Mobile Banking gets Better with the Free CIBC Home Advisor App

Last year we saw the Canadian Imperial Bank of Canada (CIBC) launch a mobile banking App, making it the first major bank in Canada to do so.

CIBC has announced today another mobile innovation with the launch of the free CIBC Home Advisor App for all Canadians, which gives homebuyers access to helpful information, tools, and advice straight from their iPhone or BlackBerry smartphone while they are out hunting for their dream home.

Buying a home and finding the right mortgage is definitely one of the biggest financial decisions anyone has to make in their life. It is important you have the right tools to make an informed decision. Christina Kramer, Executive Vice President, CIBC explained that with the CIBC Home Advisor App, all Canadians have access to advice and information in the palm of their hands.

What can the CIBC Home Advisor App do for you?

Like it was said, the CIBC Home Advisor App gives you the necessary tools to let you access advice and information straight from the palm of your hands.

With the CIBC Home Advisor App, you can:

• • Track and compare properties visited by taking and storing your photos, and completing a homebuyer’s checklist for each home
  • View neighborhood maps and get immediate access to average property valuations and trends
  • Request detailed neighborhood reports for properties of specific interest
  • Post, tweet, text or email details of the properties and neighborhoods you may be considering with your family and friends in real time
  • Request a CIBC Pre-approved mortgage certificate for financing to lock in an interest rate so you can search for your new home worry free
  • Contact the nearest CIBC Mortgage Advisor and arrange to meet wherever is most convenient for you, allowing you to get advice on your mortgage options

You are given complete control of your finances, as you are able to calculate homeownership costs at any given moment with the CIBC Home Advisor App. You can calculate the following to help determine what your best course of action is:

• • Determine the price you can afford to pay for a home
  • Estimate your mortgage payments
  • Compare the costs of buying a home vs. renting
  • Calculate the equity in your current home

When viewing detailed neighborhood information, you have great access to neighborhoods of your choosing valuations, trends and highlights. One of the best parts of the CIBC Home Advisor App is that you can find desirable neighborhoods on a color coded map based solely on property value (see below), making it easy to find houses within you budget.

This app is probably is definitely a great app for any homebuyer. I played around with it for a bit and it takes no time at all to get accustomed to how it works. The layout is easy to understand and it runs well iPhone. The biggest issue I have at the moment is that currently you can only request 5 full property reports a month through the CIBC Home Advisor App. It makes some sense to limit it, considering the amount of people who will begin to use the app. Hopefully in the future they raise start raising the limit.

For anyone interested in downloading the CIBC Home Advisor App for the iPhone or iTouch, click here.

For anyone interested in downloading the CIBC Home Advisor App for the BlackBerry, click here.