> In this case, most of these issues can be avoided by allowing a free text field instead of dedicated fields for street name, number, apartment, floor, state,

> In this case, most of these issues can be avoided by allowing a free text field instead of dedicated fields for street name, number, apartment, floor, state, county, district, and whatever. The problem is that free form text fields are the opposite of over-engineering, because you're exchanging complexity at input time for the impossible task of parsing what the user typed in later on. Garbage in, garbage out. An optimal way to tackle complex addresses is allowing the user to fill a free-form address, but annotate with meaningful metadata so you have useful data. Something like this: [Number ] [24] [Street ] [Westover Lane] [City ] [Palm Coast] [State ] [Florida] [Zipcode] [32164] [+ Add another field]