Rook
The Problem
DeFi has revolutionized our financial lives and different business areas, including real estate. Most new solutions focused on the advantages towards investors, but the demographic suffering the most in the real estate industry are homeowners and renters. Rook's mission is to make homeownership more affordable by bridging homebuyers and investors, but was challenged with how to give investors easier access to real estate. We worked with the Rook team to design and develop various applications that solved the unique needs of each of their core user personas.
The Solution
One of the largest benefits of owning a home is building wealth and capital. However, homeowners are largely unable to tap into that capital until they sell their home. Rook created a program in which they provide a lump sum of capital in exchange for a portion of their home equity. We collaborated with Rook to design a seamless wizard that helps a homeowner calculate an investment offer from Rook and understand the financial implications if they choose to accept it. Due to the complex financial nature of this product, we took extreme care in the design to provide help and context to the applicant every step of the way. To complement the homeowner's experience, we also designed the investor's side of the app where they can preview homes that have been accepted onto the platform and invest in their shares to receive the equity upside. After both of the designs were complete, we passed them to our Indie developers who built the frontend while collaborating with our client's backend team to complete the project.
