Apartment app hunting
We met the founders of a real estate startup through a referral from another real estate company we worked with in the past. While the client had plenty of stellar experience in real estate, she did not possess a technical background. This lack of experience created a bit of anxiety about the whole process of building a web app, and the time and effort needed was a complete unknown at the time.
Another area that caused some concern was the fact that the real estate industry in Chicago is very crowded and contains many of well-known competitors including large broker companies, Craigslist, and several other apps and websites. To combat the competitive market of Chicago real-estate we needed to create a seamless rental app and experience for customers!
A new way to find an apartment
The brand offers a beautiful apartment hunting experience for younger professionals looking for attainable luxury apartments.
In order to create this new residential real estate shopping experience the first thing we had to do was create a consumer facing app where users could search for apartments that fit their needs. The website had to make it easy to search for features such as the number of bedrooms, bathrooms, price, location, and amenities, and building features.
Area for quote from client
We also had to create a very thorough dashboard for property companies and owners to upload building information. A main differentiator for it is the precise and up-to-date information for each building & unit, where many apps or websites only give you a ‘bird’s-eye look’ into what the unit and building are like. The app lets the user know every single detail of the building, so they know exactly what they’re getting into!
To accomplish this we needed to create a fast and seamless process for building admins to create buildings, which includes information such as the address, building amenities, broker information, and what utilities are included.
We also needed to include a way to create floorplan for each building, which all had custom prices, details, and features. Finally we needed a way to mass create units based off the floorplan, so the building admins didn’t have to spend days creating a ‘profile’ for each building.
Moving in
After getting a good understanding of what the client wanted we used our traditional design process to build the backend, which includes creating wireframes, sharing them with the customer, and getting feedback to make changes. We also made sure that we were agile enough in our development process that we could make changes if needed. Luckily, our process allowed us to be flexible as the business demands and plans changed throughout our build cycle, but we were able to create a product that is scalable, good looking, and completely functional!