In 2015, I joined Housing.com. I joined Housing after working at FusionCharts, a data visualisation software company. Naturally, I was trained well to look at data with curiosity, I think. Housing was special because I got immediately hooked on two things:
How would people decide buying homes online?
What do people actually feel (or want to) when they are buying a home or considering one?
In the short stint (1 year), I got exposed to 1000+ data points that we'd have about a property. From manual collections, forums, developer websites, talking to buyers, non-buyers, tenants, landlords, and brokers. That got me hooked into learning about cities.
Cities shape people living in that city. Those people then choose what kind of homes they'd want to live in. In that pursuit, I found the following books helped me a great deal as a designer working at a real-estate tech company.
Introduction to Cities: How place and space shape human experience — This is the first book I read on this topic. Highly recommend this. Broadly, how physical layout of cities have significant impact on the experiences and daily lives of their inhabitants.
How Cities Work: suburbs, sprawl, and the roads not taken — Lot of examples on the effects of urban planning decisions on the development of suburbs and alternative approaches. If you're in Bangalore, this will be a good read. And read the next one too!
Soft city: Building density for everyday life — Got it earlier this year; haven't finished yet. Examples of how smarter, simpler design can make everyday city living not just bearable, but actually pretty damn good.
Cities for People — If you design a city for cars and traffic, you get cars and traffic; design it for people and public life, you get people and public life. This book has lots of examples on the how. A good follow-up recommendation after Soft city. A must must read.
The Happiness Trap: Stop struggling, start living — Although this book is about choosing happiness in general but some very good examples that you can connect with real estate.
Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time — A walkable city is so energising, it could make coffee shops obsolete. That's why I left Gurgaon. That's why I love Singapore.
How cities work — Found this cool one while getting Amazon links for these books. Will read.
How buildings work — Found another one during browsing. Will read sometime later.
If you're already in real-estate tech and feel there's a MUST-READ, please let me know on Twitter. Happy reading!