly fast-paced market, have pushed for more bells and whistles such as downloadable photos of homes -- now available in the wireless version -- and "virtual tours."

Those are powerful tools to have in your pocket, said Felix Hernandez, a broker with Abe Lee Realty who is learning towards buying the product.

"Things move so fast now that contracts are being signed on the trunk of a car. If you blink, a sale is gone," he said.

Hernandez believes Hand e Corp. may find a ready market in the future for even more features such as the ability to e-mail or fax a sales contract via a handheld.

Hold that thought, Kaneshige said. With a solid following now established, he said Hand e Corp.'s focus now is to concentrate on opening new markets and adding features that are becoming more feasible as the data-storage capacities of handheld devices grow.

The company is exploring the possibilities of adding access to financial information such as interest rates, lender options, loan applications, tax record and flood zone information.

"We provide some of the pieces that are critical to a real estate transaction but there are many more that we could add," he said. "We'd like to make as much relevant data available as we can in one point."

Pocket Real Estate is usually sold wholesale to a Realtors board or directly to agents. But Kaneshige, who travels extensively to promote the product, wants to reduce that burden so he can focus more on new features and new markets.

As such, Hand e Corp. now is focusing more on selling flat-rate site licenses to boards that can then offer the software to members, possibly as a part of membership dues, and is in talks with wireless carriers to offer the product as a bundled-in option in their plans.

Kimball doesn't expects sales to be hurt if the real estate market cools. Though Pocket Real Estate's growth has coincided with the tremendous recent spurt in real estate sales volume nationwide, he doesn't think they are related.

"It may have helped a little but I really think it works against us because brokers are too busy in periods like that to try to learn something new," he said. The flip side is that Hand e Corp. does not expect sales to suffer if the market cools and hopefully increase in the future as younger, more tech-savvy agents join the sales force.