Case Study · Real Estate Marketplace
Home to stay.
Rent with ease.
PropEase is a one-stop real estate marketplace for buying, renting and listing property across Indian cities. Across nine desktop templates, we designed a unified header for four jobs, a rent calculator that doubles as a lead engine, and an in-product rent-agreement generator — so the deal never leaves the platform.
Client
PropEase (PropTech startup)
Industry
Real Estate · Two-sided marketplace
Service
UX/UI · Web Design
Platform
Desktop web · 1440 grid
Team
1 Designer · PM · 6 Engineers
Timeline
12 weeks
The brief
Build a real estate site that doesn't feel like a broker.
The founders had a clear thesis — zero brokerage, free listings, and a closing-the-loop product where the rent agreement is generated in-house. They wanted a marketplace that felt like a calm utility, not a portal hawking 'verified leads'.
The challenge
Four audiences — buyers, renters, owners, builders — in one product.
Buyers want long, photographic project pages. Renters want speed and the calculator. Owners want a free, dignified listing form. Builders want spotlighted projects. One design system had to serve all four without leaking complexity into any single screen.
The outcome
9 templates. 0% brokerage. A calculator that drives signups.
A four-job header that lets every visitor land on their funnel. A shared card across six surfaces. A 12-field rent calculator that became the #1 organic acquisition channel. And a rent-agreement preview that closes deals without anyone leaving the product.
9
core desktop templates from search to signed agreement
4-in-1
buy, rent, list and paperwork — one product
0%
brokerage — listings stay free for owners and tenants
<90s
median time from home to a saved property
Project Timeline
Twelve weeks — from blank Figma to a closing-ready marketplace.
01
Weeks 1–3
Owner & tenant interviews · audit of 5 Indian portals · IA workshop.
02
Weeks 4–5
Wireframes for buy, rent, list and the rent calculator flow.
03
Weeks 6–10
Hi-fi system, 9 desktop templates, rent agreement preview.
04
Weeks 11–12
Usability tests with owners + tenants, dev handoff, QA.
Product Pillars
Four moves that turn a portal into a marketplace.
One header. Four jobs.
Buy, Rent, List a Project, List a Property — every primary intent sits in the header, locked to a city picker. Users never hunt for the path they came for; PropEase opens with their job already on screen.
Projects and properties, separate but symmetrical
Builder projects (Spotlight + 'All Projects') and individual listings (Top Properties for Sale / Rent) use the same card atom, the same detail layout — but two distinct funnels, so buyers and renters never have to filter the other side out.
Rent Calculator as a marketing engine
A 12-field rent estimator that doubles as a lead magnet. Owners list to validate the number; tenants land here from Google and stay for the listings. One tool, two sides of the marketplace, fed daily.
Paperwork inside the product
A guided rent agreement builder with a live preview — clauses, deposit, lock-in, notice, all baked into a generated PDF. We refused to send users off-platform; the closing of the deal lives inside PropEase.
Nine Templates
From a city pick to a signed agreement — in nine screens.
Each template earns its place in the funnel. Hover any mockup to scroll the full page; every screen lives in the same blue system.
01
Home
One header. Four jobs. A city always pinned.
Sign in / Real Estate Projects / List Property (Free) sit in the header next to a Mumbai dropdown. Buy/Rent toggle owns the hero. Below: Explore Now chips, Spotlight Project, Top Properties (Sale), Top Properties (Rent), Commercial, Recent Bidding, Why PropEase, Request Services.
02
Project Listing
Builder projects, separated from individual listings.
A dedicated rail for Spotlight Projects (GokulDham, Sundaram Towers, Pankaj Villa) with possession date, total units, total towers and BHK mix. Buyers searching new launches never wade through resale listings.
03
Project Detail
Eco. Location. No fixed maturity. Highlights as honest blocks.
Wide hero photo with project name overlay. Two-column meta — Area, Possession, BHK, Total Units, Total Towers — plus a sticky Owner / Builder contact card. Highlights split into three icon blocks. Flat configurations rendered as 1/2/3 BHK rate cards.
04
Property List (Rent)
A rent grid that respects the renter's tempo.
Same card atom as Top Properties, filtered to rentals with /Month price formatting and a free WhatsApp-style chat affordance. No 'verified lead' modals, no scroll-locked banners — just listings and a sort.
05
Rent Detail
Eight specs at a glance. Owner one tap away.
Wide image + All Photos / All Videos panel on the right. Eight-cell spec strip — Furnished, Age, Floor, Area, Builder, Type, Maintenance, Status. Sticky Owner card with name, masked phone, masked email, Connect Now CTA and an Availability in 5 Days badge.
06
Property Detail (Sale)
Same anatomy, sale-tuned.
