CollegeGaffs.com has been developed as a final year project. It seeks to solve the problem of the poor online accommodation resources available for current students and prospective students of the colleges in Cork.

The benefits for Students and Landlords are the following:

Students:

Students will benefit from this project as they will have a greater accommodation resource at their fingertips. Some of the benefits being:




• The fact the site will have images and floor plans of the property available and more detailed information to the students (accommodation seekers) will mean the student will have a better idea of what the property is like. This will eliminate pointless viewings and should cut the accommodation search for students dramatically.



• The Google map like feature on the site will be of benefit to the student as they will be able to see precisely where each property is and also they will be able to see other useful information such as public transport routes that serve the area, also the location of nearby hospitals, doctors and services to that area such as Chorus or Irish Broadband. This will be extremely valuable to students who are not familiar with the Cork area.



• The ability for students to send an SMS message to the landlord from the site will make setting up viewings even easier with landlords less likely to forget viewing times as they will have a record on their phone.



• The ability for students to register with the site and save a “houses to view” list will be of great benefit as from speaking to students it is not very often that you find suitable accommodation in your first viewing.



• Registered students will also have the ability to rate houses they have lived in or viewed using a specially designed rating system. If the landlord has this option turned on and the house has a good rating the student will know what the upkeep of the property is like and whether previous tenants have had a good experience.



• View if the accommodation has any parking options, this will be very useful for University College Cork and The College of Commerce as both these colleges are located close to or in the city, this means these colleges are surrounded by disk parking areas so it is very valuable to any student with a car to know if the property has a drive way or designated parking space before viewing the property.

Landlords:

Landlords will benefit from this project as they will have the ability to:




• Create an account to add properties and the ability to activate and deactivate the property thus avoiding having students calling about properties which have been recently leased.



• The ability to disable and enable postings for the landlord will reduce the need for them to enter accommodation details on the property each time it becomes available thus saving the landlord time.



• The landlord will have the ability to add images of the houses and thus increase the likelihood of a student viewing the house, taking it. This will drastically cut down on the time landlords spend letting students view their houses as the student will have a better idea beforehand of what they are going to view.



• The ability to add sponsored listings for a small fee, which will show up on the top of search pages will give the landlords house greater exposure and increase the chance of a quick leasing turnaround.



• Ability to add/remove/update properties using an Iphone or 3G enabled phone as a version of the site that is viewable on mobile devices will be developed. This will be extremely beneficial as the landlord will be able to instantly remove property listings from the site once they become available; this will avoid receiving unwanted SMS messages and calls from accommodation seekers after the house has been leased.



• Counter recording unique visits to each property will enable landlords to review if investment in sponsored listings is of any benefit.