uiuc-apartments-api

Improving the Apartment Search Process at UIUC

Problem

finding apartments in champaign sucks!

• the only way is to go to each agency site, and check if they have something that meets your criteria
• apartments.com / aggregators suck because each company has to upload their own apartments to each aggregator site, which they don't do

Introducting <cool name here>

• We will build an aggregator site that goes to each agency and downloads the properties using a webscaper + internal APIs
• users can just visit our site to find properties they want, which will actually be up-to-date with all properties

How it works

1. We scrape each champaign agency site for properties, once per hour to get most updated list + statuses
2. A user visits our site, and can use simple filters to narrow down agency, location, bedrooms, bathrooms, price
3. The user can now view the properties that meet their criteria

Implementation

1. Finish scraper
2. Have scraper turn data into database of some sort - mongo/postgres/i dont care
3. Write backend server code to interface with the database
4. Write simple frontend
5. Deploy frontend/backend to cloud (GCP/i dont care)
6. Improve frontend, get public URL
7. post on reddit and PROFIT!!!