Real Estate Platform Adjusted to the Country’s Market Specifics

Customer

A company is a real-estate agency, dealing with both sale and renting activities.

Need

To get an additional revenue channel, the customer wanted to develop a platform that will enable apartment owners to put their offer up at rent and tenants to find accommodation up to their needs.

Furthermore, the customer was planning to adjust the service to the specifics of the local real estate market. In contrast to the systems that only have flat/house renting options, the solution should allow users to put up at rent / rent a separate room / bed within an apartment.

Challenge

As long as the service was to offer booking of a room/bed within an apartment as its core feature, the system needed to have a scrupulously designed logic. In addition, a calendar of bookings—illustrating numerous parameters (e.g., whole or partial availability of apartments, booking/payment status, etc.), yet neatly organized—had to be delivered.

Solution

With an underlying complex logic designed by developers at HQSoftware, users are able to choose from
the following renting options:

• a flat / house (the whole apartment)
• a room
• a bed

It is also possible to reserve an accommodation for both long and short terms. Moreover, the reservation is available not only for standard time periods (months, weeks, or days), but by hours, as well.

Our engineers developed an advanced search algorithm that correctly searched through the available accommodations and already made reservations—taking into account whether the apartments are booked entirely or partly for the desired time term on specific dates. In case no options are found within the specified location, the search will demonstrate a map with the variants available nearby.

In addition, team at HQSoftware made it possible for owners to make a schedule of the days, when they can accommodate the renters. Furthermore, our specialists enabled the system to build search results in accordance with this schedule and show only relevant options.

On top of that, developers at HQSoftware ensured that the relevant results are generated in case an owner changes his/her schedule, while notifying his/her about the already existing bookings to prevent any inconveniences for all the parties involved. To aid owners in managing bookings, when the arrival date is chosen, a popup calendar appears with the highlighted availability of an apartment (partial or whole) with no need to go back and check on the schedule.

Our engineers implemented a visually rich, yet simple in use, calendar to aid owners in managing bookings with a view to different levels of their apartments’ availability. Moreover, an owner could also track the status of the payment, either full or partial.

As long as there are quite a lot of undefined geographical units (e.g., small towns or streets) in standard map services, specialists at HQSoftware cooperated with the Agency on State Registration and Land Cadastre. Thanks to this, our team was able to significantly extend a geographical database of the system before integrating with the Yandex maps.

Outcome

Partnering with HQSoftware, the customer delivered a solution that helps apartment owners to put up their offers at rent and tenants to find suitable options, also available for partial rent (a room or a bed) and for short terms (by days or ours).

With complex logic and advanced search algorithms behind the system, the customer was able to develop a unique service, adapted to the specifics of the local market. Extending its database of available apartments for rent, the customer also got an additional revenue channel by charging a fee from the registered owners.

In future, the agency is planning to launch its service in Poland and Lithuania.