Redfin has become a trusted and valuable tool for homebuyers searching for their dream home. However, they do not have a section that caters to real estate investors. Investors need a different set of data than homebuyers, and they also need to be able to verify the state of a property without seeing it in person. No tool currently exists that gives investors all the information they need in one place - and some of the data they need isn't available at all.

My Role: UX/UI Designer, Prototype Lead
Tools: Sketch, Photoshop, Marvel, POP.app
Platforms: Mobile
Deliverables: Interactive Prototype

USER INTERVIEWS

My team and I started our research by interviewing several real estate investors.

Key Points:

• The data that investors need to conduct their research is often not available or scattered across different locations.

• The most important number to an investor is the cap rate - it tells how profitable an investment will be.

C&C ANALYSIS

A quick C&C Analysis confirmed our findings. Whereas homebuyers have lots of great tools to use - Redfin in particular - resources are scarce on the investing side.

Key Points:

• Loopnet is the only site that caters to investors and shows things like the cap rate and net operating income - but they are missing a lot of other necessary data.
• From a homebuyer's point of view, Redfin is very comprehensive - but they have no investment-related data.

USER PERSONA

Our user persona, based on interviews: "Johnny Nestegg".

Key Points:

• Johnny uses real estate investing as a retirement plan for him and his wife, so his future literally depends on getting the right information.
• Johnny has a good job but isn't necessarily rich - he and his wife try to save up enough to buy one property per year.

LEARNING ABOUT REAL ESTATE

So what exactly do investors need? My team and I dove in and learned all about investment real estate so we could make our users happy. 

Key Points:

• The cap rate, simply, is how much money a property makes versus how much it's worth. 8% is considered good.
• Operating expenses for a property include insurance, property taxes, and utilities, among other things - these are numbers an investor needs.

SKETCHING

Now that we were real estate pros, we were ready to sketch out our designs. My teammate Marc drew up some beautiful sketches for our new app.

USER TESTING

We used POP to do some initial prototype testing and contextual inquiries. Initial feedback was very positive, with a few caveats. 

Key Points:

• Testers easily figured out how to search for a property.
• There was no way to switch between "commercial" and "residential".
• Investors wanted property manager information to be in a separate section - so they could find a property manager without looking for a property.

INTERACTIVE PROTOTYPE

With our feedback in hand we designed a clickable prototype of the app to do further testing and finalize the design.

So far, our prototype has received extremely positive feedback from investors. One feature that needs further A/B testing is the page-specific navigation on the property listing page. Some users like it, while some would prefer the navigation to be consistent.

Our next steps will be to create a responsive site that investors can use along with the mobile app.