- TV producer Doug Weitzbuch created Housle after working on Netflix reality show "Buy My House."
- Users get six tries to guess the asking price of a house, which Weitzbuch selects by hand daily.
- Over 46,000 people have already played the browser version, and an app is due out next week.
Love scrolling Zillow?
Your real estate prowess can finally be put to the test with Housle, a new daily game created by Los Angeles reality-TV producer Doug Weitzbuch.
Modeled after Wordle, the massively popular game where users guess a five-letter word of the day, Housle tests you on the asking prices of homes for sale.
Echoing Wordle's six guesses, Housle gives users six tries to predict the listing price of a house from any part of the country. In just three days, over 46,000 users have already logged on to the browser version of the game to try their hand.
Weitzbuch picks a new listing every day, showing players just one photo for their first guess. Subsequent rounds reveal additional photos plus the home's location, its square footage, and other details of the listing. After each attempt, players are told if their guesses are too high or too low so they can adjust accordingly. You win if your guess is within 5% of the asking price.
Weitzbuch got the idea for Housle working on Netflix's "Buy My House," a "Shark Tank"-style show where homeowners pitch their properties to major real-estate investors, including the CEOs of Redfin and the Corcoran Group.
Because he was working on the show and is married to a Compass broker, he was deeply immersed in the world of real estate. Weitzbuch is also an avid Wordle player, sharing his daily score with four friends in a group chat dubbed "Wordle Nerdles."
"One day I just came up with the idea to marry the two," he told Insider.
Weitzbuch worked with Jersey City design firm Rapptr Labs for five months in 2022 to build the game. The web browser version of Housle is currently live and an app is scheduled to be launched next week.
Weitzbuch selects the mystery home of the day himself, pulling listings from all across the country. One recent game featured a five-bedroom home in a posh Connecticut suburb, while Monday's house was an oceanfront pad in Miami.
Gawking at homes online remains a great American pastime, even as houses grow increasingly less affordable. Weitzbuch believes browsing real-estate listings is appealing because it taps into people's fantasies.
"I think there's a voyeuristic and escapist element," he said. "There's a dream behind a home."
While he created the game for fun, he wouldn't mind taking calls from the New York Times, which bought Wordle for a seven-figure sum last year, or others.
"Zillow, Redfin, Realtor.com," he speculated. "If one of them wants to come knocking on my door down the road, I'd take their call."