Helping buyers and sellers save up to 6% of the real estate value with a mobile application
Three Leaf
Most real estate transactions are made with the involvement of 3rd party agents, which imposes additional fees on both buyers and sellers. These costs amount to roughly 6% of the real estate value! Our Client decided to change that and save money for buyers and sellers by creating a direct connection between them.
About project
When ThreeLeaf Creative contacted Neoteric, they were planning to publish a mobile application for real estate posting with the capabilities of direct live chat between users. The desired result was to lower the additional agent-related costs and simplify the communication between buyers and sellers.
Our tasks
Defining technical requirements and choosing tech stack
The Client wanted to receive suggestions on the tech stack to be used for product development together with all technical requirements.
Developing a product prototype
Our team had a limited time and budget to develop a basic version of the product the Client could showcase to the investor to get funding.
Challenges
1. Keeping user flow uninterrupted with in-app authentication and authorization
Users needed to log in to their accounts in order to have access to their resources. It was not possible to use 3rd party tools such as Amazon Cognito as it would disturb the user’s flow by redirecting them out of the application.
2. Facilitating communication flow between users of different roles
We needed to make conversations easy to follow for the customers and easy to manage for the consultants. The application needed to be fast, reliable, and to handle different types of conversations in different ways.
3. Reducing the time spent on agent-related tasks
The Core API required a set of features, including adding, editing or removing properties, automation triggered by specific actions (e.g. removing a property), and integrations with third-party services.
I’m most impressed by the ease of use and quality of the end product they built. Neoteric delivered a user-friendly, modern, and high-quality end product. In addition to the caliber of their development team, their project management skills are also excellent. They met all expected deadlines and we’re so happy with their work that we don’t intend on working with anyone else in the future.
Solutions
1. Making the application scalable and easy to maintain
To make the application scalable and easy to maintain, we decided to divide it into microservices. That way, updating the existing features or adding the new ones does not require changing the whole application. What’s more, new microservices can be created with new technologies and smoothly communicate with the old ones.
3. Boosting user experience within the application
Even though it was possible to use some 3rd party solution such as Amazon Cognito, it would disturb user flow by running the authentication outside of the application. With the custom solution, the user stays in the app during the whole process.
3. Boosting user experience within the application
Quality Assurance to provide the best user experience for the end users. Our QA team made sure that the whole customer journey inside the app is smooth and easy, and that it stays in-line with the requirements.
Project Results
Helping users find their dream property with few clicks
Users of the application got a convenient system for searching real estate properties by key parameters of the location (even if they don’t know where that location is).
Saving 6% of property cost for buyers and sellers
Thanks to eliminating 3rd party agents from the process, users of the application, both buyers and sellers of real estates, are able to save the cost of fees that can typically get to about 6% of the real estate value.
Boosting app’s efficiency and scalability
Working with GraphQL, we created a typed API and implemented a unified way of filtering. Thanks to these solutions, the app “knows” what data it will receive and is able to filter that data with different fields of a chosen model – which boosts the app’s efficiency and makes it easier to develop by any future team.
