Homie
Designing a B2B SaaS to Help RE Agents Align Confidently with Clients on Property Comparisons and Pricing
Overview
Homie is a SaaS concept designed to help real estate agents in Milan work smarter.
I focused on creating a solution that addresses challenges around property comparisons when managing buyers and pricing strategies with sellers, enabling faster and more confident decision-making.
Role
I’m a Product Designer who loves a good challenge and solving real problems.
Homie was my opportunity to reimagine real estate workflows—by understanding users’ pain points, brainstorming solutions, and creating a design that truly adds value.
Skills
User Experience
Visual Design
Design Systems
User testing/Research
Prototyping
Timeline
2 Weeks
While RE SaaS are widely used in Milan, agents still struggle with gaps in functionality that could make their work more efficient and impactful.
This leaves them with tools that fail to address two major challenges: managing clients' unrealistic price expectations and efficiently comparing properties.
As a result, clients may experience doubts during decision-making, which reduces trust and transparency, and ultimately impacts the business by lowering the chances of closing deals.
The Plan
Transform the way agents and clients connect over property decisions.
An intelligent comparison tool that highlights key property differences and real-time price projections, allowing agents to guide their clients, building confidence and accelerating thoughtful decision-making.
Milestones
Build confidence
Prove that there is a problem affecting the performance of real estate agents and, consequently, the business as a whole. Articulate the problem(s), define the use cases, prove they are real, and identify a way to and identify a way to solve them.
Create value
Design a solution that solves the problem(s), saves time for agents and clients, instill confidence, speed up decisions, and leads to more successful and efficient deals.
Build confidence
Performed extensive back-office research plus some interviews to assess the opportunity
I dove deep into the data to break down the market, competitors, and alternatives. My approach focused on challenging my own assumptions rather than confirming them, I wanted the research to reveal any flaws in my thinking. I also ran interviews with target users, which, surprisingly, turned out to be trickier than expected.
Italy has over 53,000 real estate agents, with 2,500 to 3,000 agencies in Milan—roughly 7–8% of the total market. Smaller agencies typically have 3 to 5 agents, while larger ones can have 10 or more. The growing digital adoption in real estate signals a promising outlook for tools like Homie.
Build confidence
Is this problem worth solving? Frequency and pain level are key
To validate my hypothesis, I explored how often agents struggle with guiding buyers through property comparisons and handling sellers with unrealistic price expectations. More importantly, I wanted to understand how much these issues impact their work. This would help me decide if a solution was justified.
Build confidence
Identified Common Challenges in Property Comparisons and Managing Seller Expectations
Talked to over 15+ people in RE sector comprendiing RE agents, RE specialists and RE agency owners.
Price Expectations vs. Market Reality
• Around 60% of sellers initially overprice their properties.
• To retain clients, agents sometimes accept inflated prices, delaying sales.
Market Trends and Price Fluctuations
• Difficulty keeping up with real-time market trends.
• While Europe is seeing a rise in PropTech adoption for predictive pricing and sales forecasting, in Italy, these technologies are mainly used by large real estate agencies. Small and mid-sized agencies rarely adopt them due to cost and expertise barriers.
Data Fragmentation
• Fragmented real estate tools make information management inefficient.
• MLS platforms often lack key features like property comparison.
• Manual and repetitive property evaluation processes reduce productivity.
Build confidence
Defined 2 core use cases based on research
Scenario 1
Client interested in buying a property
Property Comparison: use side-by-side property comparison tool, including all key features, helping agents guide buyers quickly and effectively.
Scenario 2
Client wants to sell a property
Predictive Analytics: leverage predictive tools to forecast time-to-sale based on market trends and economic factors, enabling agents to keep clients in the loop and set realistic expectations.
Build confidence
Cutting through the noise, an MVP to align prices and compare properties
It's common for RE agents to face friction when dealing with clients, particularly when it comes to comparing properties and aligning client price expectations with market realities. My goal was to strip away the complexity and build an MVP that tackled these two challenges head-on.
● A dashboard as the central hub, surfacing key data and past actions.
● Two streamlined flows branching from the dashboard:
Buying: A side-by-side property comparison tool.
Selling: Data-driven price projections to support negotiations.
Milestones
Build confidence
Prove that there is a problem affecting the performance of real estate agents and, consequently, the business as a whole. Articulate the problem(s), define the use cases, prove they are real, and identify a way to and identify a way to solve them.
Create value
Design a solution that solves the problem(s), saves time for agents and clients, instill confidence, speed up decisions, and leads to more successful and efficient deals.
Create value
Designed and prototyped in a few days the 2 core flows in low-fidelity
Home Dashboard
When agents open Homie, they land on this UI. It shows recent buy/sell activities and price trends in their managed areas. From here, they can start the process to sell a client’s home or help a client find one.
Property Listing
This UI works like any other property listing platform but with an added feature: agents can select properties to compare.
Property comparison
Here, agents and clients can compare selected properties side by side. Key details like price, size, and price per square meter are displayed in a clean, organized way. Plus, standout values, like the lowest price, largest size, or best price per square meter.
Property sales Projection
Homie’s standout feature. It gives agents a clear picture of the market, showing similar properties nearby and how the client’s home stacks up. Homie’s algorithm also provides a probabilistic estimate of how long the property might take to sell at a given price, along with a recommended price range based on location, market trends, and property performance.
Create Value
Usability testing uncovered where users needed a better experience
3 out of 6 users found the action history cluttered and hard to navigate when managing multiple clients. 2 suggested separating buyer-related actions from seller-related actions.
To reduce clutter, I split the dashboard into buy and sell actions. Each tab now shows the relevant history. Also, Agents frequently check action statuses, so having them neatly organized and detailed is key.
2 out of 6 users expressed that it could be challenging to keep track of highlighted properties in a long comparison list
3 out of 6 users would appreciate a visualization of the distance to public transport when comparing properties.
A pin button to keep the properties visible at the beginning and a dropdown to sort them by relevant attributes.
Since locations are known, Google Maps’ API could help map out transit options and distances. Decided to include it in this iteration.
2 out of 6 users felt that displaying properties on the map without showing how long they’ve been on the market could lead to misleading client expectations and affect decision-making.
The sales projection graph was confusing for 3 out of 6 users, who felt it lacked actionable insights, with one remarking, ‘I don’t get what the bars represent. Moreover, 2 users mentioned that showing KPIs comparing the property’s price to the local market would be a valuable addition.
Agents can now filter properties by time on the market. A new menu sorts listings by publication time.
The updated graph provides more context showing competitive price ranges, above-average prices, and outliers. The UI also compares the client’s price per m² with the area average.
Create Value
High fidelity wireframes
Speeding up the process using Figma’s design system and tweaking components to align with Homie’s branding.
Impact & Next steps
Homie started as an experiment: An idea to solve a problem in the RE industry.
What I didn’t expect was the agents’ reaction. Their feedback was eye-opening
If Homie were launched in the market, the next step would be to measure its impact through key metrics
But this is just the beginning. While Homie was designed for Milan, its core concept is scalable. With the right data, it could expand across Italy, or even Europe, offering real-time market intelligence and advanced automation. Flows like onboarding, report exports, API integrations, and mobile adaptation are still on the roadmap.
Retrospective
When one approach fails, a new angle might be the key
It’s all about the research
Keep exploring
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