It probably won’t be as much fun to play with as Angry Birds, but MRIS — which is the real estate listing provider for most of the D.C. metro area — has announced an MRIS Innovation contest to spur the creation of an innovative local real estate app. A sizable grand prize of $25,000, and all the accompanying publicity, go to the winner.

We’ve seen some other local app challenges, such as Apps for the Army, generate some interest in D.C.’s development community. Recently, DCist co-founder Michael Grass bemoaned the App Trap around public transportation applications. But these real estate apps should be more comprehensive than the transportation apps, where the core issue is that the data is just not that great. If a bus driver leaves their ‘No Service’ sign on or takes a detour, that can completely screw up NextBus. MRIS’ data shouldn’t be nearly as problematic.

In the past month, I was talking to a guy who was looking at a few places to buy on H Street NE, and I said the Redfin app is my favorite — and while ZipRealty, Trulia and a few other national sites all have decent coverage in D.C., but there’s no one app that really blows people away. The hope is that a few companies, who might not normally take on this kind of project on for free, will step up to generate a cool app that works on all the major platforms in time for home-buying next spring.