When I accessed the iPhone app store to explore these, I found dozens of other applications for download, including Home Finder. Using large real estate related data bases, including one by Google that stores MLS (multiple listing service) information, Home Finder can access millions of homes for sale. Plug in a zip code for the location of the home you are seeking, a price range, some basic data on number of bedrooms and square footage, and in a few seconds, all homes that fit your parameters are listed.
I tested Home Finder with a search of homes within five miles of Pawleys Island, SC, where we own a vacation home. I set the price between $500,000 and $750,000, the bedrooms at 3+ and the square footage at 4,000. Home Finder kicked out a couple dozen listings (including the same house twice, at two different prices, which indicates that records may not be edited quickly). Many did not include a street address but do include a link to the listing agent's web site, where many more details about the house are available.
Such an application would have saved my wife and me many hours of investigation when we first started looking at properties 20 years ago during vacations along the South Carolina coast. Back then, we relied mostly on the listings in those real estate books you find in racks outside restaurants and in driving around the area. We would stop in golf communities whose front entrances looked attractive or whose golf courses had been well reviewed. Sometimes we hit, and sometimes we missed.
I much prefer the modern app-roach.