Rennit

Project description

Project Summary

Business challenge

More people than ever are striving to find a suitable place to live, especially when leaving for a new city and finding themselves in an unfamiliar environment where they have yet to develop acquaintances. This is where platforms that aim to offer as many apartments as possible come in handy. But the biggest challenge here is selecting a suitable platform that can offer a guarantee for the clients, a precise description of the place, immediate feedback and a user-friendly system.

Thus, our main objective was to create a website that would be as useful and practical as possible, and which had to contain listings of apartments that are available for renting.

Solution

At the beginning of development, we focused on planning the structure of the website and what it needed to include. Besides the practical component of the website, the visual appearance had to be pleasant and clear to be able to see the main elements. Using a design that was provided to us, we worked on the coding of the layout on the front-end, while putting our efforts into building system processes in the back-end at the same time.

In order to provide listings of the apartments, we worked on synchronization with RealtyMX, with the help of an API. It allows listings to appear on the website for users to view.

One by one, we started building pages of the website, which were the following:

• Home-page;
• About us;
• Apartments;
• Application;
• Make a payment;
• Contact us;
• My favorites;
• Page to log in or register.

While working on the home-page, we needed to apply many essential elements that serve as an introduction when a user stumbles across a website on the internet. Just like the second most important page of the site, Apartments, the home-page contained the most useful information, such as “Featured listings,” a map to find the location of the apartments quickly and efficiently, and most importantly, filters to start searching for a suitable apartment right away.

After development, the Apartments page now contained listings of apartments that allow one to look further into each of them, opening a detailed description about the place and the option to inquire about the listing. The filters on this page consisted of minimum and maximum price for the offered apartments, the searching criteria for the number of available beds and baths, the option to see the available subway paths, an advanced search filter, and a neighborhood filter.

The advanced search included the option to see whether certain amenities were available in the apartments, for instance, storage, parking, elevator, concierge, fireplace, direct outdoor space, and others. Besides, the user could identify if pets were allowed in a certain place with the help of this filter. After opening the “Neighborhood” filter, exact neighborhoods could be selected such as Bedford Stuyvesant, Bushwick, Clinton Hill, Crown Heights etc. for Brooklyn, and Ridgewood, Sunnyside for Queens.

Additional convenient options available for the user became:

• The option to be notified any time a new listing appears that matches all the search criteria selected by the user;
• Sorting found results by price: from low to high and from high to low;
• The possibility to look up the apartment’s location on the map in a split second right there on the Apartments page.

The Application page lets the user provide the official information required to proceed with the application (Guarantor or Tenant one) when they have decided to rent the apartment.

When we worked on the Make a Payment page, we put our efforts into making a page where the payments for apartment rent would go through efficiently and without any issues that could pause the application process.

“Contact Us” became the page to ask any questions in the request form, and “My Favorites” allows the user to check the apartment that they like.

Delivered results

After finishing the project, the website became a place for people to look through various apartments, find suitable ones via the filtering system, look them up on Google Maps situated directly on the page, and contact the site owners at any given time to inquire about the listings.

“Find the best place to be” reads the greeting on the home-page. And, indeed, who knows, perhaps this website can become the very place to help you find your dream apartment in New York.