
Show HN: Minimalist (Brutalist?) Real Estate Web Design - cabinguy
https://danearthur.com
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aepearson
I sort of like it. Basically a slightly nicer version of craigslist.

To be honest though... With my experience in this particular niche...I don't
"get it".

The pages are printer friendly (a lot of realtors gripe about that). Pages
load fast. Gallery/map view. It's challenging to integrate with that many MLS'
as well...Some good stuff in there. It's obviously you put a lot of work into
it.

Great job on doing something against the grain.

If the purpose is to make money...probably not the greatest site. Other than a
very tiny sliver of the population who appreciates this sort of approach (ie.
hackernews readers), most people are going to bounce right off the site.

The single biggest missing piece is any sort of search functionality. It's
REALLY annoying to use the site for anything other than a bit of browsing.

That said - great work...I hope you got paid!

 __EDIT __* The more time I spend trying to hate this website, the more I end
up liking it. Mission accomplished :)

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cabinguy
Thanks for the great feedback. Current average visit is about 9 minutes...so
it seems pretty sticky compared to our more polished/shiny real estate sites
(7 min avg).

We will most likely add an advanced search down the road, but as someone who
has made their living with real estate websites for a dozen years, I love this
one the most (as is).

~~~
aepearson
How about bounce rate comparison?

From a user perspective - I spent more time on the site than I do any other
real estate site...because I was trying to figure out where to find things,
and it took significantly longer to look at multiple areas than any other
site.

I'm not sure time on site is a reasonable measure of success - but I also
think 9 minutes is impressive regardless :)

You definitely have me thinking about doing some experimentation in minimalism
(we, apparently, service a very similar niche).

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cabinguy
Actually, we don't service the real estate industry, we're in the real estate
industry. It's a long story[1] but we stumbled into the business. The main
idea behind Dane Arthur is that we need to stand out from everyone else. We
built a niche real estate company/brokerage to $200M/year in sales on the back
of a website and want to expand our offerings, but not our geography.

And you're 100% correct about time on site. The only measure we're really
interested in is converting unique users into happy clients.

[1] [http://davegooden.com/2013/08/our-story-10-years-of-
bootstra...](http://davegooden.com/2013/08/our-story-10-years-of-
bootstrapping/)

~~~
hood_syntax
Just wanted to say I love the site. Very refreshing to see a strong
utilitarian design like this. Congratulations on your success by the way, I
hope it continues

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cabinguy
Thank you!

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stocktech
[https://danearthur.com/mn/akeley/residential](https://danearthur.com/mn/akeley/residential)

On Chrome, if you expand the listing, the description's text-overflow isn't
working. You need overflow:hidden for the ellipsis to work, but I'd rather see
the nowrap gone.

Otherwise I love it.

~~~
cabinguy
Great catch. We just made a change 20 minutes ago that must have broken this.
Thank you very much!

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mfluderx
I like it and did something similar a few years ago with a villa rental site.

I used to add the number of available properties after the place name in the
list view e.g. Tenerife (12).

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cabinguy
Hi Everyone, we just launched Dane Arthur, a minimalist (brutalist?) real
estate website that covers all areas of Minnesota & Wisconsin (19 MLS boards).
The idea was to run in the opposite direction of everyone else. Mobile version
will be up next week (currently looks terrible on mobile, fine on
desktop/tablet). Feedback is welcome - thanks!

~~~
holografix
Best thing I've seen in years. Risking an oxymoron I think you could achieve a
prettier brutalist design with a little more care around the typography. I
like it a lot.

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legitster
I was going to say, Brutalism aside, this site is about 10 CSS rules away from
being gorgeous on top.

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cabinguy
You know how it goes...when you work on something intensely, you can lose some
perspective. I'm very open to suggestions. Thanks.

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threesixandnine
With my over 30+ almost 40 eyes and glasses and a 1920x1200 24" monitor fonts
are simply too small.

Otherwise it looks good and I like the simplicity.

~~~
cabinguy
Agreed. We plan on fixing that. Thanks for taking the time to review!

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nwrk
good luck! did you tried to make the font even more smaller so you don't have
to scroll that much ?

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cabinguy
Thanks. We went with a "scroll and click" UI. Keyboard not necessary.

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perfmode
This is beautiful. Great work.

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cabinguy
Thank you.

