System designMediumsd-g077

Subject Search systemsLevel Mid–Senior~45 minCommon in Distributed systems interviewsIndustries Technology, Software development

Question

Design the search backend for a real-estate listings site. Users search by map bounding box + filters (price range, beds, baths, property type) and expect live facet counts ('342 homes match'). Scale: 50M active listings, 10M searches/day with heavy weekend spikes, p95 under 250ms, listings update price/status frequently.

What a strong answer looks like

Clarify scale and constraints first. Propose a clean component breakdown, then go deep on the hard parts — data model, bottlenecks, consistency, failure modes — and name the trade-offs you are making.

Learn the concepts

Narrate your design

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Run or narrate your approach, then ask the coach.