Identical card-and-spec system as the rent detail page, but the sticky CTA shifts from 'Connect Now' to 'Schedule Site Visit', and the meta strip drops Maintenance for an EMI Calculator link — one design, two financial languages.
07
Post Property
Listing free, with the friction stripped out.
A two-step form, step one on screen: Property For (Sale/Rent), Type, City, Locality, Address, Plot, Floor, Furnished/Unfurnished. No phone-call pop-up at the end — the listing just goes live, then a yellow Free badge reminds the owner why they're here.
08
Rent Calculator
A lead engine disguised as a tool.
Residential/Commercial toggle, type chips, locality/city/state, furnished, parking, floor, water supply, super build-up area, cover area, age of construction. One blue 'Know Your Rent' button. The number anchors the page; the listings rail loads underneath.
09
Rent Agreement
Paperwork inside the product, not on WhatsApp.
Left rail captures owner & tenant details, deposit, lock-in, notice period and clauses. The right rail renders a live A4 preview that updates as the user types. One PDF download — and the deal closes without anyone ever leaving PropEase.
Design Principles
Four rules that kept the marketplace from sounding like a broker.
Trust travels in one blue
The brand owns a single confident blue. Every confirm button, every active state, every owner-contact card uses it — no second 'primary' color anywhere. The result reads as institutional, not real-estate-broker pushy.
Free is a feature, not a footnote
Free. Listings stay free for owners and tenants — 'List Property' wears a yellow Free badge in the header. Zero brokerage isn't tucked into Why PropEase; it's the loudest design element on every page.
One card, six surfaces
Project and property cards appear on Home, Listing, Project Detail cross-rail, Bidding history, Recent Projects and the personal dashboard. We designed them once with photo, locality, price, BHK and meta — every surface composes from that single atom.
Help, not chat
Instead of a chatbot, we shipped four 'Request Services' tiles — Loan, Verification, Registry, Rent Agreement, House Cleaning, Whitewash, Construction. Real services with real partners, surfaced exactly when a transaction makes them relevant.
Tenant Journey
From a city pick to a signed agreement, ninety seconds in.
00:00
Land on Home
City picker locked to Mumbai. Hero reads 'Home to Stay. Shop to Grow. Just Rent it.' A Buy/Rent toggle sits above six chips: Residential, Commercial, Farm House, New Launch, Plots, Projects.
00:10
Browse a category
'Explore Now' rail shows live counts: 70 Apartments, 25 Villa, 35 Independent House, 60 Builder Floor — each a photographic chip, not a dropdown.
00:25
Open the Listing
Top Properties grid with locality, price, BHK, sqft and owner avatar. Same atom appears in Top Properties for Rent and Top Properties for Commercial — three rails, one card.
00:45
Open a property
Photo header + All Photos + All Videos panel. Eight-spec strip (Furnished, Age, Floor, Area, Builder, Type, Maintenance, Status) and a sticky Owner card with Connect Now CTA.
01:05
Try the Rent Calculator
Twelve fields — profession, locality, parking, water supply, floor, super build-up area, age of construction. One blue 'Know Your Rent' button. A confident number, instantly.
01:25
Generate the agreement
Owner and tenant details, deposit, lock-in, notice. A live A4 preview renders on the right. Download the PDF — the deal closes inside PropEase, not over WhatsApp.
Design System
One blue. One badge. One card.
Wordmark
PropEase
A condensed sans with a roof-shaped mark over the 'P' — institutional, never loud. Always blue on white.
Free badge
A single amber pill that follows 'List Property' and 'Real Estate Projects' everywhere — the loudest reminder that PropEase doesn't charge.
Primary CTA
Every confirm action — Connect Now, Know Your Rent, Submit, Offer Now — uses the same brand blue. There is no second 'primary' button anywhere.
Smart Surfaces
Useful nudges, never a chatbot.
No AI sidekick. Instead, four quiet insights surface on the dashboard rail — reading your saved properties, your last calculator estimate and live owner activity in your chosen locality. One helpful line at a time.
Rohini Sector 25 had 18 new 2BHK rentals listed this week — median ₹24,800/month.
Owners on PropEase typically close a tenant within 11 days of listing, free of brokerage.
Your last calculator estimate for a 1720 sqft furnished 2BHK in Rohini was ₹25,000/month.
Three of your saved projects offer possession by Dec 2025 — two are under ₹1.5 Cr.
"We came in with three separate sites — buy, rent and an owner portal. PropEase consolidated them into one product and we still ship faster than before. Owner listings doubled in beta."
Pradeep S.
Co-founder, PropEase
"The rent calculator quietly became our biggest organic acquisition channel. Tenants land for the number, owners list because the number matched the rent they hoped for."
Anjali R.
Head of Growth, PropEase
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