Juniper - Apartment Rental & Investment Platform

Juniper is a mobile app concept designed to simplify the way renters, landlords, and investors interact with apartments. Whether you're looking for a place to live, listing your property, or investing in real estate, Juniper aims to centralize that experience through a clean, user-friendly interface.

I started Juniper to explore how I might streamline the fragmented rental and investment process into a single mobile experience. The idea was to give:

• Renters a place to find and organize listings
• Landlords tools to publish and manage listings (planned)
• Investors a dashboard to track real estate portfolios (planned)

• A smooth onboarding flow
• Favorites and smart search for apartment comparison
• Scaffolding for investment tracking and future AI recommendations

Architecture & Implementation

Built with Flutter, I followed a Clean Architecture approach to keep things modular and scalable.

File Structure:

• lib/
  • core/ # Constants, themes, shared components
  • features/
    • home/
      • data/
        • datasources/
        • models/
        • repositories/
        • datasource.dart
      • domain/
        • entities/
        • repositories/
        • usecases/
        • entities.dart
      • presentation/
        • blocs/
        • pages/
        • widgets/
        • home_page.dart
      • index.dart
      • types.dart
    • onboarding/ # Welcome flow
    • search/ # Apartment discovery
    • favorites/ # Saved listings
    • investment/ # Portfolio tracking (future)
  • presentation/ # Reusable widgets and screens

To ensure platform adaptability, I created custom responsive components using platform checks to dynamically switch between Material and Cupertino elements depending on the OS.

Challenges & Lessons

Initially, I tried to build too much — search, investment, landlord dashboards, and AI. I learned to focus on smaller use cases and solve one problem really well before expanding.

Performance Issues
Image-heavy screens were laggy, so I explored:

• Image caching
• Shimmer states for loading
• Optimizing data queries to reduce network overhead
• Optimizing data queries to reduce network overhead

• How to build large features modularly within a scalable architecture
• The value of designing for performance, especially with visuals and data-heavy UIs
• Why scoping matters — keep your MVP lean and learn from it
• How to think in terms of cross-platform design, even when testing tools are limited