Lviv, Ukraine
Yaroslava Mudroho St. 9b, 79016
Vilnius, Lithuania
Vilnius Park Town, 2nd-floor Lvivo g. 105, 08104
reTHINK — Rental marketplace, powering innovation in real estate.
reTHINK
client
A real estate experts of a Singapore market introducing a forward-thinking solution to old-fashioned Real Estate sphera.
client
A real estate experts of a Singapore market introducing a forward-thinking solution to old-fashioned Real Estate sphera.
about the project
reTHINK - search property website. A comprehensive library of listings contains all the different property types - houses, condominiums, apartments and HDBs for sales & rent in Singapore.
From choosing the listing, filled with detailed information, maps, and photos up to paying the deposit and signing the OTP, the transaction process goes smoothly and clearly through the direct chat between the homeowner and the real estate agent.
Services
UI Design
UX Design
Front end Development
Back end Development
Third-party Integration
Maintenance
6 members
Team size
6 months
Timeline
Singapore
Client Location
PHASE #1
INITIAL BRIEFING
Our cooperation with reTHINK team started by investigating the market of Real Estate in Singapore. Singapore is definitely a very developed country with an established Real Estate system but there is something peculiar about the market. It’s kind of outdated. Plus, millennials now make up the largest share of homebuyers. But the real estate industry has been asleep for years, refusing to adapt to the needs and expectations of its ancestral clientele.
And we immediately faced a couple of challenges. It has to be modern, easy to use for users not related to real estate sphere and transparent in terms of communication between agents and customers.
PHASE #2
ARCHITECTURE AND FLOWS
The scope of the project was severe. The client wanted to facilitate all parties of the sale process - homeowners, buyers, real estate agents, service providers, and solicitors so the user can do everything on the platform. That was great, actually. Not for MVT, per se.
We’ve agreed to go step by step and distinguish the main roles - homeowners and buyers (as a single role) and real estate agents with the plan to expand other roles after the first release is launched.
Customer onboarding
The initial information that user gets affects subsequent judgments. As we decided to give more freedom to user, he can decide what he want to start with - to act as a homeowner, buyer or just discover the platform.
Next steps would be influenced by that first choice.
For homeowners, the ability to list a property right away. The process is divided by logical chunks. And the draft mode after each step, that saved the progress, in case some information is not near at hand.
NOTE: Listing a property
ROLE #1
HOMEOWNER
The essential Value Proposition - the agent & homeowner model where the homeowner fills out the listing and the agent is granted access to list it on the platform.
In this way, we keep high-quality listings where all information is supervised by the agent and we are raising trust among buyers who are searching for a reliable partner.
ROLE #2
BUYER
As a most requested page, the property directory is accessible from the header, footer, search bar on the hero section, and other sections on the home page.
Buyers can adjust filters to match their demands and easily erase any in the chips that are fixed on top.
No need to authorize to access the directory. Only when buyers are interested in the property, they are requested to sign in to continue the conversation in the internal chat with the agent.
ROLE #3
REAL ESTATE AGENT
All real estate agents have a license number in an open-source state system that allows us to easily confirm their identity and track company details. Thus we bypass double registration of the same agent or any fake accounts.
For the agent's profile, we use a common F-Pattern structure. It's used widely among other popular platforms and it's familiar to users. One can easily track previous selling points and reviews giving more transparency to the general experience.
Transaction Process
We’re facilitating the transaction process of property selling. All parties are involved: homeowners, agents, and buyers. All indications are handled via the internal chat where the entire process is presented on the tracker with the timeline and steps description.
Node JS
Next JS
Typescript
Redux
Firebase
Sequelize
Postgre SQL
Sass
RESULTS
challenge #1
TRANSPARENCY IN COMMUNICATION
Every interaction is handled inside the built-in chat ecosystem. Users can track the progress of every project request and access the desired property details from the chat view.
Besides we introduced the transaction tracker where all action is taking place with the timeline and steps description.
challenge #2
SECURITY VERIFICATION
In order to verify the identity and uniqueness of real estate agents, we’re using the API of Singapore's open-source state system where all license numbers can be found from.
The system is also providing the contact phone numbers.
We’re requesting the OTP from the phone number adding the extra layer of multi-factor authentication and trust from every part of a transaction process.
challenge #3
PROGRESSIVE SEARCH
We cover not only the basic searching properties like listing type, price, and space range but also users can search by Singapore Metro Stations and location affiliation within the 30 km range.
It reduces the cognitive load and clicks per action.
OVERVIEW
