Background
Softronix Global Services Ltd is an indigenous software development company specialized in the design of industry solutions and business web applications. Softronix is private limited liability company with many years of experience in the I.T. sector.
The basic objective of its establishment is to provide Information technology consultancy and software services.
The services provided are as follows:
1. Desktop Application Development.
2. Web and Mobile Application Development.
3. Database Design and Administration.
4. Search Engine Optimization.
5. Internet Marketing.
6. I.T. Consultancy and Technical Support.
Mission Statement
Quality Service Delivery.
Synergistic Customer Relation.
Provide solutions to complex life problems.
Keep the world informed.
Honesty and Integrity in Business.
Track Record
We designed the world’s 1st Real Estate Exchange (REX) – www.2huts.com: 2huts.com is a web software application that provides real estate brokering and marketing services to the real estate industry and the general public. The system operates as a real estate information exchange providing a platform to the estate professional to market real properties to the public thus an online real estate market. The concept is to gather and organize all the commercial real estate information (Sale/Letting/Rent/Lease) from all estate agencies on one platform for the public to access using the internet technology.
The application was recently launched, real estate agencies and firms from across the nation have subscribed to our services and the cliental is still growing. We also presented the application to the members of the Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers (NIESV) and it has been duly endorsed and accepted by the Institution.
Project: www.2huts.com – The Real Estate Exchange
Introduction
2huts.com is a web application that serves the real estate industry with services as follows:
i. E-marketing and Multiple Listing services.
ii. Estate broking platform.
iii. Real estate search engine.
2huts.com is designed to serve as an organized market platform (exchange) where the buyer and seller of real estate can meet and transact with the real estate agency as the intermediary. The application is a multi-face system comprising of four (4) interfaces namely: Buyer, Broker, Vendor and Admin all working interdependently.
Problem Statement
The real estate industry in Nigeria is an unorganized market with limited exposure to the general public. There is no definite place for buyers and sellers to find each other; the market mostly works on coincidental referrals. The interested buyer is not adequately exposed to the general free market forces in which he has alternative to choose from. There are no records of the transactions going on because of the uncontrolled nature of the industry making it quite impossible to enforce the real estate laws. The real estate business is a professional practice that requires a license in order to receive remuneration for services rendered as a real estate broker, but unlicensed activities has rampaged the industry violating the ethics of the profession.
Design Goals
- Commercial Information Exchange.
Our main goal is to provide an organized platform where information about real estate is obtained and utilized by both parties (buyer and seller) involved and the intermediary (estate agency) through multiple market listing.
- Estate Brokerage.
The application should provide a personalized platform where an estate agent or broker can use to market real estate on behalf of his client and selling it for the highest possible price under the best terms.
- Simplified Information Retrieval and Usage.
Another important goal was to build systems that reasonable numbers of people can actually use. Usage was important to us because we think some of the most important real property search will involve leveraging the vast amount of usage data. The information retrieved should be in a few simple steps and fast.
- Transaction and Cash Flow Documentation.
The system was design to keep record of transactions and cash flow of the market. With full implementation, it is possible to monitor all transactions in the market any time any day and to know who buy what, from whom, at what price and date. It is also possible to know the total worth of real estate transacted in a particular period of time and total cash flow of the market including the commission earned by the brokers.
- Improved and Easy Real Asset Acquisition.
We wanted to incorporate internet technology in the real estate industry so as to make the real asset acquisition easy by sophisticating and enhancing the usual procedures the buyer usually follow to acquire real estate. We think the technology can improve dramatically the professional ethics and transparency of the industry. Thus, making it a world class safe heaven for investment and employment opportunities.
Result and Performance
The most important measure of a web application is its ability to deliver quality results to its users within the shortest possible time from wherever they are. Because we are targeting a highly professional, sophisticated and at the same time unorganized industry, the system has to be some what precise to deal with the demands. 2huts.com stands uniquely different from other multiple listing services because of its simplicity, user-friendliness, reality-like features, and fastness. The results of the performance test we carried out on the system performance under a poor network condition with our local server shows that it takes less than 7 seconds to load the application.
1. Storage Requirements
2huts.com is designed to scale cost effectively to the size of the database as it grows. One aspect of this is to use storage efficiently. Table 1 has a breakdown of some statistics and storage requirements of 2huts.com. Due to the light nature of the application the total size of the application is about 565 KB. At the current disk hosting prices this makes the application a relatively cheap source of useful data. More importantly, the total of all the data used by the application requires a comparable amount of storage to start with, about 10GB.
| Storage Statistics | |
| Total size of application | 565 KB |
| Total size of database (scalable) | Up to 1000 GB (currently 266KB) |
| Total size of image folder | Up to Server Limit(currently 14.4MB) |
Table 1. Storage Statistics
2. System Performance
The current version of 2huts.com answers most search queries in between 1 and 10 seconds. With further optimization, the system can perform even better. We intend to speed up 2huts.com considerably through hardware, software, algorithm and intelligent query improvements.
3. Conclusion
2huts.com is designed to be a scalable information exchange. The primary goal is to provide high quality search results over a rapidly growing real estate industry with great potential. 2huts.com employs a number of techniques to improve quality and performance.
Furthermore, 2huts.com is a complete architecture that provides a platform for gathering real estate information from the industry and then turns it into marketable commodity to be used for the benefit of the industry, the system does nothing more than managing and storing information for performing search queries over them.
Real Estate Exchange (REX)
Real Estate Exchange (REX) is a combination of technologies that give rise to a new evolutional trend in real estate transaction through a web 2.0 platform. The technologies are as follows:
1. Multiple Listing Services (MLS)
2. Internet Data Exchange (IDX)
3. Virtual Office Website (VOW)
REX combines all the features of all the three technologies and some add-ons, giving the real estate broker flexibility and control over his data. And at same being in a competitive and cooperative market.
REX is built on the concept of web 2.0 as participatory and informational platform. REX serves a market where buyers and sellers of real properties meet each other and possibly transact.
REX gives rise to now what is called REAL ESTATE 2.0: which is next generation of real estate business transaction.
Figure 1: this is the homepage of the real estate exchange – www.2huts.com
Our Team
Our Software development team has all the modern qualifications and skills in the profession, we have a lot of experience in using the following technologies:
Programming Languages:
§ Python
§ C/C++
§ Php
§ Perl
§ Java
§ Visual Basic
Web Design
§ HTML
§ JavaScript
§ Action Script/Flash
§ Asp/php
§ Ajax (web 2.0)
§ XML/XSLT/RSS/CSS
Database Administration:
§ Firebird
§ Oracle
§ Mysql
§ Microsoft Access
§ SQlite
§ Postgresql
Staff
1. Ishiaku A. Gwamna, Chief Operating Officer
B.Eng Electrical and Electronics Engineering
2. Abdulkadir A. Hashidu, Chairman
B. Sc Business Management
3. Umar A Hashidu, Head Engineering
B. Eng Systems Engineering
M. Sc Systems Engineering
