Show HN: Tool shows UK properties matching group commute/time preferences
To add to this, finding properties that meet the budgets, commuting preferences and work locations of everyone in a group is a Sisyphean task - it often ends in failure, with somebody exceeding their original budget or somebody dropping out.
To solve this I built a tool (https://closemove.com/) that:
- lets you enter between 1-6 people’s workplaces, budgets, and maximum commute times
- filters public rental listings and only shows the ones that satisfy everyone’s constraints
- shows results in either a list or map view
No sign-up/validation required at present. Currently UK only, but please let me know if you'd want me to expand this to your city/country.
This currently works best in London (with walking, cycling, driving and public transport links connected), and works decently in the rest of the UK (walking, cycling, driving only).
This started as a side project and it still needs improvement. I’d appreciate any feedback!
* If coordinates of commute locations are not cached in s3, reaches out to Google Geocode API to get them.
* Based on commute inputs, calculates the intersectional commute area for all housemates. If this is 0, then the program can return 0 properties to the user early as there are no houses there...
* The intersectional commute area is often a multipolygon (multiple shapes), and many APIs do not accept multiple shapes as a query input. Many APIs also do not like complex geometries (often only accepting x max points).
* To get around this, each polygon within the multipolygon is simplified with the Douglas-Peucker algorithm iteratively until the points in the resulting polygons within the multipolygon sum to a total of (x - 2(n-1)) where x is the maximum allowed shape points on an API and n is the number of individual polygons.
The remaining simplified multipolygon is then connected with nearly-infinitely-small bridges [which adds 2 points between each shape, hence x - 2(n-1)].
Once this geometry is calculated, valid properties can be found and returned to the user based on bedroom, bathroom, budget etc preferences.
Vanilla JS frontend - uses leaflet.js for the map functionality.
As this is more of an MVP for now, I mainly rely on APIs such as Google Geocoding API, Mapbox, etc in the backend, but this is certainly limited. If there was a dedicated user base who found value in this, I'd look to increase granularity/accuracy and reduce costs by working with raw spatial data and doing GIS/network analysis type stuff in-house instead.
Although, I do use OSM on the site as a map view source!