Brokers: Mortgage Industry Will Miss Steve Jobs

""Vickie Thiessen"":http://www.sonomasold.com/about/ still remembers her mother talking to her about the man and his friend who worked late into the night in their garage not far from her home in Palo Alto.

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""He lived three doors down from me,"" she says, describing a young Steve Jobs, who went on to co-found ""Apple, Inc."":http://www.apple.com/ ""They would work really late on this project, and we never really understood much about it.""

Nearly 40 years later, Thiessen, a Healdsburg, California-based broker with ""RE/MAX"":http://www.remax.com/, describes the late businessman as though he never left. Speaking to _MReport_ ├â┬ó├óÔÇÜ┬¼├óÔé¼┼ô via her iPhone ├â┬ó├óÔÇÜ┬¼├óÔé¼┼ô she credits his apps, phones, and gadgets for the comfort and ease with which she sells loans and properties.

Jobs succumbed to a rare case of pancreatic cancer after a long battle Wednesday, according to multiple news reports, leaving in his wake a swath of tech-savvy consumers, including brokers and company executives, with nothing but praise for the visionary who made their professional lives easier.

""Mike Gulitz"":http://www.zoominfo.com/people/Gulitz_Mike_63124258.aspx, a onetime loan officer and founder of ""Marketing Pro Consulting"":http://mpc-co.com/, likens Jobs to a multi-industry Michael Jordan and calls his death a ""huge loss"" to several industries, not excluding his own.

""What Steve did to mobile computing unchains us from the desk,"" he says. ""His innovations allow us to work wherever we are, and that has been a huge benefit for the real estate and mortgage industry.""

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Gulitz created MortgagePlannerCRM, a Salesforce automation tool for mortgage brokers to manage workflow and one in a bevy of apps that companies like his make available for the millions of consumers with iPhones.

Real estate Web site ""Zillow"":http://www.zillow.com/ more recently announced the addition of the Zillow Mortgage Marketplace tool to the Zillow iPhone App, which continues to field industry buzz with the ability for interested homebuyers to secure anonymous quotes from brokers.

Without referring to Jobs, Zillow CEO ""Spencer Rascoff"":http://www.zillow.com/profile/spencer/ called real estate ""inherently mobile"" in a ""statement"":http://zillow.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=159&item=236, adding that his company's aim is to ""provide people with information about homes ├â┬ó├óÔÇÜ┬¼├óÔé¼┼ô and home financing ├â┬ó├óÔÇÜ┬¼├óÔé¼┼ô whenever and wherever they need it.""

Writing for ""_Inman News_"":http://www.inman.com/news/2011/10/5/steve-jobs-changed-world, columnist Glenn Roberts Jr. said that ""Apple's iPhone and iPad represented a grand paradigm shift for the real estate industry, consolidating many devices, applications, and the power of the Internet.""

He called realtors and other industry professionals ""early adopters"" in adapting to Apple products like the iPhone and iPad.

That reality isn't far off for Thiessen. After trading her BlackBerry for an iPhone in March 2010, she confesses to recently purchasing a Macbook ├â┬ó├óÔÇÜ┬¼├óÔé¼┼ô something she intends to follow up with by buying an iPad.

She says that she and her husband, also a broker, deploy a number of apps to search for properties, manage their workflow, even open doors for interested clients by swiping a house code with her iPhone.

Her favorite app: the ""Mortgage Calc App"":http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mortgage-calculator-pro/id315103123?mt=8, by SVT Software.

""I just open my app and get all the information I need,"" she says, calling it ""quicker than the Multiple Listing Service"" that other brokers use. She praises the apps as tools that make her business ""so much easier.""

Her final word for Jobs?

""I am thankful for all the wonderful things he developed,"" she says, adding: ""He invented the Apple computer across the street from me, three doors down, in Palo Alto, California on Flicker Way Street.""