Design aid: house hunting in a new town in the midst of a housing crisis
This case study is an unusual one, as I didn’t know that in the end I would apply design to find a solution. How? it happened in a challenging situation, when I decided to start a new life moving to a new town.
I needed urgently to find a place to live and the context led me to start a project to try my luck.
Introduction
This story started at the end of 2020, when I used to live in Cambridge for work. After a tough year during the pandemic I decided to travel to the Canary Islands, rest and try surfing for the first time.
On that trip I fell in love with surfing and its lifestyle. As a consequence, I began to dream of the idea of continuing to practice it and living near the sea.
Since I wanted to be able to surf, I had to move to a coastal town. After doing some research about where to surf in the UK, I discovered Newquay, the surfing capital in the UK.
Key challenges
The coastal town of Newquay lies on Cornwall’s western border near the Celtic Sea. It’s a quite popular place within the UK.
During the pandemic, a perfect storm of challenges including the increase of short-term rentals and the widespread financial hardship, created a serious housing crisis in Cornwall.
Finding a home in Newquay under these circumstances would prove quite difficult. As people struggled more than ever to locate an affordable place to live throughout Cornwall, Newquay was unlikely to be an exception.
With thousands of properties advertised on vacation rental sites like Airbnb and VRBO, booking a holiday in the region had become simpler than securing long-term housing. Regrettably, local families had in some cases lost their homes or teetered on the brink of homelessness after landlords terminated leases, leaving them without alternate housing options.
The unexpected design process
As the goal was to find a place to live, I started the process looking for housing options and contacting local people in social media.
I started searching for rooms in websites such as Spareroom, Rightmove, and Openrent. Initially, the number of options I found wouldn’t exceed the 20 listings. But also, the choices were sparse and didn’t always match my budget or preferences.
Quickly I ran out of options. When I searched in a local Facebook group, I understood a bit better the reality. There were countless people desperately looking for a place to live, and some seemed to be already searching for weeks.
Certainly the outlook was not hopeful, but I still wanted to try. I thought that if I went in person I would increase my chances to find a room.
That’s how I travelled to Newquay, convinced that I could find a place to live. I wasn’t in a good economic situation, so it was imperative I found a place to live asap. I booked accommodation for 2 weeks and I went for it.
However, soon my optimism would begin to diminish. I asked in hostels, pubs and stores. I looked for bulletin boards, checked local newspapers and even asked local people in the street. It seemed that there weren’t any options.
Key insights
At the forth day, it felt I had ran out of options. It didn’t matter if I continued searching.
Reflecting about the situation and everything I learn in the process, I knew that:
- The high number of people looking for a place to live might be overwhelming for landlords. One room listing meant dozens and dozens of messages for them.
- It’s hard for landlords to know if they are picking the right lodger.
- They arrange an appointment to view the house with the first few people who contacted them, and then decide. If none of the people seem like the right fit, they continue following up with previous requests.
- The arrangement of a viewing is useful for tenant candidates to see the status of the place. And for landlords, it’s the way to have a first impression of people.
- In the Facebook group, some landlords engage with people’s posts if they liked something about them.
I had the assumption that when landlords have a room available, they look for potential candidates in advance. If they find a tenant without posting a listing online can be a win for them.
I also realised that Spareroom or Facebook are just merely contact channels which aren’t enough to build trust. On the other hand, with so many people looking to rent a room, landlords don’t want to deal with so many people.
Ideation and design
Having all this in mind, I wondered if it could be a way to skip the queue and not rely solely in luck. I wondered how I could build trust with landlords before they even met me.
I already had a domain and website, so I thought about the possibility of using it to introduce myself to landlords.
For this to work I needed to create a great first impression. I had to do something original that could grab landlords’ attention quickly. But also it had to build trust through the process and get them to contact me.
My goal was to have the webpage published that same day by the evening.
For the design, I followed the sales funnel model, that contains a structure of discovery that leads to conversion.
Using Figma, I defined the different sections of my webpage. This would contain from top to bottom:
- A ‘hero-section’ or header to quickly provide a good first impression.
- An ‘about me’ section, to start building interest and trust.
- A section of ‘features’, or ‘attributes’ where I could explain reasons why they should consider me.
- An ‘offer’ section, where they could see my budget and options I’m looking for.
- A ‘reviews’ section, where they could see what other people said about me.
- A ‘summary’ section to remind them why they should consider me.
- And a ‘FAQ’ section, from questions I collected in previous chats with landlords
I considered to make the webpage responsive for phone as well. My idea was to post the webpage in a Facebook group, so most likely many of the visitors would be on their phones.
The final design
Following the structure defined in the wireframes, I started to build the website from top to bottom. In the landing screen, I used a picture to make an instant connection with my audience.
I wanted visitors followed the content section by section until they decided to contact me.
In most of the sections I added a button, with the intention of keeping users exploring. If they didn’t aim to scroll, the button was there to take them to the next section.
In the “what people say?” section I curated a few reviews from previous experiences. I believed that if landlords read my reviews, it would be enough to convince them to contact me.
Finally, I added the action “CONTACT ME NOW”, with a direct link to my WhatsApp. When visitors tapped on the button, it would open the chat to talk to me directly.
Outcomes
As planned, that day in the evening, I published the webpage and I shared it in the Facebook group.
- In the following 2 days I received 3 messages in WhatsApp to arrange viewings.
- One of those messages resulted to be from my future landlord.
- I found a place to live after 1 week from the time I arrived, and 2 days after I shared it in Facebook.
Conclusions
The bet was worth it. Experiencing the challenge first hand in Newquay made me realise of an opportunity I hadn’t be able to see otherwise.
My assumptions about landlords’ pain points proved to be true through the outcome of the experiment.
From since Elementor (site builder based in WordPress) updates have affected the design slightly, but if you are curious to see the webpage, you can see it here.
