To build from scratch a real estate website can be a tough job.
There is always the alternative to display your portfolio on 3rd party websites.
Unfortunately, this strategy will hardly let you stand out and attract clients.
There is a tight competition out there, and you need a professional site to create a compelling online presence.
The good news is that WordPress allows you to create a sophisticated site swiftly, even without having too much technical experience.
There are many great themes developed for the real estate business that ensure the structure of your website.
By mixing the right theme and plugins, you will create an excellent real estate site.
Before purchasing the theme, you should establish first what features and functionality are necessary.
In the following article, we will guide you through the basics and teach you how to build your site in a few easy steps.
What should your Real Estate Website include
The first and foremost purpose of a real estate website is to help you display your property portfolio, attract potential home buyers, and increase sales.
For home selling, you are most likely to close the deals offline, but a professional website will get the potential customer’s attention and initiate the sale. Think of it as the online extension of your business.
For a real estate website, you should consider the following aspects.
Contact details: Display your phone number, email, office address, and any other contact info in an easy-to-find and understandable way. You can list your info in the footer area or consider creating a dedicated contact page. This way, your visitors don’t lose time searching for a way to get in touch with you. It is relatively simple to accomplish this, and you only require the essential features of a WordPress theme for that.
Property information: you will need to show accurate info about the property and include images, videos, documents, and other details you may wish.
Take bookings: If you have a large client base, you can implement an online appointment system to make your workflow more efficient. And if you run a rental business, an online reservation system is a must-have functionality.
Search filters: The search feature is a primary function for a real estate website allowing users to find content fast. Your visitors should be able to browse through properties and filter by location, number of rooms, square footage, and more.
Custom fields: If you operate in a specific real estate niche, you might want to look for a WordPress theme that enables you to customize the search function and add custom fields to address the needs of your market.
Map listings: This is another vital tool for a real estate website that enables visitors to find properties in their target area and see the location on a map. These custom features require a little more work to implement correctly on your site, and we will guide you through in the following guide.
How to create a WordPress real estate website
It’s really simple to build a real estate website. As experts in delivering the best WordPress themes to our real estate customers, we recommend you to follow the below recommendations to get your site up fast.
1. Get a domain, hosting and install WordPress
WordPress offers you the complete set of tools and plugins to create an up-and-running beautiful site.
If you are just getting started, you will need to ensure two things before beginning to build your website.
These are the domain name registration and the web host.
The domain name is an important aspect, and it should reflect your business area.
To start customizing your website, you must first install WordPress.
Keep in mind that your real estate site should have a domain name, should be hosted and set to work before installing WordPress.
Once you do these, you are ready for the next step.
Choose the best theme to showcase your properties
There are plenty of beautiful WordPress themes designed specifically for real estate. These make for an excellent foundation for your real estate site. Browse through the rich library of WordPress themes, and you will find a dedicated theme created for this business area.
To meet your web design needs, we have build three professional WordPress themes for real estate sites such as WP Residence and Wp Estate.
Our recommendation to you: WP Residence Premium WordPress theme
Our best seller theme packs over 400 options and features, powerful tools, a responsive framework, and fantastic technical support.
WP Residence includes the most versatile advanced search system with custom property fields and Ajax map filtering. You may also design your property listing page with the various options available and showcase the best of your listings in different gallery styles.
Once you have installed the theme, you can customize it with WordPress dedicated plugins or use it out of the box with the plugins included.
WP Residence is compatible with top-rated plugins such as Elementor or Bakery Page builders, Ultimate Addons, Revolution Slider, Contact Form 7, Mailchimp for WordPress.
The available demos show you how to build your content, and there is also a detailed help website to answer any question you might have.
WP Residence is also compatible with MLS Import plugin, a seamless solution to integrate MLS properties in your real estate website, with very little costs, no technical knowledge required and with full support from MLS Import staff.
List your properties on your website
Property listings are the most vital functions of a real estate website.
To attract visitors, they should have a robust and appealing look, provide many images, and include as much information as possible.
An excellent property listing section on your website will be your number 1 lead generation tool.
To get the properties in your real estate website, you have several options:
- Add manually listings
- Let users submit their properties
- Import properties from your external source or from MLS directly.
Wp Residence is one of the first WordPress themes to be compatible with MLS Import Plugin which allows you to connect to your MLS and publish properties from your area as if you would add listings manually.
WP Residence offers several page templates with many different options to list your properties in various gallery types.
You can choose from a full-header gallery with a responsive slider or as a classic gallery.
Enrich listings with custom fields, customer reviews, yelp data, Walkscore, a 360 panorama view, floor plans, etc.
This theme comes with dedicated demos that help you set up the property page. You should check this article that includes instructions on how to install the property page demo.
To make it easier for your visitors to locate you or the properties listed, add Google Map to your website. Or choose Open Street Maps if you’d like.
With WpEstate themes, you have full control over your Google Map settings: from its placement to size, custom colors, and property markers.
Our themes support AJAX filtering over the map, which is a handy system to search and display listings. The properties markers will show on the map as the visitors perform the search selection as well as on the list.
Gets email leads and transform them into buyers
Our WpResidence & WpEstate themes come with pre-built contact forms that show on every listing page. These can be used to contact agents and establish appointments or to ask for more details.
WP Rentals WordPress theme is a booking platform for short term holiday rental. It is an ideal theme if you run a holiday realty business, as it allows you to publish property listings for daily rent.
WP Rentals offers over 200 options and features in a custom-made booking system that comes by default with the theme. To see how it works, you can check the available demos that are easily imported and customized.
Conclusion
A real estate website is the online extension of your offline business.
In such a dynamic and fast-paced domain, you must ensure you are up-to-date with the latest news.
Your website should also be regularly updated and list the property in real-time.
Our WordPress themes offer the right tools to build a professional, up-to-the-minute site.
You will just be required to choose the features and functionalities you need from our extensive offer.
