CellSigns Inc. has made it easier for home buyers to make purchase descisions with the release of Mobile Agent, its real estate search tool for consumers on-the-go.

Home buyers can now drive around their local market, see any home for sale and get property information on that home, including photos and detailed descriptions, via their handset. Real estate brokers and agents can deploy an SMS mobile access tool.

"Many home buyers today do lots of online research, but they leave their desktops when they start to get more serious about buying a home," said Mark Ford, CEO of Cellsigns, Philadelphia.

"We saw an opportunity in the marketplace to power mobile real estate info, and we wanted people have just a standard mobile phone to have access, so decided that text messaging was the primary mechanism to reach the largest audience," he said.

Using Mobile Agent 2.0, home buyers can quickly search by property address, street name, Multiple Listings Service number or agent name from any mobile phone and get information via SMS, MMS and CellSign's mobile Internet site.

Mobile Agent provides such features as photos delivered to consumers' mobile phone with a detailed property description and a list of comparable properties in the area.

Other features include text-to-client immediately sending listing information to clients or other agents and click-to-call letting consumers instantly connect to their agent or broker.

Property descriptions include all the relevant pricing information, square footage, acreage, up to 12 pictures and the number of beds and baths, among other details.

Home buyers can request additional information via CellSign's real estate text messaging service, including details about taxes, school districts and whether or not the property has air conditioning, a garage or basement.

Also, home buyers can log in to CellSign's Web site at http://www.cellsigns.com to plot the homes they have viewed on an interactive map.

Mobile Agent works on all mobile phones without any downloads or special training.

The Mobile Agent offering has been launched market by market to thousands of real estate agents. The service currently covers 20 major metro areas and more are being added daily.

Major markets served by Mobile Agent include Philadelphia, Chicago, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Dallas/Ft. Worth, the San Francisco Bay Area, Portland, OR, and Orlando, FL, along with with Boston and Seattle.

"We have pretty much 100 percent coverage of properties listed by real estate agents and brokerages in our current markets, and we're adding between five and ten new markets per month," Mr. Ford said.

The RE/MAX 4000 office in Grand Junction, CO, has added a Mobile Agent portal to its Web site.

In about a month or so, CellSigns will release a Mobile Agent application downloadable from the iPhone App Store.

The service is free for consumers other than carriers' data charges, while for agents and brokers it is subscription-based.

Subscribers get mobile search for all buyers, full reporting on all activities of buyers in their market, including every property they have viewed, a widget portal on their Web site and offline tools allowing agents to hand out a how-to card telling consumers how Mobile Agent works.

The package also includes a listing tool letting subscribers advertise their own listings and on-property signage with a call-to-action urging prospective buyers to text in a property ID keyword to a specific short code.

There is also an active chat feature that lets consumers chat live with a broker or agent through interactive SMS sessions via handsets or instant messaging via computers.

Agents and brokers can sign up at http://www.mymobileagent.com.

CellSigns created a YouTube video to promote the Mobile Agent platform.

"Right now we're the only ones offering this service," Mr. Ford said.

"Other companies do SMS marketing for real estate companies, but their technology is limited to property IDs at specific listings and their coverage is limited to the agents on their service," he said. "They might cover roughly 10 out of the 60,000 properties for sale in the Philadelphia market, while we cover 100 percent of them.

"We've given consumers a free mobile tool for getting real estate information, and our partners have a tool to advertise their own listings and communicate with their buyers."