Inspiration
One of our teammates' parents wanted to appeal their property tax assessment, but found it very difficult to find and retrieve tax assessments of other, similar properties in the neighborhood, having to use multiple websites and cross-reference different types of information. This app will hopefully solve those problems.
What it does
Featuring an easy-to-use user interface, the app allows users to retrieve relevant real estate data from residential properties in their neighborhood, and compare these details with their own house, in order to determine if LA County's assessed value of the house is overstated, and to apply for a assessment appeal.
How we built it
Using Swift, various open-source iOS libraries available via Cocoapods, and Apple IDE Xcode, we were able to prototype and build TaxAppeal within the time allotted.
Challenges we ran into
Parsing the JSON data from the LA County's public API into Swift structs, and crafting the view hierarchy of the application in Swift.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Utilizing rich iOS libraries for the user interface, being able to learn Swift and general iOS development in a short period of time, and developing a genuinely useful tool to people around LA County.
What we learned
Perseverance always wins! And that in limited time, it's important to see the final vision of your app through to the end.
What's next for TaxAppeal
Use various other APIs to grab richer information about each property, integrate other municipal APIs to allow usage outside of LA county, implement a richer property tracking system with better instructions, and provide more detailed processes for making a property assessment appeal.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.