Kiinteistövälitysalan keskusliitto ry
KVKL Price Monitoring Service
The Central Federation of Finnish Real Estate Agencies (KVKL) is a nationwide advocacy and umbrella organization for companies and associations engaged in the real estate brokerage business in Finland.
We renewed the KVKL price monitoring service (hintaseurantapalvelu.fi), which helps real estate agencies to determine market prices, and supports the estimations and negotiations. The service includes all transactions made by Finnish real estate agents starting from 1998, which constitutes a database of over 1 million entries.
Digital service channel
Better service for KVKL's stakeholders
The new solution serves KVKL’s stakeholders needs better and is also easy to develop and maintain.
New service that caters all customer segments using all devices
The old price monitoring service had served its customers well over 15 years, but both the technology and the user interface were out-dated, and it was not viable to continue its development. In order to serve better its members and customers, KVKL wanted to implement a new, modern solution, which would also be easy to develop and maintain. The new service should cater for all customer segments using mobile, tablet, and desktop devices.
The goal was to develop a MVP (Minimum Viable Product) solution first, and then develop it further based on feedback.
The project started with defining the client’s needs and specifying the data architecture.
Exove designed the user interface and the visual layouts. The key goal was to make it easy for the user to find and read relevant information on any kind of device. The user interface was developed in an agile way as throughout the project, the KVKL and Exove project teams worked closely together.
The new data comes from the customers mainly via automated data transfers. It was crucial to define and agree the data model early in the project so data providers could adapt their systems to the new format.
The data associated with a transaction of an apartment building share is very different from the data coming from a transaction of an empty plot even though there are many similarities like price and location. That’s why the chosen database is MongoDB. Unlike traditional SQL databases, there are no strict restrictions about data schema. MongoDB saves only the defined data so disk space is used efficiently.
The system provides both a user interface that the real estate agents can use to search for price data and create statistics, as well as a restful API for the members of KVKL to use the data directly. The API is provided with node.js server. Node.js is a non-blocking and event-driven Javascript framework. Due to its nature it is very fast.
The user interface is implemented with Angular.js. The interface is responsive so it’s possible to use the system via tablet or even mobile phone.
Exove consultant joined the project mid-way to help KVKL manage the project and serve the customers in the best possible manner, as well as to provide KVKL advice on digitalization related matters.
The new system was introduced to the users by creating a short introduction video
After a transition period of one month, the new system was fully taken into use. To ensure a smooth transition for the users, the introduction of the new system was planned in detail, and we also created a short video introduction for the users. The feedback has been mainly positive, and we have also received valuable input from users that helps in defining the next development phases of the MVP solution.
The client is very satisfied with the end result and the way the project was executed on schedule and on budget.
