Connecting the Wholesale Real Estate Industry

2022-2023

SUMMARY

Wholster has started to build a wholesale real estate community, going from 0 to ~2000 users in the 6 months it has been live. Roughly 100 real property offers have been executed since the launch of the platform, reducing friction in what is otherwise a tedious and clunky offline workflow.

MY ROLE

Design Direction

UX Design

UX Research

UI Design

Rentals, investment properties, and other off-market real estate represent a diverse and opportunity-rich market. Yet buyers face a fragmented landscape: attending networking events, enrolling in investor courses, scouring Craigslist, or relying on chance connections. Sellers face their own challenges—managing inventory through spreadsheets, maintaining unwieldy email distribution lists, and fielding inquiries about properties that have long since sold.

Wholster streamlines this entire ecosystem. Sellers can effortlessly list and manage their properties, while buyers gain a clean, intuitive interface to favorite promising opportunities and filter out those that don't fit their criteria.

Wholster aims to centralize the wholesale real estate community by providing tools that replace sellers' current patchwork of email distribution lists, Excel spreadsheets, and note-taking apps. The platform must also attract buyers by enabling them to efficiently browse listings that match their investment criteria.

Since many sellers are also active buyers, a unified interface serving both user groups creates the most seamless experience while fostering a cohesive community.

THE TEAM

1 Product Designer (myself)

2 UI Engineers

1 Real Estate Investor acting as a Product Manager

My Design Process

UNDERSTAND

• Agree on the goal, Map the challenge
• Discuss with experts
• Empathize with users
• Pick the target

IDEATE

• Focus on solutions
• Remix existing concepts
• Sketch, Whiteboard
• Plan for testing

DECIDE

• Choose a solution
• Define the workflow
• Synthesize the concepts

PROTOTYPE

• Create a realistic prototype
• Write the research script

TEST

• Interview users
• Test prototype
• Summarize findings
• Iterate depending on feedback

Project Goals

Research Methods

.01

Meet Seller needs with Inventory and Marketing tools.

.02

Become the central plaform for the wholesale real estate community.

.03

Meet Buyer needs with robust search tools and simple browsing.

.04

Provide a low barrier to entry with a free tier, while offering more tools for serious subscription users.

User Interviews

Prototype Testing

Focus Group Discussions

Usability Testing

Experts Involved throughout the Design Process

Understand.

Virtual Focus Group Sessions

The Wholster team is fortunate to have two seasoned real estate investors. Both of these experts have done 10's, if not 100's, of wholesale real estate deals. With their guidance, we worked together to identify the initial requirements and our overall MVP strategy. 

To make sure that their insights weren't too limited, we organized several focus group discussions. In these group sessions, I prepared a click through Invision prototype, and sent the link to all of the attendees to use on their phones. From there, I was able to gather real time feedback as the users worked through filtering, adding listings, and favoriting listings they wanted to come back to.

The best outcome from the focus sessions wasn't just validation for the designs and the overall product, but also the list of features users wanted to add to the MVP. The sessions were very organic, and while they may have suffered a little from group think, the outcome was strong, and helped to round out the list of requirements for the first release.

Core Customer Needs

Listing Properties

Available properties are the fuel that runs this platform. Sellers need to be able to list and manage their properties. Without our solution, they're stuck with unmanageable mailing lists, and spreadsheets to manually keep track of all of their property statuses.

Communication

Interested Buyers need to be able to reach out to Sellers. This communication needs to be in the context of the property being discussed. Although Buyers and Sellers could still communicate via email, or social media, in app messagining reduces friction by aligning conversations with investment opportunities.

Sharing Listings off Platform

The app should provide the single source of inventory management for a Seller. The product needs to enable sharing listings through other systems - email, social media, etc. so that Sellers are not forced into difficult offline, manual workflows.

Make Buyers Feel Welcome

First time Buyers getting into this industry generally feel very intimidated. The feature set needs to be simple and intuitive to overcome any overwhelming emotions.

Ideate.

Define.

MEDIUM FIDELITY SAMPLES USED WITH FOCUS GROUPS

Prototype.

The development team built the app based on the InVision prototype, and I worked with them to launch beta testing with our initial focus group. Beta testers downloaded the app and integrated it into their daily workflows, managing their businesses in real-world conditions.

This ongoing testing has served dual purposes: quality assurance and feature discovery. Users identified several critical additions, including video links for property walkthroughs and bulk upload capabilities for property information.

User feedback also revealed usability improvements. I repositioned primary call-to-action buttons from the top-right corner to more accessible, thumb-friendly locations. This iteration also introduced a more polished and cohesive design language throughout the experience.

HIGH FIDELITY SAMPLES FOR IMPLEMENTATION

REDLINE EXAMPLES FOR IMPLEMENTATION

Test.

CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT WITH USER FEEDBACK

Users that were a part of the initial focus groups didn't care much about map views. These users turned out to be power users that don't think about property locations, but instead think about properties as lines of business. As more users onboarded, there were many requests for a map view, that would allow users to jump into the Favorite/Discard workflow of the app. 

What's Next

Exiting Beta

The app is slated for full release at the beginning of 2023. This release will include all relevant features identified for MVP, while also launching the tiered subscription structure. 

More Convenience

Bulk operations were identified as a key need in our testing sessions. Given the complexity of bulk operations, and the timeline for release, these will be slated for Q1 or Q2 of next year.

Measuring Success

As Wholster launches on the Google Play and Apple App Stores, tracking key metrics will be essential for informed product decisions.

I'll monitor usage analytics including active users, overall engagement, and retention rates. These insights will guide workflow improvements and feature prioritization. Should retention decline, I'll organize focus group sessions to diagnose issues and identify solutions.

Equally important will be tracking success and failure rates for the app's core use cases. Once we introduce the subscription model, I'll analyze conversion rates and compare usage patterns between free-tier users and paid subscribers to optimize our monetization strategy.

Usage Metrics during 3 month Beta Launch

519

Favorited Listings

202

Active Listings

17,571

Discarded Listings

90

Offers

1,976

Users

152

Saved Searches

Contact

Phone: 540.421.5358
Email: jclark.design@gmail.com

© Josh Clark 2026