MatchARoom

Inspiration

Finding off-campus housing as a UB student can be surprisingly difficult. There’s no centralized resource or public API to access housing data — most people rely on scattered listings or random Snapchat stories to find roommates. That challenge inspired us to create MatchARoom: a single platform where UB students can connect, explore available rooms, and match with potential roommates easily.

What it does

MatchARoom is a web app built exclusively for UB students to simplify finding off-campus housing and roommates.

It combines a forum-style community and a Tinder-like swiping experience to make housing searches more interactive and personal. Students can:

Post or explore housing listings with photos, descriptions, and prices
Chat in discussion threads to ask questions and connect with others
Swipe through potential roommates based on preferences such as location, lifestyle, and gender
Track live price updates for popular off-campus housing complexes
Save favorite rooms to an “Interested List” for easier decision-making

MatchARoom makes finding a roommate feel less like a chore and more like building a community — helping students match a room, not just a lease.

How we built it

We used Next.js with TypeScript for the frontend and PostgreSQL for authentication, database management, and real-time updates. We integrated a Tinder-like swipe component for roommate matching and connected our forum posts directly to the database, allowing users to chat, comment, and share housing details.

To gather housing data, we scraped information from multiple off-campus housing websites such as Aspen and The Station, since no public API exists for this data.

Challenges we ran into

One of the toughest challenges was finding a way to access off-campus housing data without an API. We had to build our own scraping logic to collect listings reliably. Another major challenge was implementing the swiping component, which required custom logic to handle preferences and matches. Finally, integrating our forum with the database and ensuring smooth real-time updates was tricky but rewarding.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re proud of how much we accomplished in just two days. Our team built a functional prototype that connects UB students through an interactive platform combining a forum, real-time database, and swiping interface — all integrated smoothly.

We’re especially proud of:

Successfully scraping and organizing off-campus housing data despite no public API
Building a Tinder-style roommate matcher from scratch
Designing a clean and intuitive UI/UX that feels familiar and student-friendly
Learning to work efficiently with TypeScript, Next.js, and PostgreSQL under tight time pressure

Most of all, we’re proud that MatchARoom solves a real problem students face every semester — helping our community connect and find housing more easily.

What we learned

Throughout this project, we learned how to:

Effectively combine TypeScript with databases
Work with real-time data and user authentication
Collaborate efficiently as a team under tight hackathon deadlines

MatchARoom taught us how to turn an everyday student frustration into a working product — and that with the right tools, even complex ideas can come to life quickly.

What's next for MatchARoom

Next for MatchARoom is introducing a live component that allows users to interact in real time. This includes features like:

Live chat between potential roommates to ask questions instantly
Real-time updates for new listings, price changes, and messages
Profile for each user and consistently updating roommate matcher

These features will make MatchARoom more dynamic and community-driven — helping UB students connect faster and more naturally as they search for housing and roommates.