Land id, the mapping and property research platform formerly known as MapRight, says its biggest competitor in the real estate industry for vehicle dashboard space isn’t another proptech company. It’s a hunting app.
That’s according to founder Steve Roberson, who told Inman that Land id’s new Apple CarPlay integration, which went live in late July, has almost no direct competition among real estate tools built for the car.
The new feature brings saved maps, parcel boundaries and owner names onto the dashboard screen, letting agents reference property data while driving instead of glancing down at a phone.
Roberson cautioned that he doesn’t know exactly how many other proptech apps have Apple CarPlay integrations, but to his best knowledge, there aren’t many.
“Honestly, I don’t know,” Roberson said. “It seems shocking to me that there aren’t more, but I don’t think there really are. None come to mind. I know this is kind of anecdotal, but our main ‘competition’ for a CarPlay app in real estate is basically a random hunting app.”
There are other real estate apps for CarPlay, though they don’t cover the features that Land id does.
In 2023, Inman reported that Rocket Homes released an iOS app available through CarPlay that enables drivers to see homes listed for sale in a “nearby” tab. Unlike Land ID’s integration, Rocket Homes’ app is more homeowner- and consumer-facing.
A cursory review for real estate apps on Apple CarPlay didn’t find many other examples.
Land id’s new CarPlay feature lets agents drop a waypoint with a single tap as they drive. It’s a red pin marking a property or area of interest that syncs back to their Land id account, where they can add notes later.
Owner labels and parcel boundaries stay visible in real time as the agent’s location moves across the map, and the app includes built-in turn-by-turn navigation.
Roberson said the CarPlay integration makes sense because real estate agents are so frequently in the car, driving around canvassing neighborhoods or their market.
“To me, it’s a significant upgrade in the experience for any kind of mobile activity a real estate agent is having,” Roberson said. “It doesn’t matter what they’re doing. They can visualize the data as they drive around, whether it’s touring a specific ranch or driving around a neighborhood and seeing all the property lines, owner names and waypoints.”
Mitigating distracted driving risks
Roberson said the CarPlay integration design was deliberately limited to one interaction — tapping the waypoint button — to avoid the kind of distracted-driving risk that has dogged other in-car app experiences.
“That’s very much intentional, as opposed to previously, when they just had the phone and had to look up and down constantly, which is a huge safety issue,” Roberson said.
While using third-party apps like CarPlay or Android Auto may be better than holding a cell phone while driving, recent research shows it’s not exactly that much safer. In fact, it may be more dangerous.
A 2020 study of distracted driving by TRL found that using Apple CarPlay by touch increased distracted drivers’ response times by 57 percent, the most of any factor examined. The percentage increase in response time was greater than that of cannabis use and hand-held phone use.
Using Apple CarPlay by voice command, however, did lower the percentage increase in distracted drivers’ response time to 36 percent.
Roberson said the ease of Land id’s CarPlay use can mitigate distraction.
“The only real function we have is dropping the red dot right where you’re at as you’re driving,” he said. “So you zoom in, set your zoom level, it auto-centers as you drive, and the only interaction is a button with a red waypoint icon. You tap it, it drops a pin at your current location, and you come back later to fill it out.”
Meeting agents where they work
Founded in 2014 and based in Austin, Texas, Land id initially built its client base with land and ranch brokers doing property tours across large rural parcels.
“Previously, what we found more on the rural side was that a lot of people were actually mounting iPads and other things in their vehicles,” Roberson said. “We wanted to replace that. We have a nice mobile app, but that’s when the first clue hit. I wonder if CarPlay would be an even better experience for them.”
As Land id attracted more urban real estate agent clients, Roberson said the company also found they were using real estate apps on their phones while driving around canvassing their neighborhoods. They would find a property of interest, wanting to write a quick note, having to pull up the phone, tap it, keep driving, and try to remember what they said.
Since the integration has been offered, Roberson said many longtime users say Land ID in CarPlay has fully replaced Google and Apple Maps for them.
The parcel data underlying the feature includes acreage, tax and building information, floodplain and wetlands coverage, water well data, and, in a recent addition, 2-foot high-resolution contour mapping.
Land id is also testing artificial intelligence-generated property narratives and neighborhood-level breakdowns with information on walkability, noise sources, and owner-occupancy versus rental status. Roberson said they are built for eventual use inside CarPlay as well, layered on top of the driving view.
CarPlay access is limited to Land id’s Pro subscribers and, for now, to iOS. Roberson said an Android Auto version is planned but didn’t offer a timeline.
“I genuinely believe that providing valuable real estate data for professionals in CarPlay is, in the long term, if you do it correctly, really high value,” Roberson said. “It’s a great advantage for us to meet our clients where they work.”
