Home Impressions Home Buyer Edition User’s Guide and FAQ

Organize your thoughts. Communicate clearly about what matters to you. Work through the trade-offs to find the home of your dreams with Home Impressions Home Buyer Edition.

The Home Buyer Edition provides a simple set of screens to help home buyers identify what attributes are important to them in a home, and then collect their thoughts about each home they tour.

My Realtor Information

Your Realtor can use the Home Impressions Realtor Edition to share their electronic business card with you via email.  Their update will populate the empty white box below the “My Realtor Information” heading on the Options screen.

On your iPad or iPhone, from your Realtor’s email titled “Home Impressions – Realtor information,” touch the “RealtorInfo.hidd” attachment and the screen will swipe left to show “Loading…” Press the action button in the top right corner, and select Open in “Impressions.” The Mail app will swipe away, and the Home Impressions Home Buyer Edition will start up and import the attachment. When the Options screen appears, you’ll see the newly imported information from your Realtor!

Sharing Information

In the 1.0 releases of the Home Impressions Realtor Edition and Home Impressions Home Buyer Edition, buttons on the Options screen enable information exchange via email.

• Touching “Share My Information” will create an email that includes an attachment that holds the your profile and homes. Use this option to update your Realtor and other home buyers with your latest updates.
• Touching “Share Homes” will create an email and attachment that hold your complete list of homes. During import by others, the attachment will add new homes, and overwrite existing homes, updating them with any changes you have made (e.g., price).
• Touching “Share Profiles” will create an email and attachment that hold the entire set of data associated with your device. You’ll typically only use this option to send out initial profiles or to synchronize your iPad and iPhone. The attachment will completely overwrite all existing profile data when it is imported, so care should be take to ensure that only the most current information is shared.

The Screens: Profiles

The Profiles screen allows you to select a profile:

Each profile includes a set of attributes and a set of ratings for each home. By touching the “detail disclosure” button for one of the profiles, you can access the Profile screen which enables changes to the profile name, phone number, email and graph color.

Only the profile you have designated as yours using the “This Is Me” button on the Profile screen will be editable. (The “This Is Me” button allows you and your partner to share the same iPhone or iPad, but keep track of your individual sets of ratings separately.)

The Screens: Attributes

The Attributes screen allows you to describe what is most important to you when buying a home, and then adapt your preferences during your search.

A base set of attributes is provided when each profile is initially generated, and can be fully customized to correspond to your exact preferences. Changes in the weight of any given attribute are immediately reflected in the overall rating shown on the Homes screen.

The Screens: Homes

The Homes screen provides a one page list of the homes under consideration, organized into three groups: Favorite, Candidate, Not Interested:

Sorted by rating, then by increasing cost within each group, this screen provides a snapshot of the top contenders, and provides easy access to information about each home, and the ratings screen for each.

The Screens: Ratings

The Ratings screen allows you to organize notes, take or select photos, and rate each attribute of the selected home:

The Screens: Options

The “Edit My Information” button will create a new profile for you, or will access your current profile if one has been created. The Profile screen may also be accessed from the Profiles tab.

Just below your Realtor’s electronic business card, you’ll see the Rating Style selection:

The rating styles — scale from one to ten, one to five stars, and three color-coded smiley faces — offer you different levels of granularity for your ratings. Try all three styles to determine which works best for you. All three are converted to a 1-10 scale, with stars being equivalent to 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10, and smiles being equivalent to 2, 6 and 10 so the values will always be compatible among users with different “Rating Style” settings.

FAQ

Q: Do I have to update my information using the “Edit My Information” button on the Options screen?
A: Yes. This button will create a new profile to hold your attributes, homes and ratings. And, no: Your profile may also be created by touching the “+” in the top left of the Profiles screen.

Q: Do I have to update My Realtor’s information before I begin using the Home Impressions Home Buyer Edition?
A: No. The email address will be used as the sender address for data exchanged via email, but all other information is for display only. Of course, if you touch the “Share My Information” button, only the information that you have provided will be included in the email attachment.

Q: I have a question that’s not addressed here. How can I get help?
A: Contact us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/FTLapps or email us at support@ftlapps.com.