Physical references for providing supplemental real estate information

A computer system for using physical references for providing supplemental real estate information, the system comprising:

• a processor and memory configured to execute software instructions embodied within the following components;
• an item identifying component that receives an identification of a physical real estate item with which a user wants to associate supplemental electronic information;
• an item description component that receives electronic supplemental information to associate with the real estate item;
• a reference creation component that creates a physical reference to the electronic information by creating a physical tag that can be printed out or otherwise physically affixed to the item;
• a reference decoding component that receives a physical reference from a visiting user interested in more information related to a real estate item, and decodes the reference to extract an electronic reference to the supplemental information;
• a reference lookup component that looks up the decoded reference to access the supplemental information associated with the real estate item;
• and
• a description display component that displays the supplemental information in response to the visiting user requesting the supplemental information by providing the physical reference to the system.

A computer-readable storage medium comprising instructions for controlling a computer system to retrieve contextually relevant supplemental electronic information related to a physical real estate item, wherein the instructions, upon execution, cause a processor to perform actions comprising:

• receiving a physical reference associated with a real estate item at a location where the real estate item is located;
• decoding the received physical reference to discover an electronic reference embedded within the physical reference;
• determining an application to resolve the discovered electronic reference to receive supplemental electronic information about the real estate item;
• invoking the determined application and providing the electronic reference to the application;
• sending a request to retrieve the supplemental information from the invoked application to a data store that contains the supplemental information;
• determining a behavior of the provided electronic reference;
• and
• displaying the received supplemental information to the user.