Matthew Ferrara is Banker & Tradesman’s real estate technology writer. He is the founder of Matthew Ferrara Seminars (mfseminars.com), a Boston-area company that provides technology training to real estate professionals nationwide.

Last month, the National Association of Realtors released a report indicating that most of its million members planned to double their spending on technology this year. Good news, you’d think, from an industry that fancies itself innovative with technology. To see how far this “doubled spending” might go, I thought it would be interesting to get some feedback from my students in cities ranging from Boston to Charlotte, N.C., to Washington, D.C., where NAR last week held its mid-year meetings. With little more than informal “raise your hand” techniques, my survey of Realtors attending a technology seminar showed a slightly different picture.

Let’s start with the numbers: In Philadelphia, about 95 percent of a group of 250 agents raised their hand to indicate they owned a laptop. In Boston, about the same percentage out of 75 students indicated laptop ownership. A full 99 percent of 50 Realtors had a laptop in Parsippany, N.J., while about 75 percent of 200 students in Charlotte claimed to own a fairly modern laptop. Not a bad start considering the diverse geography of this informal sampling. Another, similar survey was more revealing: At least 98 percent or more of all Realtor groups in a number of cities cited owning a “handheld computer” with only one exception in Hartford, Conn., where the number was a solid 100 percent. The same percentages came back on the question of digital camera ownership, with almost 100 percent of hands in Philadelphia and Parsippany, and about 80 percent in Hartford. Overall, if NAR’s survey indicates Realtors will be spending more on technology this year, it looks like a lot of that will be for replacements and upgrades of tools they already own.

But it’s not all rosy in Realtor-ville. Let’s look at the second part of each of my surveys. To each Realtor group, I asked a second set of questions: How many laptop owners took their laptop to their last three listing presentations? Three agents in Philly, four in Boston, two in Parsippany and two in Charlotte said they had. Not encouraging, so I changed the question: How many used their laptop at their last three open houses? One Realtor in Boston and two in Hartford said they had, and none anywhere else. Well, let’s try the digital camera, since everyone has one: How many agents take multiple photos and upload them to a company Web site or multiple listing service at the listing appointment? Results: 3 percent in Hartford, 2 percent in Philly, 1 percent in Parsippany and none in Charlotte. And what about PDAs? Has anyone used their handheld computer to “beam” marketing material – a business card, flyer or photos – to a buyer during the last three open houses they conducted? Results: none. Zero. Zilch.

While my results are admittedly far from scientific, the anecdotal conclusions are inescapable: While many Realtors either own or plan to buy technology-related items this year, the real problem lies in their lack of applying technology to everyday sales activities. In each city and in every survey, I watched as audiences stunned themselves; as they looked at each other’s hands (or lack thereof) in the air, the picture was clear: When it comes to technology, many agents seem to have missed the point of portability.

Take, for example, the idea of taking your laptop to a home listing presentation. Now this seemed like the uber-obvious point of getting a laptop in the first place. The portable nature of the computer is not so you can take it from your desk at home to your desk at the office; it’s portable so you can take it to work – and that work happens in the client’s house. Why spend the extra money on a laptop when a sufficiently cheap desktop can crank out labels? Let your imagination wander, and you’ll see where this is headed.

House Call

Imagine that you arrive 15 minutes early to a listing presentation. You roll down the car window and lean out with your camera-equipped PDA; you snap a shot of the front of the home and beam it to your laptop. With simple Solitaire-enabled skills, you drag the photo from the desktop into the first slide of your PowerPoint presentation to customize the opening screen. Closing the lid of the laptop, you enter the home and greet the potential seller. At the table, you flip open the laptop, which jumps to life instantly (it was in standby mode) and you begin talking about your company, your personal skills and your marketing plan. When it’s time to talk about your Web site, you show it live in your browser (your laptop is online wirelessly through your cell phone). You show your site’s features, click over to partner sites like Realtor.com and preview a list of registered buyers you will alert the moment you list this home. You even demonstrate a virtual tour, so the seller can picture what their home will look like online. When it comes time to talk pricing, you click over to the local multiple listing service and let the seller do the driving; together you click up similar homes and review the market prices in real time. Sellers trust themselves and the data on the screen more than any printout you could have brought along. Satisfied of your qualifications and pricing strategy, they agree to work with you. With two clicks you call up the forms software, type in some basic listing agreement information and e-mail a copy to the seller right before their eyes. Since you were just hired, you reach into your bag and take out your camera-equipped PDA and start snapping shots of the house – four, five, six, seven photos in seconds. Using a USB cord or wireless synchronization, you transfer the photos to the laptop and begin marketing: First, you upload the photos to your MLS or company Web page (or both). A cup of coffee later, you drop the photos into your e-newsletter tool and fire it off to 10 registered buyers in your database. As the seller watches, you burn the photos, a few extra forms and some useful articles onto a CD and hand it to them, and beam your contact information into their PDA so they can call, e-mail or stop by your office any time during the transaction. Confident in another job well done, you leave the home and head to your next appointment.

That, I submit, is the point of using mobile technology to sell real estate. Everything else is busy work, mouse clicks or just so much time wasted sitting at a desk. Nothing described in the sequence above is impossible – or even hard to do – once you decide to spend more time integrating technology into your day. Let’s break it down:

Start by taking your laptop everywhere. If you don’t plan to carry it, don’t buy it. It’s the power tool of choice at listing presentations, and equally cool at open houses. Rather than telling a buyer you will “contact them later,” imagine saying “sit down!” and using your laptop to check inventory, scan mortgage rates, view school info and e-mail them items to review later. It makes sales sense: there’s a buyer right in front of you, why would you let them leave? Because you left your office at home.

Next, work on integration. Your laptop is not a fancy printing press; it’s not a database filing cabinet and it’s certainly not a photo library – or at least it’s not very good at any of these tasks if you cannot do them when and where they are needed. Want to give a visitor to the open house something to remember? Try a CD-ROM with 100 photos, a few videos, a printable flyer, a link to your Web site and a few useful articles, all custom created in about 20 seconds while they wait. Sure beats the faded photocopy any day, and it moves your marketing from “printed” to “imprinted” on the mind of the consumer. What good is a database of buyers unless you’re using it. Conduct a cross-search on the screen, creating a list of prospects you’ll notify the moment the seller lists with you. And let’s get one thing straight: a picture is only worth a thousand words if somebody actually sees it. So hand your laptop to the next buyer you meet and tell them to keep pressing the spacebar until they find a photo of a property they want to see – or buy.

Lastly, look for new possibilities every day. Each time you reach for a pen or click File/Print, ask yourself: Is this something I could just as easily show on my laptop screen or carry on my PDA? Look for places where you are wasting time under-leveraging your technology’s portability. Make a note each time you snap your fingers and say, if I’d only had my laptop with me now, I’d be able to show them the photo or take them online. The more ways you can bring your laptop, PDA or even cell phone into the sales process – at home, in the car, at a client’s house – the better returns you’ll get on all this money NAR says you’re going to be spending.