Buying and Selling Homes has Never been this Easy.

When I started working with the HomeLister project, it was already an established site, but needed a lot of work, facelift, rework certain flows, add additional services, introduce new approaches to various services, and a slight brand refresh etc. As you’ll see below, the evolution of this real estate site is quite large. From the start, we wanted to address how users can create their free account and listing and to really make it clear that the service is always free to list and only pay when the home-lister actually sells their home. I went through extensive research and going through all the competitor apps and learning them inside-out. I studied the flow of Zillow, Redfin, Realtor, and more. We decided to follow a little bit of the Redfin model since it was the easiest to navigate and their smart search is spectacular. This was very important to us, to be able to have users use smart filters and search homes easily.

One of the biggest challenge was how to get users to enter the monotonous task of entering their entire home details and set their price etc. During this flow, we wanted to subtly introduce the additional services such as photography, video, Matterport 3D virtual tours, yard signs, and more. We were able to accomplish this continuous and steady flow where users can also save and pickup where they left off if they decide to finish the forms at a later date. We also made sure there was easy access to the flat fee pricing package in a separate page. After a few iterations, we came up with the best solution which you’ll see below. The site is so jam packed with information and we were constantly reviewing placement and positioning throughout the site and made sure that all the mobile versions (phones, tablets, and extra widescreen monitors) are tightly done and organized.

Since the users get to publish their listing to their local MLS, and most major real estate websites, like Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com, we didn’t want these steps to be complicated. Once the user is signed up, they’ll have easy access to all of their information right in their dashboard, so everything they need to work on or update is within reach all in one page. The site also has the ability to provide tips and help users prepare their home for showing and promote the best features. The ability to set up open houses, access to lockboxes, showings with potential buyers and agents was an crucial piece to this flow. From here, we added the HomeLister Live Tours app, where users can easily schedule and host virtual tours. The ability to communicate and work with buyers directly was at the forefront of their service, where users can take control over their own home sale. Then we created a flow for receiving offers, create and send counteroffers, and accept an offer from a buyer. Schedule and perform the closing. We also added the feature for seller and the buyer to digitally sign all documents, get professional help if needed, include offer review, counter offers, all paperwork, legal disclosures, and total process agent guidance by choosing the support they want. This was a wonder experience for me and the site was a success!