Show HN: Hown – Message Any Homeowner and Buy and Sell Off-Market (opens in new tab)

(hown.app)

8 pointselliot9521y ago1 comments

Hi HN! A few years ago, I had a tough time buying a home in a competitive market where listings were scarce. I kept wondering—why isn’t there a simple way to contact a homeowner directly to ask if they’re interested in selling?

So a friend and I built Hown, an app that lets buyers message any homeowner, creating a way to buy and sell houses outside the real estate market (sorry, US only for now). The app is for:

  -Homeowners who might be open to selling but aren’t ready to list.

  -Buyers who want to express interest in homes before they hit the market.

  -House enthusiasts who just enjoy browsing and tracking the popularity of their home.

We built it in SwiftUI (which has been interesting…) and we launched recently. We’re still iterating, but curious to hear what the HN community thinks—Does this seem useful? What would make it better? Really any thoughts would be appreciated! Thanks!

1 comments

justin7648391y ago

I am the friend that helped build this. We would love anyone's thoughts or feedback! There are still so many ideas and improvements we have planned for the future, if the concept progresses in the direction we hope it will.

This was our first time building something, so there was a lot we learned along the way. Along with SwiftUI for the client, we used a lot of Swift on the server. For the server, it felt like the Swift ecosystem is 95% there. Good frameworks for AWS. Decent for caching. Foundation was helpful, but the transition to Swift Foundation adds a little friction. Overall, it seems like it was a good direction despite some of the rough edges, and it will only get better.

Let us know what you think!

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

1 comments

justin7648391y ago

Let us know what you think!

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse