Housle: daily estimation game

Housle is a daily guessing game built around real, currently-listed U.S. homes. You get six tries to guess a home's list price, and you win by landing within five percent of the real number. Each wrong guess reveals another listing photo and a new fact about the property.

What is Housle?

The core loop is simple to learn and hard to nail. Every day the game shows you one hand-picked home that is actually on the market. Your first guess is close to blind: you see a single photo and have to estimate the asking price from that alone. After you commit a number, Housle tells you whether you guessed too high or too low, then reveals a new photo and an additional clue about the house. You keep narrowing in from there.

The clues arrive one at a time as you use up guesses, so the puzzle gets easier the longer you play it. The second photo comes with the city and state, and later reveals include the square footage, the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, the lot size, the year it was built, and other features of the property. The challenge is deciding how much to trust each new detail: a large square footage means little without knowing the neighborhood, and a great location can carry a small house. Balancing those signals against the too-high or too-low feedback is the whole game.

What sets Housle apart from most games in the -dle family is that it is not about words or trivia. It is a price-estimation game about physical real estate, and every puzzle is tied to a genuine listing rather than a fabricated answer. That also makes it different from the similarly named housle.io, which is a separate higher-or-lower home-price game with an endless streak mode. The version at housle.house is the original guess-the-list-price format that started the idea.

Housle was created by Doug Weitzbuch, who co-executive produced the Netflix real-estate series Buy My House, and it launched in January 2023. He designed it with the firm Rapptr Labs. It is free to play in a browser, and a companion mobile app exists for iOS and Android. The game also tracks your games played, your success rate, and your streaks, and it lets you share your results with friends.

How to play Housle

Open Housle at housle.house in your browser or in the mobile app.
Study the first photo of the day's home and form a rough estimate of its list price.
Enter your first guess as a dollar amount and submit it.
Read the too-high or too-low feedback, then use the newly revealed photo and clue to adjust.
Keep guessing, tightening your estimate with each new photo and property fact.
Try to land within five percent of the real list price before your six guesses are gone.

Tips and strategy

Anchor your first guess to a broad national range for a typical home, then adjust once the city and state appear with the second photo, since location moves the price more than anything else.
Treat the too-high and too-low feedback like a binary search: move a large amount early and smaller amounts as you close in.
Do not overreact to a single impressive photo. A staged interior can sit on a modest house, and price depends more on location and size than on decor.
Wait for the square footage and bed-and-bath clues before making your big correction, because those numbers let you sanity-check a dollar-per-square-foot estimate.
Factor in the year built and lot size once revealed. An older home or a large lot can swing the value in either direction depending on the market.
Because you only need to be within five percent, aim for a confident middle number rather than an exact figure once the feedback has bracketed the answer.

Good to know

Category: Estimation / real-estate guessing
Resets: Daily, a new hand-picked live listing each day
Cost: Free in the browser; companion iOS and Android app also available
Guesses: 6 guesses, must be within 5% of the list price to win
Feedback: Too-high or too-low after each guess, plus a new photo and clue
Tracking: Games played, success rate, and streaks; results can be shared
Creator: Doug Weitzbuch, with Rapptr Labs
Launched: January 2023
Platform: Web browser and mobile app

Housle FAQ

Is Housle free to play?

Yes. Housle is free to play in a web browser at housle.house, and there is also a companion app for iOS and Android.

How do you play Housle?

Each day you get six guesses at the list price of one real, currently-listed home. You start from a single photo, and after each wrong guess the game tells you whether you were too high or too low and reveals another photo plus a property clue. You win by landing within five percent of the real asking price.

How is Housle different from Wordle?

Housle is not a word game. Instead of guessing a hidden word from letter feedback, you estimate the asking price of a real home from photos and property facts, using too-high or too-low hints to close in.

Who made Housle?

Housle at housle.house was created by Doug Weitzbuch, who co-executive produced the Netflix series Buy My House, and it launched in January 2023. Note that it is a separate game from the similarly named housle.io.

What happens when the round ends?

When you win or use all six guesses, Housle shows the result along with more images and details of the home. The game also keeps track of your success rate and streaks so you can compare results over time.