Was made at Housing hackathon. Complemented with an android app.

Our project consists of three parts.

1. To provide personilized suggestions to users- We ask the user what his purpose of buying the land is, whether he wants it for residential purposes or whether he is an investor.Based on his response , we can ask the user a bunch of questions inorder to provide him the best personilized recommendations. If the user was looking to buy land for residential purposes for example, we would ask him to list his priorities in order, like closeness to hospitals, educational institutes etc. This way we can provide different suggestions to different users based on their needs. For this we have divided the city of Bangalore into 6 sectors. We use Google Places API to get the total number of hospitals/ schools/ malls, or whatever the user has asked for, and suggest an area with the best combination of all the users needs.

2. To eliminate site visit- Once we show the user the suggested region, he would want to know the locality and probably see many pictures and videos to get an idea of it. What websites like magic bricks do currently is that they send a team down to different locations in random cities and ask them to take videos and pictures of the locality. This is very inefficient as the area the small team can cover is limited. We propose to crowd source this process of taking photos and videos. For this purpose, we have made an android app, wherein the user signs in , takes a photo, writes optional comments, and uploads the image. The latitude and longitude of the users position area automatically taken and a marker is put on the map. In order to make it crowd sourced, any person who uploads photos and videos of his area is given points. Once the number of points crosses a limit, we provide incentives like 'free movie ticket' or 'free ola ride' etc. This will result in a large number of pictures and videos in any particular area over time, and is the best thing after google street view. This will help the buyer know more about the area and hence avoid a site visit.

3. To make the transaction process more transparent-

   Once the user is decided and has shortlisted two-three properties, he would want to make sure that there is no discripancy in the documents. The current process is very cummbersome for the user. He has to spend a lot of time in getting documents verified, getting legal advice (this also includes the countless amount of money and time he spends on bribes and various processes). This is one of the main reasons why people are hesitant in buying land. We try to simplify the process by making the entire process transparent. What we have proposed is a 'Land Document Index (LDI)', which gives an overall score for every site/house. We do this by an empirical formula which takes into consideration all documents needed and also gives higher weightage to important and sensitive documents like 'Khata or Encumbrance Ceritificates'. The user has to pay a small fee to get this first hand verified information about that plot. These documents are verified by a legal council. Once he pays the fee, he can see the LDI and also see all related documents. This makes the system transparent and the process effortless. We also provide a chat service where the user can contact a the tied up legal council and also the owner of the land he's interested in. This makes the entire ecosystem of buying and selling land easy, efficient, transparent and productive.

All these factors used together, would reinvent the way people look at the land market and would change the face of the online real estate market, and would encourage more people to buy and sell land.