Product documentation

TafTaf

Premium real estate, transacted in taps. TafTaf connects property owners and clients across Kenya — Airbnb stays, apartments, houses, plots and commercial space — with verified listings, M-Pesa-native payments, and tools for owners to manage tenants and rent from their pocket.

“Home is not a place. It’s a feeling.” — from the TafTaf onboarding carousel

What TafTaf is

TafTaf is a two-sided marketplace app. Clients browse verified listings, unlock full property details with a single M-Pesa payment, message owners directly, and book stays. Owners list properties across five categories, track views and saves, and run day-to-day rent operations for their buildings through a dedicated Tenant Manager — down to bulk-importing tenants from a spreadsheet and printing PDF receipts.

Product

Features

Everything below ships in the current build — pulled directly from the app’s feature set, not a roadmap.

Product · Client role

Client Experience

From sign-up to booking: the flow a person renting or buying moves through. Screenshots below are captured from a real build running on an Android emulator, not mockups.

Create account

Username, email, phone, role and password — role picked at signup.

Login

Username-or-email plus password, or continue with Google.

Home feed

Featured and nearby listings, filterable by type.

Search & filter

Location, price range, and category filters with instant results.

Unlock paywall

KES 50 via M-Pesa unlocks owner contact, map, chat and full amenities.

Bookings

All / Active / Past tabs track a client’s stays.

Messages

Conversations open once a listing is unlocked.

Profile

Cover photo, avatar, username and role badge.

Settings

Notifications, password, dark mode, support and privacy.

Product · Owner role

Owner Dashboard

Owners get a management console instead of a browse feed: listing performance at a glance, a fast path to add inventory, and a rent-collection tool most listing apps don’t bother building.

Dashboard

Total listings, views, and an Ad Manager alongside the Tenant Manager entry point.

Add Property

Photos, type, price, price period, location and specs in one form.

Tenant Manager

Create an apartment, then assign tenants with rent and due dates.

Why a Tenant Manager exists

Most listing marketplaces stop at the booking. TafTaf’s owner side keeps going after move-in: rooms get assigned to tenants with a rent amount and due date, a whole building can be imported from a spreadsheet in one pass, and receipts get generated as PDFs the owner can print or share — no separate landlord software required.

Engineering

Architecture

One Flutter codebase, Firebase as the backend of record, and three external services doing the jobs Firebase doesn’t: payments, voice, and maps.

Account documents live in two Firestore collections: users/{uid} holds the profile, and usernames/{usernameLower} is a lookup index that enforces username uniqueness and resolves username → email at login.

Engineering

Code Reference

Three excerpts, taken directly from the codebase, that show how the core mechanics actually work.

Property price formatting

From lib/core/models/property_model.dart — collapses raw KES values into the K/M shorthand shown throughout the app.

enum PropertyType { airbnb, apartment, house, plot, commercial }
enum PriceType { daily, monthly, fixed }

String get priceFormatted {
  if (price >= 1000000) {
    return 'KES ${(price / 1000000).toStringAsFixed(1)}M';
  } else if (price >= 1000) {
    final k = price / 1000;
    final s = k == k.truncateToDouble()
        ? k.toInt().toString()
        : k.toStringAsFixed(1);
    return 'KES ${s}K';
  }
  return 'KES ${price.toStringAsFixed(0)}';
}

Signup — username uniqueness

From lib/core/services/auth_service.dart — a username reservation doc is written alongside the Firebase Auth account so logins can resolve username → email.

Future<UserModel> signup(String username, String email,
    String phone, UserRole role, String password) async {
  final usernameLower = username.trim().toLowerCase();
  final existing = await _usernames.doc(usernameLower).get();
  if (existing.exists) throw Exception('Username or email already taken');

  final cred = await _auth.createUserWithEmailAndPassword(
      email: email.trim(), password: password);
  final uid = cred.user!.uid;

  final newUser = UserModel(id: uid, username: username.trim(),
      email: email.trim(), phone: phone.trim(), role: role,
      createdAt: DateTime.now());

  await _users.doc(uid).set(newUser.toJson());
  await _usernames.doc(usernameLower)
      .set({'uid': uid, 'email': email.trim().toLowerCase()});
  return newUser;
}

M-Pesa STK Push

From lib/core/services/mpesa_service.dart — the request that pops the payment prompt on the payer’s phone.

Future<StkPushResult> initiateStkPush({
  required String phoneNumber,
  required int amount,
  required String accountReference,
  required String transactionDescription,
}) async {
  final token = await _getAccessToken(); // Daraja OAuth, cached
  final password = base64Encode(utf8.encode(
      '${ApiKeys.mpesaBusinessShortCode}${ApiKeys.mpesaPasskey}$ts'));

  final res = await http.post(
    Uri.parse('$_baseUrl/mpesa/stkpush/v1/processrequest'),
    headers: {'Authorization': 'Bearer $token'},
    body: jsonEncode({
      'BusinessShortCode': ApiKeys.mpesaBusinessShortCode,
      'TransactionType': 'CustomerPayBillOnline',
      'Amount': amount,
      'PartyA': phone, 'PhoneNumber': phone,
      'AccountReference': accountReference,
    }),
  );
  // ResponseCode '0' => success, checkout ID returned for polling
}

Engineering

Design System

Pulled directly from app_colors.dart and app_theme.dart. Neon lime on near-black, in the same register as the Apple Fitness palette, plus a matching light theme.

Brand accent

Semantic

Type scale — Poppins

Components

Buttons use a 30px pill radius; cards and inputs use 14–16px radii — consistent across both themes.

Engineering

Getting Started

Local setup for anyone picking up the codebase.

git clone <repo>
cd taftaf
flutter pub get

android/app/google-services.json
ios/Runner/GoogleService-Info.plist

cp lib/core/constants/api_keys.example.dart \
   lib/core/constants/api_keys.dart

flutter devices
flutter run -d <device-id>

Contact

Developer

TafTaf is designed, built, and maintained end-to-end by a single fullstack engineer.

Sharks Muli

Fullstack Engineer · Founder, LM-Graphics

Nakuru, Kenya

Building TafTaf end-to-end — the Flutter app, the Firebase backend, and the M-Pesa integration behind the pay-per-unlock model documented on this site. Software Engineering undergraduate at Kisii University, focused on API design, database architecture, and system integration. Also runs LM-Graphics, a technical & digital solutions studio.

GitHub ↗ Website ↗ 0741 441 007

Skills

Toolbox

Experience

Projects & roles

Education

Résumé

Meshack Muli Kikuvi — Full CV

One-page résumé: professional summary, full project & work history, skills and education. PDF, ready to download or open in a new tab.

↓ Download PDF View in browser

TafTaf — premium real estate platform for Kenya. Built with Flutter, Firebase, and M-Pesa.