Initiator Erwin de Wekker approached us to set up the project together with him and Danne de Vries. Our years of experience advising start ups, our expertise in design and frontend, as well as in technology and innovation formed the perfect basis for this collaboration.
An idea comes to fruition
An idea born out of dissatisfaction with the current housing market. Instead of waiting for a house to become available, Erwin approached homeowners directly by putting a bill in their mailbox. And with success, because that same evening the first responses from residents arrived and ultimately resulted in him buying a house in the neighborhood of his dreams. From this personal success, Hoodhunt was born.
Turning the market around
Where traditional housing websites only showcase available homes, Hoodhunt aims to turn the market around and instead emphasize mapping potential buyers. This is done on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis and with all the specific needs and possibilities that come with it. Hoodhunt is a fully transparent platform where supply and demand in the housing market will meet directly without the intervention of a broker.
The platform
We developed the final platform where supply and demand are brought together. The website is accessible via desktop, tablet and mobile. Important for the design was that there would be a clear split for the 2 target groups, that of buyer and seller.
Buyers and sellers can contact each other through a message function. Starting a conversation costs the initiator 1 credit, which can easily be purchased in the personal profile. Eventually, contact information can be exchanged when interested.
Innovation and technology
The platform consists of a number of innovative features. Being able to link free forms (people's own markable favorite neighborhoods on a digital map) and fixed positions (the existing homes) is one example.
This allows buyers and sellers to be matched based on geographic preference (neighborhood). By giving the option to add housing preferences to that, a homeowner can very specifically see if the home seeker could actually be a potential buyer of his/her home. The code written for this purpose makes it possible to match buyers and sellers without any human intervention.
Fine-tune
Then the platform was tested not only on design and technology, but especially on user experiences. When you work on a project for a long time, your choices may be based on assumptions. A simple form then suddenly turns out to be completely unclear to the end user. We used the feedback that emerged from the testing to connect all the dots.