From Idea to Production: How Propertips Serves 10,000+ Real Estate Advisors

Context: What is Propertips and Why It Matters

Propertips is the flagship mobile app for iad Group, Europe's leading independent real estate network. It's the daily tool for 10,000+ real estate advisors across France, Portugal, Spain, and other European markets.

Think of it as a super app: property listings, CRM, notifications, document management, and networking — all in one React Native application.

My Role: Mobile Lead, React Native Architecture

I joined as the mobile lead responsible for:

• Architecture decisions for the React Native codebase
• Performance optimization for a user base that grew from 2K to 20K daily active users
• Feature development including the notification system, deep linking, and offline capabilities
• GA4 tracking plan design for product-driven growth

Technical Challenges

1. Batch Notification System

With 10K+ users, notifications are critical. I designed a batch notification system that:

• Groups similar notifications to avoid spam
• Uses deep linking to navigate directly to the relevant screen
• Handles background/foreground states gracefully on both iOS and Android

// Simplified notification grouping logic
const groupNotifications = (notifications: Notification[]) => {
  const groups = new Map<string, Notification[]>();
  notifications.forEach(n => {
    const key = `${n.type}_${n.entityId}`;
    groups.set(key, [...(groups.get(key) || []), n]);
  });
  return Array.from(groups.entries()).map(([key, items]) => ({
    ...items[0],
    count: items.length,
    title: items.length > 1
      ? `${items.length} new updates on ${items[0].entityName}`
      : items[0].title
  }));
};

2. Deep Linking Architecture

Every screen in the app is accessible via deep link. This enables:

• Push notification → direct screen navigation
• Email links → app with fallback to web
• QR code scanning → property details

The challenge was maintaining a URL scheme that maps cleanly to the React Navigation stack while handling auth states (logged in vs. logged out → redirect after login).

3. Offline-First with WatermelonDB

Real estate advisors work in the field — often in basements, parking lots, or rural areas with poor connectivity. The app needed to work offline.

I implemented WatermelonDB for local-first data with lazy syncing:

• Property data syncs incrementally
• Favorites and notes persist locally immediately
• Conflict resolution uses last-write-wins with server authority

Performance Optimizations for 10K+ Users

Key optimizations that kept the app snappy:

• FlatList virtualization with getItemLayout for instant scroll
• Image caching with progressive loading
• Hermes engine for faster startup on Android
• Bundle splitting to reduce initial load by 40%

GA4 Tracking Plan

I designed a comprehensive tracking plan to inform product decisions:

• Engagement events: screen views, feature usage, search queries
• Business events: property saves, contact requests, referral clicks
• Technical events: crash-free rate, API latency, offline sync events

This data directly informed the product roadmap — we discovered that the "nearby properties" feature had 3x higher engagement than expected, leading to it being promoted to the home screen.

What Building for Enterprise Scale Taught Me

1. Code review culture matters more than code quality tools. PR reviews caught more bugs than ESLint ever did.
2. Feature flags are essential. Rolling out to 10K users means you need the ability to kill a feature instantly.
3. Users are surprisingly patient with performance, but unforgiving with data loss. Offline sync reliability was more important than animation smoothness.

---

Need a React Native developer for your enterprise app? Book a call.