Which app have you used for finding an apartment? How would you improve it?

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Which app have you used for finding an apartment? How would you improve it?

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billmondei · Answer 1 · 2025-03-14T02:24:40+0000

I've used Zillow. I like it because it's easy to use - practically no learning curve, the UI is very intuitive and it's innovative - features like video tours of some houses set it apart.

When thinking about improvement, I'd first think about what would be the goal of improvement and then think about who would be the target audience to achieve these goals.

Judging by the current market dynamic with multiple equally strong competitors such as Redfin and House.com, I'll assume the goal would be to gain market share (as opposed to, for example, increase revenue or cut costs).

So we will measure success by looking mostly at acquisition and retention metrics.

Before diving into the exercise, I also want to aknowledge it's a marketplace type of product, so we'll need to think about all the involved parties: end consumers, house seller/renters and agents. I'd like to focus on the end consumers, since that's where I think the most potential for capturing a larger market share is and sellers/agents will come to the platform with the largest user base.

Consumer segments:

Residential Renters
1. Short-term
2. Long-term
Residential Buyers
1. First time buyers / for own use
2. Buyers for renting out
Commercial Renters/Buyers

Since we're going after market share increase, I'll want to prioritize the largest segment. Therefore, I'll pick the long-term renters, which is the most popular way of getting into a house (people buy houses very infrequently, usually tend to rent for longer time and commercial is an even smaller segment, which although untapped, would mean a lot of investment in areas that Zillow doesn't cover).

User journey (happy path): Register/login -> add criteria like geo, price, #rooms -> see the relevant listings -> open interesting ones (maybe bookmark) -> browse through the images and the info -> contact the agent to schedule a walk-through -> show up -> get approved -> sign contract -> pay deposit -> move in, start renting

Pain points:

1. Registration and discoverability are pretty good, the listings are fresh and presented in several ways (as a list and on a map). Sometimes I wish they had more filters like ceiling height.

2. Looking at the images is sometimes misleading, but it's a big pain to go to physically see the house, especially if it's not nearby and if I want to see multiple.

3. When I show up - if I like the house, I get anxious that it might get rented to someone else.

Prio: I'll use depth and breadth of pain as a framework to prio the painpoints. #1 is not broad, I think 90% of people would find their filters sufficient and even those who don't, it's not a biggie -> Low.

#2 might get pretty acute for many people: I would sometimes block out whole days to go see multiple houses because it's difficult to make a decision only by looking at the pics. -> High

#3 I actually get a pretty good sense of whether I will get the house or not, even though in some instances it slips away -> Med.

Will focus on #2.

Solutions:

1. Leverage VR headsets tech (potentially send and later collect those to/from renters). Would require the owners to also have the necessary tech to actually create the VR walk-throughs.

2. Detailed comparison of properties, like for phones. Currently users can only see one house details on the page, difficult to compare.

3. Similar to #2, but instead of a "split screen" - allow the user to select multiple houses they're interested in and leverage GenAI to briefly summarize the main differences among them, recommending top 1 or 2 with clear argumentation as to why.

Prio (using something like RICE): #1 low reach due to cumbersome tech, costly and risky+high effort, #2 is low effort, but also low impact, #3 is slightly higher effort, but has a higher impact for the majority of users who won't be playing with a split-screen type of a feature that still puts the burden of decision-making on the user, but would much more easily engage with a quick summary and GenAI basically making the decision for them. Might require more input from the user to improve the recommendations (like do they have kids in order to select houses in areas with good schools, etc), but the added benefit of it might be future revenue stream from ads.

MVP: no additional data collection - just the ability to select houses and get a quick recommendation. Based on the engagement with this, we can explore options to improve further by collecting more details from the user, etc.

Success metrics: we should AB test this and watch for:

North star: MAU (we can look at the whole funnel, but bottom line we need to increase users)

Secondary: User satisfaction

One thing to mention is - I'm not sure if we're going to impact the agents in any way (maybe they get paid for showing houses and we're not reducing that).

Sujan Merla · Answer 2 · 2023-07-05T02:15:03+0000

App: Housing.com

I have used Housing.com app for finding the apartment.

About Housing.com: App which helps users to find properties, flats for rent or sale. They are also into selling commercial spaces, not only residential. It is quite active in tier 1 cities in India.

You asked to improve right? I would like to know what do you mean by improve? - Is there any goal that we should look at?

It's upto you. You can choose whatever you want to improve in the application.

Improving Housing.com:

So from the following are the goals for the Improvement, I would like to choose increasing the userbase (aquisition) as the goal for the improvement.

1. Engagement
2. Aquisition
3. Retention
4. Revenue

Types of Users:

Users can be categorised into Commercial property Owners, Students looking for rents/PGs, Families looking for residencies, Professional Workspaces.

User Persona:

Stduents who are looking for flats and also for room mates as they are tech savy and move frequently from place to place compared to families. So those are our target audience for the improvement.

User Painpoints:

- Hard to find a good roommate who is trustworthy

- High Rents

- Hard to get the basic services for the few months (like maid service, furniture)

- Language Barrier to negotiate the terms with the owners

(Solving the first problem as many face it and also based on the value generated compared to the others)

Solutions:

1. Room Mate Matching of the like minded.

Connect with people based on your preferences and collectively once you found your room mate you can search for the flat together. Once user request for a room mate all the people who are near to him searched for similar flats and in the same area gets notified.

2. Posting feature for the room

Users can post about the prefrences on a community posting where others can check it and connect with them if they are good with the preferences and the person.

3. 1 Member is looking for room mate for this flat kind of tag for every room/flat which is available for bachelors.

I would prioritise 2nd over the other two, reason being value generated over the less time.

That's it!