Reviu. A review portal for apartments
Carrer de Balmes, 13, Barcelona, Espanya
Channel
Reviews of real apartments
Infrastructure
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Minimum | Optimum |
|---|---|---|
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Portal tech development - Adding images to apartment reviews
The portal is currently at a very early stage of development. One final development phase is needed before it can launch, which includes refining the features built into the portal so far and adding the remaining ones that haven’t been developed yet. Among them, we want to make it possible for users to add images to their reviews so they’re more visual.
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£ 1,677 | |
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Portal tech development - Adding a tips page
Another element still to be added is a page within the portal where users can find tips and practical resources on how to survive the rental jungle in Barcelona.
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£ 1,677 | |
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Portal tech development - Real estate agency search
To make the portal a more useful tool, we want to add a search feature that lets users look up real estate agencies directly by name, so they can read all the reviews each agency has received.
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£ 5,030 | |
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Administrative costs
Bank fees and Goteo costs.
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£ 1,026 |
Material
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Minimum | Optimum |
|---|---|---|
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Communications campaign
For the portal to reach as many tenants as possible and make an impact, we’ll need a communications campaign to explain our project and generate a significant number of reviews. So far, we’ve developed an initial communications approach, drawing up a communications plan and taking a first pass at the key messaging and the portal’s final graphic identity, as well as its visual identity.
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£ 4,191 | |
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Review collection
At the same time, we’ve set a series of goals focused on growing the portal and collecting reviews, so it can become better known and turn into a useful tool. We plan to hire a dedicated team to carry out large-scale, on-the-ground review collection and to build alliances with players in the cooperative movement and beyond that bring us closer to our goal of building a successful digital product, since its success will depend largely on users being encouraged to leave their own.
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£ 1,257 | |
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Reward shipping costs
This amount will go toward producing and shipping the rewards listed on Goteo.
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£ 419 | |
| Total | £ 9,409 | £ 15,276 |
At IDRA, we’ve been working for a while on a tool we believe is much needed, and we can finally tell you about it: REVIU, a housing portal for sharing and searching reviews of apartments in Barcelona. An online platform with information about the building and its neighbors, the area, the landlord and the real estate agency. All completely anonymous.
When we look for an apartment, we’re going in totally blind, since all we have is the information in the listings that real estate agencies post on the big property portals. Unlike what happens with other goods and services, housing is extremely opaque, because users have no voice. In theory, we have the right to know things like how much the previous tenant paid, whether they got their security deposit back or how they were treated, but in reality, this doesn’t happen.
With this project, we want to promote transparency and accountability in access to housing, overcoming the information asymmetry that currently characterizes the housing market. It’s about changing the rules of the game.
Linked to the cadastral registry, the portal lets you search for addresses in Barcelona and see the reviews other users have left, with the following information:
Features of the home (light, temperature, noise, services and maintenance)
Price of the home
How the real estate agency and/or landlord treat tenants
The building’s neighbors and the condition of the stairwell (who lives there, whether there are tourist apartments, etc.)
Area (300 m²) and nearby services
The portal will also have a companion page with practical resources, tips and explainer videos covering all kinds of information about renting a home in Barcelona, from “what the new rent control law will mean” to “everything you need to know to find an apartment in Barcelona.”
Reviu’s goal is to promote transparency and information between tenants and landlords of rental housing, ensuring compliance with current regulations and helping prevent price speculation and abuse of any kind.
It’s an innovative project that responds to a major urban challenge: there is no housing portal that works on the basis of symmetry, using the information and ratings provided by all its users.
Connecting this pioneering digital app with local stakeholders will make it possible to create a new digital community, with a shared governance model that will transform our relationship with housing and the city.
In recent years, we’ve studied the rental market and uncovered very serious problems.
When there’s no direct contact with the landlord and a real estate agency acts as an intermediary, the rent is more likely to go up.
Large landlords also tend to raise rents more than small ones.
59% of homes have at least three problems that nobody fixes. The most common are poor thermal insulation, the need for renovations, and damp and windows in poor condition.
The people who live in Barcelona are the main audience for this tech project, which aims to turn around the user experience of searching for housing and improve access to it by making it possible to share reviews.
This project is the direct result of the hands-on experience and applied research on the housing system and the real estate market that we have been carrying out for years at the Barcelona Urban Research Institute (IDRA, formerly publicly known as La Hidra Cooperativa), in collaboration with a wide range of stakeholders (universities, cooperatives and housing organizations).
The portal’s development project currently has an initial team of 4 people, mainly involved in research, housing interventions and software development.
IDRA is committed to the XES Social Balance, which is why we take part every year in the accountability and impact measurement platform of the social and solidarity economy (known as “Ensenya el Cor”). We have been completing the Social Balance since 2020.
The goal of this project is to promote more transparent and informed relationships between tenants and landlords of rental housing, ensuring compliance with current regulations and helping prevent price speculation and abuse of any kind. The portal will make it possible to create a new tech community and will offer users better support, helping them learn about their rights. It will also include personal data management and protection tools that will guarantee privacy, digital rights and security for everyone involved.
Because the portal is based on free and open-source software, it will also be scalable and able to grow beyond the city of Barcelona. It has been designed so it can be replicated in any municipality in Catalonia and across Spain, since it’s a tool that can be reproduced at almost no extra cost, and it’s a service that doesn’t exist anywhere else in Europe.
Initially, we want the portal to be the seed of a network of cities including Girona, Valencia and Madrid, which share the same housing access challenges and also have a strong, organized social base.
To reduce inequalities, policies should be universal in principle, paying attention to the needs of disadvantaged and marginalized populations.
There needs to be a future in which cities provide opportunities for all, with access to basic services, energy, housing, transportation and more.
