Clarification Question:

• What all is covered in house hunting experience? Finding new houses for rent, buying homes.
• Do we plan this to be a part of FB core product or a standalone app? FB Core Product
• Which geography is targeted? India
• Do we have any product related to this already? No

Approach:

First, I would like to discuss the mission/ vision of FB as a whole, then, draw out some of the possible user groups who’ll be interested and then prioritize one among them to further list out their needs/pain points. Later I’ll come up with solutions and prioritize one from them. Finally, I’ll discuss the KPIs and possible pitfalls.

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Facebook’s Vision:

FB, as a whole, wants to empower people with the ability to form meaningful communities and the world as jointly as possible.

The whole idea of making a product makes sense as it is in alignment with FB’s vision of bringing the communities together.

User Groups:

• People looking out for plots/houses to rent/ buy
• People looking out for potential buyers
• People who act as the middle-man between buyers and sellers, basically the Realestate Dealers/ Agents.

Of the above three, it is the People looking out for plots/houses to rent/buy are more in number, and thus building a problem that solves their issue will be a way to address a vast community and bring them closer.

User Pain Points/ Needs

1. People who look out for buying plots/ renting houses aren’t aware of the rates over there and tend to get cheated easily. So, their primary need is to know what’s the average price over there.
2. People find it challenging to take time out of their busy day to look at the house in person.
3. People are facing difficulty in finding the exact location and reaching there quickly.
4. Most importantly, finding the authenticity of the ad and it’s present status is a significant issue -i.e., Few people tend not to close the announcement that they have posted even after selling/renting it.
5. People like to stay nearby to the office colleagues/ friends and might not know who resides where.

Prioritize :

To prioritize one of the pain points/needs listed, I would like to look at the Reach of the problem, Players in the market solving it already.

With the above factors in mind, it is the 1st User Need/Pain points that I would like to prioritize and solve it due to the reason that every buyer faces the 1st pain point. There are a few sellers, too(as they are not precisely aware of how the rates are in a particular part of the city). Though there are many players in the market to connect buyers and sellers, not many of them take care of this point.

Solutions:

• Sharing info about the present market rates along with various other details alongside the price quoted by the seller.
• Build up an algorithm using ML to predict the probable worth of a place listed.

Of these solutions listed, I would like to prioritize a solution using the following conditions:

1. Reach – How Common is the problem among the user segment.
2. Impact – How impactful it is for the users
3. Confidence – Confidence Score for the ides
4. Effort – How tedious is it to build one as a feature/product.
5. How in sync is it with the Vision of FB

Both the ideas aimed at solving the said problem help in reducing the unmatched power of the sellers in the House Hunting phase and thus helps the buyer not get misused.

So, the first idea will have a score of 4 3 4 * 3 = 16

It has a relatively low score for the impact, as it is challenging to get to know the amount accurately.

While the last idea will get a score of 4 3 2 * 4 = 6

It has a relatively lower confidence score and higher effort score because collecting sufficient data to get the score accurate is pretty tricky.

Thus, The prioritized solution is number 1.

Solution 1 in Detail:

The Product shall get the

• data of average amount transferred in a successful transaction location-wise
• the time that is taken for a successful ad conversion and get the price used there

and add suitable weights to calculate the final price wrt land sold or rented houses and get it displayed beside the rate quoted by a seller.

KPI:

1. # of Successful transactions
2. NPS score for the predicted rate
3. # of ads listed

Potential Pitfalls:

• Though the buyers might love this idea, not every seller would be appreciative of this feature and thus might cause in the reduction of # of DAU/MAU, # of ads posted, # of Successful transactions.
• So, We should keep in mind to show the rate in a range value and not as an accurate price.