Re-engineering and AI-Powered Tool Creation for a Real Estate Platform

The platform collects all premium properties for rent and sale in a single place and provides an opportunity to search for properties all over the world in the local language. 

Learn how our client got:

• A 43% reduction in infrastructure costs
• Integration costs lowered by 10 times
• 63 times more website visitors and leads
• Excellent technical SEO and indexing
• AI-powered tool for localization and SEO

Challenge

Our client is a Top 1% USA Real Estate Agent with hundreds of transactions who decided to create a global property search platform. After two years of development and facing performance challenges, he turned to us for technical expertise. Our mission was to enhance platform efficiency and address issues affecting its search result ranking.

Our Approach

We conducted a project audit and identified three key principles for success—performance, usability, and content quality. Based on this, we created an approved Development Roadmap. To maximize efficiency within a set budget, we adjusted the team by replacing three frontend developers with one and adding a project manager, team lead, and part-time QA specialist, along with on-demand DevOps and UI/UX services.

Tech Audit Results

• Significant website slowness and instability
• Numerous 3xx, 4xx, and 5xx errors
• Unsynchronized search and pagination functionalities
• An abundance of hardcoded components, links, and elements
• Issues with hardcoded and missing translations
• Poor database structure, with two-thirds of the data being irrelevant
• Multiple duplicate API calls made to the backend from the frontend
• Inconsistently generated backend links on the frontend
• Duplicated and inefficient integrations with third-party services

Establishing Development Process

First and foremost, we established Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC), and SCRUM processes, integrating Dev, Stage, and Prod environments for deployment.

Platform Redesign

Our design team revamped the client’s public website and developed new platform components, including communication channels, a request management system, enhanced search and sorting options, and a property information quality validator.

Rebuilding Internal Links System

The client-side logic for URL generation caused inconsistencies and complications, often resulting in 400 errors on both the back-end and front-end. Meta tags were stored in JSON, leading to numerous 404 errors, missing meta titles and descriptions, and inefficient manual management of meta tags in JSON.

Our solution was to develop a new URL generation mechanism and implement an AI-driven system for generating meta tags for all URL types and languages.

Migrating Catalog Listing into ElasticSearch and DocumentDB 

The platform’s backend was built with Django and PostgreSQL, which worked for a quick MVP launch but struggled with performance as capacity grew, especially in search and filtering.

We found that typical queries took about 600 milliseconds, making sub-1-second response times difficult without major infrastructure upgrades. To address this, we migrated the listings database to MongoDB and Elasticsearch, achieving average response times of 25-35 milliseconds.

AI-Powered SEO Tool

To support the client’s extensive SEO efforts and numerous webpages, we created a tool for managing metadata and descriptions for each page type. This tool dynamically generates unique, human-like content and translates it into over 20 languages. Utilizing a snippet repository, the content is tailored to specific entity types, ensuring optimized SEO performance.

Requests Management System

To enhance communication, we developed a new module with features including:

• Sending messages via email and other channels
• Analytics tracking deliverability, views, spam status, and response times
• Storing message history in a database
• A blocking feature for clients and agents
• Automatic translation of messages
• Reminders for agents about new property requests, with automatic reassignment if pending
• Advanced analytics for administrators with segmentation options for property requests

Implementing Platform Monetization

The client decided to integrate monetization features into the website, allowing real estate agents to prominently promote properties across various pages. We are also developing a feature for agencies to join the platform, manage their agents, and access detailed statistics and reports.

Reports

The application generates weekly reports detailing the number of properties, requests, and user activity, segmented by various criteria. Agents can analyze statistics on property views and applications over the past 3, 7, 14 days, or 3 months and track their personal performance.

“Our traffic, click-through rate, and lead business conversion have substantially grown. What we like the most is that they think and plan ahead so there aren’t any emergencies. They anticipate challenges and solve them before the challenges become a reality. The biggest advice for new clients is to trust OTAKOYI’s vision and advice. They know what they’re doing and can foresee where things should go.”

CEO, Real Estate Marketing Firm

Read the full client review at Clutch – https://clutch.co/go-to-review/f4ccfbd7-f21c-415a-8712-c0bac38b6cb2/294769

Check out the full case – https://otakoyi.software/cases/real-estate-platform