Property, made human again.
A community platform for finding a home and getting to know the streets around it: property search, neighbourhood profiles packed with data, a forum for everything real estate, the best local businesses, and an instant valuation tool. We were the creative and technical partner for all of it, from the wordmark to the models.
- Website
- abodda.com
- Client
- Abodda, Glasgow
- Practice
- Studio Surface and Surface Labs
- Scope
- Identity, product, data and models, infrastructure, campaign
The first community driven property marketplace.
Studio Surface, on the briefTwo sides of a market, one calm product.
Abodda set out to make property feel like the best consumer apps rather than an estate agent: warm, casual, minimal. Not just listings, but the whole life around a home: what the street is like, where to eat, what the neighbours think, what a place is really worth. A brand with no corporate edge and a product that treats a neighbourhood as a community rather than a postcode.
Under the surface it is a heavy technical build: large language models for search and content, image processing behind the instant valuation calculator, geospatial and ONS data behind the neighbourhood profiles, Azure infrastructure, and a long list of integrations for property, mapping, finance and identity. Several languages in the codebase, Tailwind on the front, one interface that never shows the seams.
Home. Neighbourhood. Community.
The campaign ran across the Underground with the product's own voice: short questions, real streets, the wordmark doing the rest.
The productBrand to backend, nine pieces.
Brand identity and creative direction
Wordmark, system and tone of voice. Warm, casual, minimal, with a campaign voice built from short questions.
Property search
Listings with search that understands what people mean, powered by large language models, with shortlisting, alerts, points and milestones.
Neighbourhood profiles
Pages packed with data: ONS statistics, geospatial layers, schools, transport, prices, and what the community says about living there.
Community forum
A place to share anything and everything real estate: posts, photos and videos, interactive voting and commenting, moderated and in the brand's voice.
Things to do
The best local businesses, rated and reviewed by the community, so a listing comes with the pub, the cafe and the Saturday market around it.
Instant valuation
A calculator that uses image processing on property photos alongside market and ONS data to estimate what a home is worth in seconds.
Tools
Mortgage and stamp duty calculators built into the journey rather than bolted on.
Integrations and infrastructure
Azure, ONS data, LLM providers, property, mapping, finance and identity APIs. Built in several languages with Tailwind on the front end.
Lifecycle email and out of home
Welcome, verification, login, password and notification emails, and the Underground campaign at Baker Street: Homes. Round here? Pub or cafe? Together.
The tools behind it.
Figma
Design and prototyping
Blender
3D
After Effects
Motion and animation
Tailwind CSS
Front end
Python
Services, image processing
Django and Django REST framework
Backend and API
PostgreSQL
Database
Celery
Task queue
Gunicorn
WSGI HTTP server
TypeScript
Application code
React and React Native
Web and mobile front end
Microsoft Azure
Infrastructure
LLMs
Search and content
AI
Models and automation
ONS data
Neighbourhood statistics
Google APIs
Maps and location
API
Integrations
Who made it.
Studio Surface works as one team across design and engineering, with specialist contractors brought in when a project needs them.
Amin Gabbani
Creative direction, identity, product
Nicholas
AI search and geospatial data
Ziad
Platform and integrations
Ala Suboh
Programme and campaign
