Bayt Qareeb

Inspiration

Finding housing as a student meant living in group chats, with listings and prices flying by from every direction and no way to compare them. Tracking many options at once was exhausting, and it was hard to know who was legit or who I’d actually be comfortable living with. Bayt Qareeb replaces that with one place to search.

What it does

Bayt Qareeb is a student room-rental platform with a Zillow-style map of listings. Listers are verified through .edu accounts, and you can filter by house type (brothers, sisters, or mixed) and halal kitchens.

How we built it

We built it with Next.js and Tailwind CSS. The map and listings run on react-map-gl with Mapbox, and Clerk handles authentication.

Challenges we ran into

Housing has many sides, and we could have built a little of everything with no depth in any of it. We chose to focus on one part, navigating the house-finding process, and built that out well.

Accomplishments that we’re proud of A working map-based search that replaces scattered group chats Verified .edu listers that build trust Filters that reflect real student needs What we learned

Narrowing scope lets you go deeper, and trust and verification matter a lot in housing.

What’s next for Bayt Qareeb

We want to add more schools and richer roommate matching. Beyond that, we plan to add in-app messaging, price and cost-splitting tools, commute info, and support for interns and new grads.