Created by Vincent Yang, Tracy Xie, Jayden Lee, and Hung Nguyen
At Georgia Tech, finding short-term housing is a recurring challenge. Every semester, students post in Snapchat groups or GroupMe chats asking if anyone is subleasing their apartment for a few months. The process is scattered, unreliable, and often stressful.
We saw this repeated problem and asked ourselves: what if there was a single, trusted platform where students could easily post available leases or quickly find a place to stay? That idea became Burrow—a unified solution built for the Georgia Tech community.
Burrow makes housing simple for Georgia Tech students. Those looking to list their place can add details like cost, availability dates, location, number of rooms, size, utilities, a short description, and photos. Students searching for housing can explore options across Midtown, West Midtown, Home Park, and North Avenue. With filters for budget, time frame, and specific preferences, it’s easy to narrow down the perfect fit. And if they’re still deciding, users can favorite a listing to revisit later—taking the stress out of finding or subleasing a home.
Within the first hour, we decided on what tech stack we were going to lean on: Next.js, React, TypeScript, and Postgres. We then split up the initialization of core features such as backend infrastructure, database table creation, and frontend design/installation. For the rest of our time, we delegated clear tasks and tackled them one by one by priority. With effective time management, we were able to build and deploy a first version of Burrow.
One challenge we faced early on was redirecting pages, which seemed simple but quickly became a major hurdle since we weren’t familiar with the process. It took trial, error, and a lot of searching before we finally got it working. Another big challenge was implementing user identification and login. At first, it felt overwhelming, but working through it taught us just how important proper authentication is in building reliable applications.
Midway through development, we also decided to switch our UI framework from Chakra to Ant Design. It gave our project a cleaner, more polished look and a more intuitive user experience, but also taught us a core lesson—thinking through design decisions before implementation. Throughout the hackathon, these challenges tested us, but each one pushed us to adapt and manage our time more effectively. We worked tirelessly, but in the end, we were proud not only of what we built but also of the invaluable knowledge we gained along the way.
We are proud that we took a problem that many students experience as students and turned it into a real and working product in just two days. Alongside successfully building a fully-functional full-stack application, we are proud of how quickly we adapted to new frameworks, debugging problems, and dividing responsibilities effectively. Above all, we are excited that Burrow is something students can actually use, impacting our community by making the housing search process less stressful and more accessible.
Everyone has their first hackathon. For us, this was ours. From figuring out where to start, organizing and delegating tasks, to implementing all the bits and pieces, we were constantly learning. Through firsthand experience, we learned the importance of scoping out features early in the process and deciding what was essential and what can wait.
After design, we uncovered how important clear communication and version control was, especially since we were all building at the same time. Furthermore, on a more technical side, we gained expertise in full stack development, database creation, and authentication. Most importantly, we learned how to scale an idea from an everyday problem to a working solution in a very short amount of time. Between learning and integrating, Burrow was made.
We see Burrow growing far beyond Georgia Tech. Our goal is to expand the platform to colleges and universities across the U.S., creating a trusted network for student housing. To support this growth, we plan to focus on features that prioritize safety and trust, ensuring that every listing and user is verified.
By strengthening reliability and transparency, we can give students peace of mind when subleasing or searching for housing. College is already stressful enough—finding a safe and affordable place to live shouldn’t be another challenge. With Burrow, we want to make housing the easiest part of the student experience.