HuisjeHuisje

“A Tinder for home swapping.” HuisjeHuisje is an app that cleverly breaks open the market for rental homes.

We made HuisjeHuisje as intuitive and easy-to-use as possible. The visual style and copy have been chosen to match that intuitive interface: friendly, simple and personal.

It is easy to swipe through the houses and flats on offer. You can “like” a home with a simple click. If the other party likes your house too: Bingo! You have a match. You can use the app to start a chat and arrange a meeting with the other person.

INSIGHTS 

The basis for HuisjeHuisje was laid in a ‘Pressure Cooker’, during which we determined the basics and developed a working demo. The demo convinced other partners to participate. WoningNet got in on the act, and several associations joined in, too. Together, the 26 associations that are now part of HuisjeHuisje manage a total of 336,000 rental homes.

The partnership with WoningNet and the associations means security; swappers have a high probability that their association will approve the swap, and because the app is connected to the housing databases the rental price and number of square metres can be verified.

When the app was launched in September 2017, HuisjeHuisje received a lot of attention from the press. With 35,000 downloads in three months, the app quickly became more popular than its competitor woningruil.nl.

The Netherlands has too many people, and not enough homes. Many people have to wait for years, and the waiting lists of Social housing associations just don’t seem to be getting any shorter.

Some of these people already rent from an association, but would like a different kind of home. A bigger one, perhaps, with more room for their children, or a smaller one, because all their children have moved out.
These people don’t need a waiting list, they need a swap!

Housing association Ymere took the initiative to develop a platform for supply and demand. Their question: “Is it possible to build a simple app for something as complicated as home swapping?”