HomelyVest

A hassle-free platform for property owners to effortlessly turn their vacant properties into income-generating rentals, without the typical headaches of property management and maintenance.

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Inspiration

The inspiration for HomelyVest came from a simple observation in our community: a lot of properties sit empty while their owners live elsewhere or hesitate to deal with renters. One teammate talked about a family friend with an apartment left vacant for months. We realized that those empty homes could be earning income if renting them out was easier. The problem is, many property owners get overwhelmed by the headaches of property management – the maintenance calls at odd hours, the endless guest questions, the cleaning, all of it. We felt this pain point ourselves, seeing how people shy away from renting out their places because it’s just too much hassle.

We started digging into the market and the potential was eye-opening. For instance, in Lagos last December, short-term rental apartments pulled in over $13 million in a single month. That means there’s huge demand and money to be made from rentals, but only if owners have a way to manage it without stress. This insight fired us up. We thought: what if we could build a platform that lets property owners turn their vacant homes into income with zero hassle? This idea of “income without the headache” became our guiding light.

So, we envisioned HomelyVest; a platform to empower property owners to list and rent their homes easily while we handle the hard parts. Our value proposition is straightforward: help owners earn passive income from their properties without the usual stress. Whether an owner is overseas, busy with a day job, or just not interested in becoming a full-time landlord, our platform would have their back. We kept thinking about people like our parents or neighbors who have an extra apartment but fear the work involved. We wanted HomelyVest to give them peace of mind and a sense that they’re not leaving money on the table.

What it does

Even though this is just an MVP that we intend to build one, we still wanted HomelyVest to feel comprehensive. Some key features and benefits we built or planned include:

Effortless Listing & Optimization: Owners can list a property with a few clicks. We guide them on how to make their listing attractive (good photos, catchy description) and even plan to suggest improvements.

Hands-Off Day-to-Day Management: Once the property is live, HomelyVest (with a paired property manager) will handle guest check-ins, guest communications, booking schedules, and maintenance requests accross the listed platforms.

Performance Tracking Dashboard: We knew owners would want to see how well is my property doing? So we built a dashboard that shows metrics like occupancy rate, monthly income, and even an estimate of operating costs which will be integrated from our third party partner hostex.io . It’s presented with simple charts and numbers, nothing overwhelming. An owner can log in and in one glance see if their place is booked solid or if a slow month is coming up.

Maintenance and Housekeeping Coordination: This was a unique aspect of our solution. In our platform, owners don’t have to scramble to find a cleaner or artisans, our property managers will handle maintenance and housekeeping.

How we built it

When it came to building HomelyVest, we focused on simplicity and user-friendliness. None of us wanted this to be another complicated property management software that only tech experts can use. For the frontend we used React, Tailwind CSS, ShadCN, Typescript and for the backend we used supabase for the database, edge fucntions and media storage.

Challenges we ran into

While working on the Bolt project, we faced several challenges: collaborating as a team within the Bolt platform itself, handling GitHub sync issues and merge conflicts, and staying within token usage limits. We also had to adjust to a new bolt IDE and build workflow, which differed from our usual local development environment. Additionally, because we couldn’t retrieve sample data from hostex.io—the third‑party service we intend to use to sync properties across booking platform, we had to rely on manually generated sample data for analytics only, until we have properties listed on the platform.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Beyond the technical gains, our research into the shortlet industry deepens our conviction that the idea has real impact, and we remain motivated by the thought of helping people maximise their properties. More than just building software, we’re building a solution to a meaningful problem, and that’s what makes this project something we’re truly proud of.

What we learned

This project taught us more than we expected in just a short time. On the technical side, we each learned new skills: we all got hands-on experience building a fullstack application with an AI agent for the first time, and all of us improved our ability to integrate systems quickly. We also learned a lot about the short-term rental industry. In researching the problem, we ended up reading about how platforms like Airbnb work and what property owners struggle with. We were surprised to learn just how big the market is and how much revenue a city can generate from shortlets (the Lagos example earlier really stuck with us). It reinforced that our idea has real-world value if executed well.

What's next for HomelyVest

In the next quarter, HomelyVest will be launching Version 1 and entering a beta testing phase to validate the platform with real users. The team has already begun conversations with property owners and managers who may be interested in joining, aiming to onboard them and gather practical feedback to further refine and improve the product. Beyond the MVP, the roadmap includes developing key features such as assisted listing, property makeover advice, insurance packages, streamlined maintenance and housekeeping coordination. HomelyVest also plans to integrate with hostex for seamless syncing and management of property calendar schedules. As the product evolves, the vision is to scale into a full-featured web and mobile application offering comprehensive end-to-end rental management, empowering property owners to boost revenue and simplify daily operations. Ultimately, HomelyVest aspires to become the trusted, all-in-one solution for stress-free, profitable property rental management. Our strategy includes positioning ourselves before the peak booking periods toward the end of the year to capture seasonal demand. Looking ahead, we don’t intend to limit ourselves to the local market; instead, we see potential for global scalability in regions where tourism and home rentals thrive. In the future, we also plan to explore additional areas of property management to broaden our impact and value.

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