Developing Mobile Application for Residential Property Business in Transit-Oriented Development Areas

Transit-oriented development (TOD) areas are being constructed in Indonesia, particularly in Jakarta, since the issuance of the Regulation of Minister of Agrarian Affairs and Spatial Planning in 2017. This development has led to an increasing supply of apartment units in Jakarta, but this is contrary to the declining residential property sales, which was at the worst level in 2019. Therefore, this study aims to determine the factors that influence consumer preferences in buying residential properties in the TOD area, which serves as the basis for planning residential apartments in the next TOD area development. This study adopts both quantitative and qualitative methods through desk study and benchmarking, as well as questionnaire surveys and fuzzy logic to achieve its objectives. The results obtained here showed that the order of priority factors for consumers intending to buy property is financial, property type, and demographic factors. Consumers intending to rent property prioritize property type, financial, and demographic factors. Moreover, the higher one’s income means the lower one’s interest in living in the TOD area. Another objective of this research is to harness many mobile internet users in Indonesia, reaching 53% of the total population, to develop a mobile phone-based application that serves as the platform for sale and purchase transactions of residential properties in the TOD area. The proposed application has six features: My Preferences, which provides recommendations for suitable apartment units according to user preferences; Search My Apartment; My Store; Mortgage Simulation; Payment Gateway; and Profile Settings.

Customer preferences; Fuzzy rules; Residential property; TOD

        Consumer preferences are individual attitudes towards a series of objects, which are usually reflected in the decision-making process, based on whether individuals favor an object or not (Abdullah et al., 2011). As consumers often optimize their satisfaction from consuming goods to meeting their daily needs given their income (Krugman and Wells, 2006), their preferences to product selections are triggered by many factors, such as material substance, product brand, ease of instruction for product usage, as well as legality and recognition by state regulations (Voicu, 2013). Therefore, companies need to involve their potential customers’ preferences in their product or service development (Chia and Harun, 2016).

Furthermore, concerning the development of TOD that aims to increase the ridership of public transportation (Berawi, et al., 2020b; Saroji et al., 2020), the government needs to determine the preferences of potential consumers for the properties in the TOD area. Consumer preferences in purchasing property, particularly residential properties, are influenced by various factors, such as location (Kauko, 2007), property feature (Manganelli, 2015), environment (Zhang and Xu, 2017), finance (Xiao and Tan, 2007), demography (Haddad et al., 2011), and many more.

The distance between the property and the city center, schools, business centers, and social facilities is a significant consideration for consumers in purchasing a property; hence location is vital (Hei and Dastane, 2017). Besides, proximity to public transit will increase land and property values (Berawi et al., 2020a). On the contrary, property features assessed from the building designs also play a significant influence. Moreover, the environmental factors, including the area’s condition and security level around the property, have never been ruled out in determining property purchases (Zhang and Xu, 2017). In addition, customers consider their ability to pay (Anastasia, 2015), related to the price, payment, and repayment methods. Lastly, demographic factors, such as marital and family status, are essential because the more family members, the more living space will be needed.

Customer preferences are often expressed in a vague colloquial way at purchase time. Various fuzzy methods can be considered to develop new and more accurate ways to understand customers’ product choices based on this kind of information (Barajas and Agard, 2011). Many studies have been conducted using fuzzy techniques regarding customer’s behaviors and preferences. There are two methods to determine and revise the priority of customer demands (Chen et al., 2004): first, to classify the customers’ demands using natural language processing techniques to obtain their expectations and second, to determine the revised priority of the customers’ demands using a fuzzy logic inference. Kwong et al. (2007) developed a methodology to determine the significance of engineering characteristics and their influence using the fuzzy technique, while Földesi et al. (2007) used fuzzy numbers to represent customer assessments to classify the relationship between customer satisfaction and attribute-level performance and identify whether or not some of those attributes have a non-linear relationship with satisfaction.

In the development of the TOD area, good communication and information exchange must be established so that all stakeholders can contribute and work together effectively and appropriately. With the fact that 53% of Indonesians are internet users (Siswoko, 2019), there is an opportunity to develop an online platform that unites all stakeholders to ensure the sustainability of property businesses in the TOD area. Previous studies regarding the development of mobile phone applications in the transportation sector, particularly in transportation data collection, route planning, traffic safety, ride-sharing, etc., have been extensively conducted in several countries (Siuhi and Mwakalonge, 2016). The utilization of information and communication technology (ICT) in the property business process has also been widely researched (Najib Razali et al., 2014). However, the development of a mobile application for property transactions, particularly those located in the TOD areas, have not been studied yet.

This study focuses on developing a mobile phone-based information system using fuzzy rules that considers the perspective of prospective consumers for residential properties in the TOD area, providing property unit recommendations for the consumers and facilitates them in the transaction process.

The results of this study show that there are three main factors influencing consumers in buying or renting residential property in the TOD area: financial factors (property prices and consumers’ income), property type concerning the number of people or family members occupying the property, and consumer demographics. For customers intending to buy residential properties, the order of influential factors is finance, property types, and demographics. For consumers intending to rent an apartment, the order of influential factors is property type, followed by financial and demographics factors.

Considering the high number of mobile phone users in Indonesia, a mobile phone-based application developed to serve residential property transactions for purchasing and renting, particularly in the TOD development area, is an opportunity to leverage the property business process. The mobile application proposed in this study has six main features: My Preferences, Search My Apartment, My Store, & Payment Gateway, Mortgage Simulation, and Profile Settings.

       This research was supported by a research grant from the Ministry of Research and Technology/National Research and Innovation Agency, Republic of Indonesia, Contract No. NKB-2661/UN2.RST/HKP.05.00/2020.

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