Off Market Group Custom Application for Home Owners + Buyers
Off Market Group, also known as OMG, is a residential marketplace that will unlock up to 60x more houses in an off-market setting. This application caters to private homeowners who are interested in receiving offers on their homes and increases the availability of home options for buyers and home seekers.
The Problem
Did you know that only 1.6% of all homes are for sale at any given moment in time? That means that anxious buyers diligently searching for their dream home are inherently missing out on 98.6% of the home options across the United States, and all existing home search software solutions are too!
Furthermore, the existing home search software solutions solely cater to real estate agents and buyers. The sellers of homes are mostly overlooked and neglected, forced to do a majority of the work while also bearing all of the cost. And what does the seller get upon a successful sale of their home? A hefty 6% commission in return to the buyer’s and seller’s Real Estate Agents who, if honest, would struggle to quantify their true value in the transaction beyond simply home tour coordination and the basic manager of the sales transaction closing process (appraisal, inspection, survey, etc).
OMG wants to be a solution for anyone who has driven past a beautiful home and said “Wow, that’s my dream home! I really wish that home was for sale!”
The Solution
Off Market Group wants to open up the residential home sales marketplace – from 1.6% homes available to 100%! In addition to helping potential buyers, OMG wants their application to first and foremost cater to the seller – the one who really holds the keys to any potential transaction and actually owns arguably the most valuable asset in any home sales transaction. OMG’s goal is to do all of this free of charge to both the buyer and seller unless they choose to have a single Real Estate Agent handle the closing process for them – a transaction that we can help facilitate free of charge but where the actual transaction will occur outside of OMG.
OMG came to Airship with a well-thought-out idea of where they wanted to start and we collaborated during the Mapping phase to bring the idea to life. Airship’s Mapping team explored the problem statement, user personas, and some user flows to help us begin working on some wireframes.
At the start of the Journey, our design team determined that this product could benefit from some user testing. One of our designers came up with a prototype and some questions and distributed them to an outside testing group. This gave us valuable insight into some key areas.
One example is that some people assumed during the Mapping that people would prefer that the map default to a satellite view but, through user testing, we learned that 100% of the people we asked preferred the map view!
When the OMG Journey came to a close and we looked back on the project, the feedback from the Airship team was unanimous: we are all proud to have been part of building this beautiful application! We also all signed up and turned our homes green!
Key features in the build:
- Sign up/login = account creation
- Claim your home and turn it green (accept offers)
- Search for homes to make offers
- Direct communication between buyers/sellers
You can check out the OMG website here to see which features you like best.
Third-party solutions and/or libraries used:
- Heroku — Hosting the web application, all versions
- SendGrid- Mail service (SMTP)
- Twilio- text messaging
- Amazon Web Services (AWS) S3 — Cloud File Storage
- Mapbox- Map API
Airship did what they said they would do. They were a trusting partner not just a service provider which is the ultimate compliment. At the end of the day, it was a better application and a better experience than I had hoped for on the front end. You can’t get more powerful than that.
-Charles Black, Founder, Off Market Group
If you’re interested in learning more about Off Market Group and using their application for your own home, check out their FAQ page here.