Citty.com — Off to New York!

Who’s into browsing real estate ads? It seems all of us have some kind of experience with it: “Oh, there is a pic… but it is way too small”, “There is no pic… What a pity, the description sounded nice.” And we could go on like this for long. Why are we talking about this now? In the last couple of years, we have gained some experience in the housing market of New York, so we thought we would like to share the most exciting elements of it.

One of our clients — a real estate agency from New York — contacted us with a request for a new site in the summer of 2013. The topic was exciting, as most of us had already been involved in some kind of real estate issues: some had rented, some had bought, and some already sold flats or houses in their life… And also we had already developed similar sites before. So we were happy to accept the request and were soon off to work.

Expectations and development

Apart from the graphic design (which we got ready-made from the client), we were in charge of designing everything else on the site. Our main focus was on the search function: the point was to come up with an interface where everybody could find the most relevant and suitable real estates in New York — without any fuss. The site lists only the buildings also showing their properties and prices. The would-be clients could get more information on them in email or on the phone.

The map function has the role to help the users browse the flats in a given district or area. Our keyword was again simplicity. You might be familiar with the urge to start searching for a flat. In such a situation, you usually get lost in the maze of the countless ads and pictures. Does it ring the bell? So during the development process, we put the most emphasis on the search function. The goal of the client and also our team was to provide a site where the visitors could easily and quickly find the properties they were hunting for.

Users can restrict their findings with further simple filters. For this, we used the search engine of Apache Solr instead of the one provided by Drupal. Initially, Drupal’s Views module was set in to show results, but pretty soon, it turned out to extend the page loading time. After a little bit of head work, we decided to manage the communication with Solr by a unique solution.

One problem of the Views module option was that it generated every finding — even those that were not needed. In our version, on the other hand, the listing pages are now produced by the browser on the client-side. So the search process could get faster this way.

Another unique characteristic of this page is that there are neither users nor administrators assigned. The data is imported from the database server provided by the client via REST API. It is the route all the data (e.g., news, descriptions, buildings, etc.) comes from. As there are no users signed in, with a simple Varnish setting, we could generate a significant speed-up on the whole website.

A few weeks had passed by when we could tune in to the business issues of selling real properties. In that period, we needed to rely more on the client to delineate the expectations.

After a while, though, we could get the feel of what was going. Our performance got better from sprint to sprint, and we were more confident to suit the expectations to the issues already solved.

The final results — summarized by Marci, the project owner

During the project, we could gradually get closer to the realm of the real estate market in New York. Due to this, we can now design the site not only from a developer’s viewpoint but also based on the expectations of the genuine estate business. The client needed a transparent and attractive website that served as a focal point for their clients. If we were successful or not. Check out the page and decide for yourself.

One thing is for sure, though: our cooperation has had plenty of positive outcomes. The fact that now we know what kind of expectations we would need to meet in the real estate business is already a massive step for us from a professional point of view. The American way of working has also had exceptional effects on us: advanced visual culture and faster communication were both needed for the sake of success. Building partnerships and building trust are immensely essential for us, so we put a lot of stress also on these things during our collaboration. By growing the level of involvement, our cooperation got to be also smoother and smoother.