<aside> 💡 For this case study, I will be using the STAR (Situation, Tasks, Action, Results) framework. See explanation here

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Yulom: Find a Home that is just perfect for you!

Background

Yulom, an online property listing service in Nigeria is looking to make a strategic move into the real estate market, offering unique value propositions against incumbents. Yulom engaged my services to help them understand the pain points in the market, identify viable opportunities and collaborate with the business to ideate and deliver a winning solution.

Problem Hypothesis

Business Motivations: What is motivating Yulom’s Go-to-Market-Strategy?

To understand the motivations why Yulom was making this strategic shifts, I spoke to 4 key stakeholders within Yulom, conducting a 45mins 1:1 stakeholder interview with each stakeholder. Yulom’s Go-to-Market-Strategy was driven and informed by;

• Increase in demand for affordable housing particularly in urban areas, driven by population growth and the need for more housing options for lower and middle-income earners.
• The new demography of buyers are digital natives and already run majority of their lives online and so do real estate agents, brokers and other related services.
• While the market is expanding, access to financing is still a hassle and accounts for majority of the failed deals.

Quan-Qual User Insights: What insights validate Yulom’s Strategy?

Using contextual enquires and surveys with renters, buyers and property managers; benchmarking their experience with existing incumbents, some of the key insights were:

• Customer Journey Drop-offs: 89% of users used other competing property listing sites for only the first part of their journey - viewing available properties within their desired location, price range, and available amenities. After that, the remainder of the journey goes offline with they user making a call to an agent.

• Cumbersome offline Journeys: 94% of users complained that the paperwork and back-and-forth involved in renter/buyer identity verification, affordability check, references check, and contract signing prolongs the time it takes from finding a property to moving into the property.

• Overwhelming inefficiency: Property managers with multiple property listings, are unable to manage high number of requests on their properties, validate renters/buyers, manage payments and have a birds-eye-view on how properties in their portfolio are performing.

• Increasing brokerage costs: Renters are consistently slighted by the increasing rates housing agents require to facilitate their rent/buy process of their desired properties. They spend up to 80% of actual rent costs to secure their desired properties.

• Rent Financing: Renters who meet most minimum requirements to rent/buy their desired property suffer the fate of falling out of getting their home because of their inability to get access to favorable financing partners or are deemed ineligible for financing at commercial banks.

• Unverified, Fake or Duplicate Listings: There is a prevalent issue of unverified, fake or duplicate listings. Users mentioned they have been victim of several agent scams and sadly no one takes any responsibility as the platform they use do not offer any guarantees.

Competitor Analysis

User Persona

After synthesising key insights from the user interviews to understand the problems, expectations and goals, I summarised the users we will be solving for into 3; Renter, Buyer and Property Manager. I also highlighted their key goals, existing frustrations and expectations.