Case study · Real estate · For sale by owner
List Your Space Your home. Your sale. Your money.
A free for-sale-by-owner listing site for Canadian homes, with a commission slider, human-reviewed listings and a lawn-sign builder.
01 — The brief
The problem it solves
A typical Canadian commission isn't a service charge — on a $750,000 home it's $37,500. Owners who want to sell themselves face listing sites that feel like catalogues and gatekeepers in between.
The brief: a friendly, genuinely free way to list a home, with every listing reviewed by a person and buyers able to reach the owner without exposing their details.
02 — What we built
Features that do real work.
The commission slider
“Drag the slider. Feel the fee.” — the cost of commission on your price, in dollars.
List your home — free
A four-step form with no account; a person reviews every listing before it goes live.
Private buyer messages
Buyer enquiries are relayed, so the owner's contact details are never published.
Neighbourhood guides
Guides that unlock in stages as real listings arrive in an area — grown, not generated.
Lawn sign builder
Design a for-sale sign, preview it on a lawn, and pay only after approving an emailed proof.
03 — How it's put together
Structure
Homes for sale with filters, listing pages, neighbourhood guides and the sign shop. The example listings shown before launch are badged as examples on every card.
Under the hood
- Plain HTML and vanilla JavaScript; forms handled by Netlify Forms
- Listings render from a single data file, so launch is a data change, not a rebuild
- Photo credits on every image
Details that matter
- Unusually honest pre-launch: every example listing is labelled as one
- A plain comparison with the big listing portal
- Proof-first, pay-on-approval sign ordering
Launch the trust before the inventory: the free model, the human review and the labelled examples tell owners exactly what they're getting before the first real listing arrives.
Want a build
like this one?
Tell us what you're launching. We'll tell you honestly what it needs — and what it doesn't.