AlbaHaven - Map-First Property Product

AlbaHaven was a self-initiated product attempt for the Albanian property market. I wanted to explore a faster, map-first way to discover homes: start with where someone wants to live, then let them narrow the search visually instead of working through long, disconnected lists. I designed and developed the product across the public experience, agent tooling, admin tooling, and shared backend.

Starting with location

The public experience opens on an interactive map of Albania, divided into geographic zones. Properties appear as colour-coded points, so visitors can explore apartments, villas, townhouses, and other types by place first. A point opens a quick preview, with a fuller property page available when someone wants more detail.

Make searching feel visual

The map is part of the search flow, not decoration. Visitors can select cities or regions and refine by location and property type while keeping their geographic context. The aim was to make property discovery feel quicker and easier to orient than a conventional results page.

From a listing to a better sense of the space

Each listing combines a gallery with structured facts such as rooms, size, amenities, year built, price, energy class, and location. The detail page was intended to answer the practical questions before someone contacts an agent.

The 3D walkthrough was meant to be useful, not a visual extra. The idea was that an agent could use a modern phone with depth-scanning capability to scan an apartment, upload the resulting 3D model with the listing, and let prospective buyers explore it online. The platform supports displaying those models; a finished production scanning app was not part of this project.

Tools for the people maintaining the listings

Agents can manage listings, create new properties, upload images and 3D models, review activity, and handle incoming messages and enquiries. Their changes feed the same data used by the public map, keeping the management and browsing sides connected.

One product, separate responsibilities

Administrators have a separate control panel for agent accounts, listings, platform structure, and permissions. The public site, agent dashboard, admin dashboard, and shared API were built as connected parts of one product rather than separate one-off tools.

What was built

A substantial part of the product was developed and it came close to the point where a business collaboration in Albania could have taken it further. That collaboration did not materialise, so AlbaHaven remained a product case study rather than becoming the operating business originally intended.

Technical overview:

• Next.js and React across the public and dashboard applications
• Node.js and Express REST API shared between applications
• MongoDB with JWT-based application authentication
• Tailwind CSS
• Leaflet and GeoJSON for map-based discovery
• Three.js and React Three Fiber for listing walkthroughs
• Recharts for dashboard reporting
• Dockerised development environment

The architecture consists of a public client, agent dashboard, admin dashboard, and shared API using the same data models.

What the case study represents

AlbaHaven is an example of an ambitious, self-initiated product that was substantially built but did not become a client or operating business. It demonstrates how I approach a product idea from the user journey through to the data model, dashboards, and supporting architecture.