The Mission

The mission of the project is to empower international university students by providing a dedicated, free, and intuitive digital platform that eliminates the inefficiencies and fragmentation of the student housing search process. Recognizing the challenges posed by complex real estate regulations, a lack of student-focused rental options, and the difficulty of navigating an unfamiliar market, the platform serves as a centralized hub that aggregates all available housing offers—from university portals, agencies, student residences, and peer listings—into one coherent, student-exclusive environment. To achieve this, the platform aggregates and continuously updates all verified housing options—revised and categorized into the five main student-relevant channels identified through research: 1. University portals (e.g., Maastricht Housing), 2. Student residences and housing providers (such as Xior, The Social Hub, UM Guesthouse, and others), 3. Real estate and housing agencies, 4. Online aggregators, and 5. Social and community networks (e.g., Facebook and WhatsApp housing groups). Built with a focus on simplicity, accessibility, and real-time accuracy, the platform leverages on a smart automated filtering system to display only verified, student-appropriate accommodations. By doing so, it removes friction, saves time, and ensures transparency for users entering new cities or countries for their studies. Its business model prioritizes accessibility through a free-to-use interface, initially monetized through advertising and later expanded via partnerships, visibility-based revenue streams, and complementary services. As the project scales, it aspires to become the global reference point for student housing while progressively introducing additional community-oriented services—such as student marketplaces, discount networks, and cultural activities—thus transforming from a housing search tool into a comprehensive ecosystem for student life abroad. Long term, it aims to expand beyond Maastricht into other European student hubs, maintaining its core values of efficiency, inclusivity, and innovation while continually adapting to students’ evolving needs.

The Challenge

Problem: difficulty in finding housing as an international student Why: difficulties caused by: 1- Tough real estate market / required license for house-owners / little willingness to rent to non dutch-speaking students 2- No dedicated rental market exclusively targeting students exists. The search process is fragmented: there are various house listing websites,agencies, student housings, students leaving houses, students looking for tenants to take over their place… 3- A student arriving in Maastricht faces an unknown market/reality. How to know where to search and what are the various options?

The solution

Solution: The market itself obviously cannot be changed, what can surely though be eliminated are the difficulties and the time consumed in the research process. To do that the idea is to offer a platform that channels all the various offers into a single platform serving as a starting point into the research process, eliminating the fragmentation of it making it easier and intuitive for the customer to visualise all of the availability in the market housing, filtered for students. It removes every friction in the search process for more efficiency and simplicity acting as a filter and funnel.