Chapimo

Inspiration

Finding a rental home in Abidjan is often slow, fragmented, and stressful. People search across scattered listings, WhatsApp groups, informal contacts, and agencies without knowing who can really help. Chapimo was created to make the housing search simpler and more direct for renters while giving real estate agencies a clearer way to receive qualified client requests.

What it does

Chapimo creates a two-sided housing experience for Abidjan.

On the client side, a user chooses the type of home, commune, neighborhood, and budget range. If the available listings do not fit, the user can send an active housing request to agencies. That request is saved under the user's personal space and can receive proposals.

On the agency side, agencies can see active client requests, filter by commune, publish listings, and propose homes to clients. A proposal can include the monthly rent and up to six photos. The client can review proposals before deciding to contact the agency.

Chapimo also includes an admin space for agency validation, basic analytics, and a directory of real estate agencies.

How we built it

Chapimo is a Firebase-hosted progressive web app built with a mobile-first interface. The app uses Firebase for hosting, database-backed records, notifications, device tracking, and admin flows. The product was shaped around Abidjan's communes and neighborhoods first, because the first market is Cote d'Ivoire.

Challenges

The main challenge was designing a flow that stays simple for renters while still being useful for agencies. We also worked through mobile layout issues, image handling for listings, notification behavior, agency validation, and the difference between public listings and private client requests.

What we learned

We learned that for this market, the strongest flow is not only showing listings. Many clients need to send a clear request when they cannot find a matching home. That request can become a high-intent lead for agencies.

What's next

The next step is to strengthen agency onboarding, improve trust and verification, add contact unlocking/payment for agencies, and expand the marketplace once the Abidjan flow is stable.

Built with Codex

Codex was used as a full development partner to design, implement, debug, and deploy the application. It helped build the client flow, agency flow, admin validation, Firebase hosting, PWA behavior, notifications, image handling, request/listing storage, mobile UI refinements, and analytics counters. GPT-5.6/Codex also helped refine the product wording, UX decisions, and submission material.

Built With

• cloud-functions
• codex
• css
• firebase
• firebase-hosting
• firestore
• gpt-5.6
• html
• javascript
• pwa
• web-push