Introduction to Home Finder Project

3-minute read
home-finder • nlp • practical-application
Photo by  Camylla Battani  on  Unsplash

The property market in major UK cities are high in demand, they get taken off the market in less than 1 week of posting. The quick turnaround makes finding a suitable property fairly challenging, even more so, if you have a checklist of requirements like myself.

Location, affordability, bed and bathrooms and furnished state are just a few things we consider.

  1. Are public amenities and transportation within walking distance?

  2. Is the location part of a busy street?

  3. What is the ratio of bathrooms to bedrooms? 1 bathroom across 3 people is just a disaster waiting to happen, unless you’re close to your neighbours!

With the pandemic and move towards hybrid working, we are spending more time at home than we used to, driving the need to ensure that our home is comfortable to live in.

Property portals like Rightmove and Zoopla are our friends in this search. However, it does get overwhelming, trying to keep track of the goods and bads between each viewed listing; which have we seen but eliminated etc.. Further I’m a data person, so obviously I wanted to know:

  • The distribution of property prices across properties within my budget. Was my budget reasonable?

  • How far are these properties from the nearest public transport? Which properties are too far from my acceptable distance?

  • Which property listing mentions car parking or lift? Yes, I like to know I have the option of taking the lift when I’m on a no stairs walking day OR when I have heavy stuff with me!

In my current consulting role, we use interactive dashboards to communicate insights to our clients. Interactive dashboards have been useful to explore and filter data in multiple ways. I’ve applied that same approach to help myself make better and more organised and informed decision.. and hence HomeFinder project was born.

HomeFinder Project

User Journey

  • As a potential tenant / home buyer, I would like a more flexible way to view and shortlist properties based on my requirements.

  • As a potential tenant / home buyer who is unfamiliar with a city / town of interest, I would like to understand the value of properties within the local market.

Project Journey

Project building blocks:

  1. Visualise structured data such as location, bed and bathrooms, price etc

    Example questions to explore as a potential tenant / home buyer:

    • What is the average property price in a specific location?

    • When are the properties available?

    • Which properties are within walking distance of specific train stations? For professionals frequently required to travel between major UK cities, it might be more convenient to stay closer to the station.

  2. Categorise listings using property descriptions

  3. Recommend potential listings based on user preference