Estate Agent Program

1          Analysis

1.1         Introduction

The aim of the project is to design a new estate agent system based on the old computer-based system written by Hillfields Ltd., whilst improving the functionality of the program and updating the user interface to today’s standards.

1.2         Statement of the problem

An estate agent selects a number of suitable houses for a potential buyer to consider based on criteria specified by the client, such as the desired location or price willing to be paid.  Due to the large number of houses in an estate agent’s database a computer system is required which will examine the specified criteria and automatically produce a list of houses from the database that match the criteria.  The estate agent may then query a house’s details by selecting it from the list and then print them for the client to keep and ponder over.

In addition to on-the-spot searching, an estate agent would need to be able to repeat a particular search for houses on behalf of a prospective buyer whenever new houses are added, i.e. whenever the house database is modified.  So the estate agent would need a way to store a buyer’s preferences, as he/she would never be able to remember them all, just like a client’s personal details for example.

Although this system is already automated by an existing computer-based solution, there are problems with it as described in the ‘Problems with Current System’ section.

1.3         Current System

The current system locates houses according to the criteria selected through the menus by the estate agent (the user), the criteria being the type of house (such as 3 bed detached), the town/city and the price range.  After selection the system displays descriptions of houses matching the criteria in its database, and any houses of interest may be printed together with all relevant details (except pictures which can’t be processed by the system) and given to the client as a paper copy.

The only way to enter a new property is to pretend to do a search for houses in the category that you want the new house to belong to.  There is no command in the main menu for doing this; it was designed in this way so that the addition of new houses was mixed in with the look-up of existing houses in the ‘Houses for Sale’ function group (see first screenshot below).  The program also has facilities for:

·       Amending house details as you view them (which is not very safe as details may be modified accidentally)

·       Entering new client information via a ‘financial services’ option

·       Entering mortgage and insurance information in ‘financial services’.

·       Changing the content and structure of application forms used in entering client, mortgage and insurance details (this was very crude based on text files and wouldn’t be acceptable in modern day applications)

·       Changing miscellaneous values such as basic interest rate, which affect mortgage and insurance calculations.

Honestly, this system is totally out of date and is not suitable for modern day use (this was quoted directly from the creator of the program).  It is no longer being used today.  The task as defined by the end-user is to modernise this system in line with today’s user’s expectations.