Two 17-year-olds are trying to make it easier for New Yorkers to find affordable housing, a problem city leaders have long struggled to solve.

The innovative teens continue their work on a website called Realer Estate, which is designed to help make a difference for renters who feel priced out. 

How the Realer Estate site works

The website has consumed every moment outside of class for friends Beckett Zahedi and Derrick Webster Jr. Both say they gave up basketball and their last two summers to help tackle the city’s housing crisis.

“[It’s] a platform trying to make, you know, affordable units and rent-stabilized units more accessible to everyday New Yorkers,” Zahedi said.

The teens launched the site last summer, following countless hours of podcasts, YouTube videos, and AI consultations.

Realer Estate combines public data with real estate listings, and helps New York renters easily identify rent-stabilized apartments and units below market value.

The teens said their site streamlines a cumbersome and time-consuming process for renters.

“We had very little clue what we were doing at first, and with so little coding experience. And so, when I started, it took about two months just to get two neighborhoods on the platform. And every single time I just like write some code, it’d be like some syntax error and I just see a big red, like, crash deployment on my screen,” Zahedi said.

While Zahedi coded, Webster tackled increasing their outreach.

“I knew our site wasn’t enough, [so I] built an email automation that alerts users whenever our algorithm finds a property and matches with their preferences,” Webster said.

“It’s a temporary solution for a bigger problem”

Zahedi said his parents’ divorce — and watching his dad move out — exposed him to the housing problem, and in their 11th grade economics class at Brooklyn Friends School, they learned about the gravity of the crisis.

“Through the process of trying to help him find, you know, a more affordable apartment, I just noticed how difficult the whole process was,” Zahedi said.

So far, the site has garnered 27,000 visitors, and the teens estimate between 4,000 and 5,000 state listings are on it.

The problem-solving teens say they’re exploring additional features, including government assistance programs for homeowners.

Every day brings a new challenge, but they say they’re focused on helping as many New Yorkers as they can.

“I’ve always loved helping people,” Webster said.