Splash Page
Listing Page
Create a Listing Page
Messaging Page
Profile Page

Inspiration

As students who have had to deal with difficult and unstructured subleasing processes, we wanted to develop an easier and safer way to go about it. Most student subleases are posted through social media or messaging platforms with no real verification system, which can lead to scams, miscommunication, and unreliable listings. We wanted to build a safe and more secure platform for students to make sublease listings and have secure real-time communication.

How we built it

We built EasyLease using React.js for the frontend and Supabase for the backend. Frontend Components

React components to structure the interface
React Router for navigation
Custom CSS for styling Backend Components We used Supabase for:
Authentication
Password hashing
Email verification
PostgreSQL database storage
Realtime messaging subscriptions.

Challenges we ran into

We initially experimented with using both Supabase and MongoDB, but later simplified our architecture to use only Supabase to reduce complexity and improve stability. This proved to be a hefty challenge as we had to overhaul many different dependencies.
Supabase email verification stopped working after a while because there were email sending limits on the free version. We overcame this by setting up our own SMTP connection through a personal email.
We had many ideas for our project, but ended up having to drop some ideas like an AI chatbot in order to create a sensible and connected website.
Our project was extremely ambitious for our skillset and we had to work long hours just learning. We ended up skipping many workshops, meals, and sleeping hours to finish.
As teammates with no prior meeting before this hackathon, we had to work through many chemistry issues.

Accomplishments that we're proud of
Through all our arguments and mistakes, we were able to get together and grind out long work hours in order to polish and finish our website.
We were able to learn unfamiliar coding formats to a competent level to create this website.
The listing search algorithms, University database, and the real-time messaging system are the features we are the most proud of and that took the longest time.

What we learned
We learned better how to work in parallel, set goals, and divide work for efficient workflow.
We learned what makes the components of a good project, and how important the small details are
We learned to narrow our scope and goals in order to create a more complete project