Ownability – Mortgage affordability calculator
Ownability is Houseful’s first big financial feature. It’s a mortgage affordability calculator with superpowers. It helps Canadian homebuyers understand their true buying power, how home ownership fits in their monthly budget, and integrates with their home search experience.
Houseful, an RBCx Company
2025
Summary
Mission / Business goals
Ownability was a major project and foray into fintech for the bank-owned real-estate company, Houseful. The business goals were to increase app retention and new user account creation, while increasing the financial confidence of first-time home buyers (Houseful’s target user).
My role
Owning the end-to-end design and research of the feature from start to finish. I collaborated closely with product, design and engineering partners, as well as legal, copywriters, RBC financial partners, and our marketing team.
Core responsibilities: User research, competitor research & analysis, led brainstorming session, concept testing, UI design, accessibility, prototyping, usability testing, design QA, and a post-launch user satisfaction survey.
Role
Design Owner, Product Designer
Project Team
Product Manager & Development Team.
Timeline
6 Months
My impact
Customer satisfaction scores
81%Said this feature was useful to estimate their home affordability. (4 months after launch)
93%
Said this feature was easy to use and understand.
(4 months after launch)
Business results
69%
Increase in app retention within 4 weeks of using Ownability.
(7 months after launch)
19%Account creation conversion rate directly resulting from Ownability.
(7 months after launch)
92%
Of app users have used Ownability.
(1 month after launch)
My process for this project
Problem
Prospective first-time home buyers often struggle with the financial confidence to buy. They want to know that a home purchase fits within their budget and maintains their standard of living.
They use a patchwork of mortgage calculators and spreadsheets to explore buying scenarios to see what fits within their monthly budget. Visualizing the monthly cost is critical to truly understand their affordability.
Challenge
How might we design a feature that helps first-time home buyers feel financially confident to buy their first home, while increasing new user account creation and app retention?
Solution
Houseful is in a unique position to bring home search and financing together in one experience. Ownability boosts the financial confidence of first-time home buyers by combining their personal affordability range and their monthly cost to own. This solves a core problem for first-time buyers and also provides a compelling signup value prop, competitive advantage and boosts our retention rate.
Onboarding
My product partner and I collaborated with RBC (Royal Bank of Canada) to create Ownability’s affordability calculator. This onboarding flow, complete with helpful tips, allows us to estimate how much home a buyer can afford.
Ownability Results
My buying power
After onboarding, users discover their buying power. This is represented by personalized ranges of affordability (affordable, stretch and unaffordable).
This approach was essential. Our research showed that presenting a single maximum affordable number confused users about whether it reflected their true affordability or the bank’s lending limit.
Monthly costs
The second key element was displaying a monthly breakdown of home prices within the user’s affordability range. This feature lets users explore price scenarios and often provides the “ah-ha” moment that clarifies what’s truly affordable.
Integration with home search
Driving account creation
This feature is partially gated to boost sign-ups, requiring an account to save and use the results.
Authenticated features
Account holders can filter listings by their personalized affordable, stretch, and unaffordable ranges. Affordability badges on listing cards make these distinctions clear at a glance.
Dark mode
We designed Houseful’s native app with dark mode in mind to reduce eye strain in low light and offer users an alternative visual experience. This required systems-level thinking to ensure colours remained accessible and consistent across both light and dark UI themes.
Retrospective
The Ownability feature proved highly successful, driving a 69% increase in app retention and a 19% account creation conversion rate. However, usability testing and post-launch feedback identified clear opportunities for improvement.
Users expressed a desire for additional homeownership expense categories within the monthly costs tab, which would enhance both perceived value and trust. They also wanted closing costs included to better understand upfront financial requirements.
From a business standpoint, Ownability has strong potential to evolve into a broader platform for financial tools and educational content, deepening user engagement and supporting future product growth.