Real Estate Web App for Property Deals

Industry:
Real Estate
Location:
Brazil
Collaboration
2015

Customer

David Sherbow is a seasoned attorney, broker, and realtor with extensive hands-on experience in the US real estate industry. He partnered with Brandon Johns, a young entrepreneur, to launch a startup.

Their aim was to build a comprehensive online real estate service for Latin America, transferring the successful practices of US apps to this rapidly growing, yet still underdeveloped market.

Challenge

Customers asked Cyfrania to develop convenient functionalities covering all needs for homeowners, realtors, buyers, and renters. We had to replicate successful models from popular American real estate platforms.

Plus, the app had to include an extra feature: pulling together relevant real estate listings for buying, selling, and renting in the target area from numerous online sources.

The plan was to first launch the app in Brazil, with an aim to cover Latin America later.

Solution

Analyzing the task led us to this tech stack:

  • Ruby on Rails for fast backend setup.
  • React for a stylish interface.
  • PostgreSQL for managing listing databases.
  • Elasticsearch for efficient listing searches.
  • Stripe and Braintree for user-friendly payments.
  • Digital Ocean as affordable and functional cloud infrastructure.

Key App Features

This web application came with the following functions.

Features for buyers and rentals:

  • Easy browsing of real estate listings for sale and rent. Users had many filters, custom keyword search, and a list of popular search queries.
  • Neighborhood insights. This website section allowed homeowners and realtors to describe their areas, with photo galleries, infrastructure details, agent reviews, and stories from locals.
  • Saving search history and favorites. Registered users could save their favorite listings and revisit viewed ones in their account.
  • Multilingual support.

Features for owners and realtors:

  • Admin panel for managing listings. Ability to add photo galleries, fill in key property details for optimized search results, and include neighborhood info.
  • Ability to run advertising campaigns. Customizable ad targeting and the inclusion of multimedia in ads.
  • Messaging with potential buyers.
  • Easy payment for premium features access.

Listing aggregation from open online sources:

  • Advanced search system to find and evaluate online listings for relevance and currentness.
  • Automated external listing conversion to the format required for the Zuhda platform.

Help center:

  • Blog for buyers with helpful articles and home search advice.
  • Tutorials and guides for owners and realtors on platform use and listing promotion.

Team Composition

Our team on this project included a project manager, a UI/UX designer, a full-stack developer, and a QA engineer.

Project Timeline

The first app version intended for Brazil, with basic features, was released three months after active development began.

We continued to extend and support this platform for a year. Then we handed over the project to another team due to a change in ownership.

Results

The app saw good traction after its release, attracting key Brazilian real estate players and establishing a solid user base. After a year, the customer company was taken over by a major American real estate company.

Services Provided

Technologies Used

  • Ruby on Rails
  • PostgreSQL
  • DigitalOcean
  • React
  • Elasticsearch
  • Stripe
  • Braintree
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