Resident Experience Research & Community Platform Evaluation for a Residential Property Group
Overview
Researched resident and homeowner experience and evaluated community-platform vendors for a residential property group looking to build a stronger digital relationship with the people living in its buildings.
Who This Is For
Real estate technology companies, proptech businesses, or property service providers with 50-500 employees seeking to develop new digital product concepts that create commercial value for property buyers, sellers, landlords, tenants, or investors. Common traits: clear commercial intent but uncertainty about which product concepts will generate adoption and value, technology investment decisions being made before user needs are fully understood.
The Challenge
The company wanted to move beyond being just a landlord and property manager and build a genuine ongoing relationship with residents, but had no structured understanding of what residents actually valued or struggled with, in their home, in dealings with the builder, in their immediate community, and no clear view of whether an off-the-shelf resident community platform could deliver that relationship better than building something bespoke.
Our Approach
The team now behind ECM.DEV designed a homeowner and resident satisfaction research approach structured around five themes: the home and the client's experience, the experience with the builder, the immediate community and neighbourhood, and the psychological ambiance of the home itself, to surface what actually mattered to residents rather than assuming it. In parallel, the team evaluated resident community-platform vendors, including a UK-based specialist platform, comparing functionality, commercial terms and fit against the alternative of building a bespoke solution.
Impact
Started with residents, not features - the research themes came from what residents actually experience (home, builder, neighbourhood, atmosphere), not a list of platform capabilities to sell against. Buy versus build, decided on evidence - a genuine vendor comparison, not an assumption that a bespoke platform was automatically the right answer. A broader view of the product - psychological and emotional dimensions of living somewhere treated as real product inputs, not just service tickets and maintenance requests.
Delivered while employed at Making Waves (later NoA Ignite). Any public information referenced here is used for identification and does not imply endorsement.
Topics
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Built a data-driven content and channel strategy for Econa, Norway's professional association for economists and business graduates, building on an already-delivered website redesign to reduce member churn.
Built a CRM-connected advertising sales platform for a leading Nordic digital marketplace. Connected audience data, targeting options, advertising formats, pricing and sales contacts into a single self-service portal for advertisers and media agencies, replacing a fragmented sales experience with a repeatable path from research to qualified inquiry.
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