Invest in shares of rental homes online
A website where people invest small amounts in shares of rental homes. They pick a home, prove who they are, link a bank account and invest online.
- Client
- Homevest
- Industry
- Real Estate
- Services
- Web and Mobile App Development
The problem
Buying a rental home to invest in takes a lot of money and time. Homevest wanted to change that. People buy small shares in one rental home and get part of the rent.
Homevest buys family homes and rents them out. Shareholders get their part of the rent, and part of the profit if the home is sold.
The shares are regulated by the SEC (the US Securities and Exchange Commission). So the website had to check every investor and follow US rules on who can invest and how much.
What we built
We built the investor website, the investment portal and an admin dashboard.
- Home listings with photos, documents, the price per share and the return on investment (ROI)
- Sign-up with email or a social account, with two-factor login (2FA)
- Automatic identity checks (KYC, know your customer) and anti-money-laundering checks (AML)
- Checks that confirm accredited investors, through Plaid and Parallel Markets
- Bank linking with Plaid, and wallet top-ups with PayPal or a linked bank account
- A portfolio dashboard with charts, past transactions and returns
- Alerts in the app and by email when money moves or dividends are paid
- An admin dashboard to manage users, homes, transactions and approvals
The result
Homevest investors now do everything online. They find a home, prove who they are, link a bank and buy shares in one place.
The system works out each investor’s share of the rent and returns. The Homevest team manages homes, investors and approvals from one dashboard.
Challenges we solved
- Challenge
- The platform had to follow US financial rules.
- How we solved it
- We added KYC and AML checks and accreditation checks through Plaid and Parallel Markets.
- Challenge
- Bank accounts had to connect safely.
- How we solved it
- We used Plaid Link and the Plaid Transactions API, and store bank data as secure tokens.
- Challenge
- The system had to track who owns which part of each home.
- How we solved it
- We wrote the ROI and dividend calculations on the server, with Drizzle ORM.
- Challenge
- Dashboards show data that changes often.
- How we solved it
- We built the charts with Next.js and used Firebase for live updates.
