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98 vs 43: rebuilding a real estate portal to outrun the market
THE SITUATION
Real estate portals are heavy by nature: map rendering, image
galleries, live listing feeds, filter logic. The industry treats
slow as inevitable.
I tested that assumption against six portals, including the three
largest in Brazil, plus Zillow and Craigslist.
THE RESULT
Mobile PageSpeed Insights, measured September and October 2026:
Performance 98 43
Largest Contentful 2.0s 12.3s
Total Blocking Time 0ms 1,444ms
Cumulative Shift 0 0.011
Sum of all four Lighthouse scores: 398 out of 400. The closest
competitor scored 347.
It wins outright on seven metrics and ties at the top on three.
It does not lose a single one.
AGENTIC BROWSING
I also tested whether AI agents can read each portal. Brokers
passes 3 of 3. The three largest Brazilian portals fail. Zillow
passes. This matters more every month, as more purchase research
starts inside an AI assistant rather than a search box.
HOW IT WAS PROVEN
Claims like this get challenged, so the build was verified by
mutation testing: 101 test batteries, 52 mutants, 173 of 173
files matching by md5 checksum. The numbers are reproducible,
not asserted.
THE HONEST PART
A fair objection is that larger portals do more. True. But every
metric above is measured on the same device profile, same network
throttling, same tool. Complexity explains some of the gap. It
does not explain 10 seconds of LCP.
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Related posts
A few things we’ve been working on this month.
Different industries, different problems, but the same goal: making complex products feel simple, clear, and trustworthy.
Fintech → Investment Banking → Geospatial AI
More projects are still in progress.
Full case studies coming soon.
This is the kind of work I enjoy seeing — simple, focused, and actually thought through.
Same prompt. Two builders.
One site made with Lovable, one with Google AI Studio. A Flemish still-life snack brand, gilt frames, GSAP scroll, the works.
Which one is better?
33 voted
67%
16 voted
33%
49 votes
Closed
A three-card tarot spread where every face is unique procedural sigil-art, woven into one reading.
I built this project to test a three-card tarot spread where every face is unique procedural sigil-art, woven into one reading. The goal was simple: push interactive browser rendering using HTML5 Canvas and see how smoothly the system responds to direct user interaction.
WHAT I WAS TESTING:
I wanted to focus on two core engineering aspects:
Procedural generation of unique runic card sigils from mathematical formulas
Dynamic typography and card flipping choreography without heavy 3D frameworks
THE TECHNICAL SIDE:
The card faces render directly onto an HTML5 Canvas using polar coordinate trigonometric curves and procedural geometry. Every draw call is computed dynamically without image textures or external SVGs.
Everything runs in the browser using HTML5 Canvas, Procedural Sigil Geometry, Seeded Randomness. No plugins, no heavy dependencies, and no external tracking.
WHAT I LEARNED:
Balancing procedural symmetry with organic irregularity was the main hurdle. Pure mathematical curves looked too synthetic, so adding minor pseudo-random offsets gave the sigils their handcrafted appearance.
Finding the sweet spot between mathematical precision and tactile visual feedback took several iterations, but the end result runs consistently at 60 FPS.
TRY IT YOURSELF:
The live experiment is deployed on Netlify. You can open it in any modern browser, interact with the controls, and test the response times.
If you are working on similar 3D, physics, or creative web projects and want to collaborate, message me here on Contra.
cinematic💯 . Nice work😍