Real Estate Website Development: Purpose, Cost and Useful Tips

Real estate has become a highly digitalized industry. Technologies streamline the process of searching for, investing in, and selling properties, making it faster and more accessible. At the same time, web development for real estate is an excellent way to establish your business’s online presence, reach a broader target audience, and promote your services effectively.

As an IT partner with extensive experience in developing web solutions for the real estate niche, in this guide, we’ll help you cover all aspects regarding the real estate website's main function, its benefits, cost, and development roadmap.

A real estate website is a digital platform where users can search for properties, explore listings, and access information about real estate services and companies. For you as a business owner, this becomes a valuable tool to seamlessly deal with time-consuming customer interactions, inefficient management, limited market reach, or difficulty showcasing properties, etc.

Take a look at a simple example – a real estate agent managing multiple properties. Instead of spending hours responding to inquiries, a website allows clients to browse listings, view virtual tours, and schedule appointments at their convenience. It streamlines your processes, enhances client satisfaction, and frees up your time to focus on closing deals.

You can proceed to examine real estate web development advantages below.

Creating a real estate website may become a great decision, as it may aid you in streamlining routine tasks and automating business processes. Here are the main benefits of this solution:

• Enhanced market reach. Real estate website development allows you to reach a global audience, showcasing properties to buyers and investors worldwide, which significantly expands your customer base beyond traditional local markets.
• Streamlined property transactions. With integrated features like virtual tours, advanced search filters, and online payment systems, your website can simplify the buying, selling, and renting process, offering a seamless experience for clients.
• 24/7 availability. Unlike physical offices, a real estate website operates around the clock, allowing potential buyers to browse properties, request information, or schedule appointments anytime, increasing engagement and conversions.
• Data-driven decision making. A real estate site enables the integration of analytics tools, providing insights into customer behavior, property trends, and market demands, helping you make informed decisions to optimize your business strategy.

An online real estate solution may also provide you with a source of alternative revenue. All this becomes possible through a variety of monetization options. Let’s see the most commonly utilized monetization models and how real-world real-estate websites apply them.

Advertisement revenue

In this model, your real estate website earns income by displaying ads from related services, such as home improvement, mortgage providers, or moving companies, creating a steady revenue stream.

Platforms like Zillow successfully monetize this model by partnering with service providers and agents who pay to display targeted ads to a highly relevant audience.

Freemium model

This method offers your website users basic features at no cost while charging for premium options, such as enhanced listing visibility, advanced analytics, or detailed property insights, to generate additional revenue.

For example, Redfin provides free property listings to users but monetizes through premium services, including enhanced placement and advanced market analysis tools for agents.

Lead generation

By collecting contact information and inquiries from prospective buyers or sellers, this monetization model for property website development generates revenue by selling verified leads to real estate agents, brokers, or developers.

Realtor.com thrives on this model by offering real estate professionals access to a pool of high-quality, pre-qualified leads, helping them connect with serious clients.

Subscription fees

Users, such as real estate professionals or investors, pay recurring fees for exclusive access to premium listings, detailed market data, and powerful tools that streamline property searches.

LoopNet employs this strategy, offering commercial property professionals subscription-based services for advanced search tools, analytics, and exclusive property data access.

Website development for real estate may be divided into several types, differentiating by purpose. Let’s overview each of them:

Property listing platforms display properties for sale or rent, complete with advanced search filters, high-quality images, and virtual tours. These platforms reach a wide audience, including buyers and investors, helping real estate businesses connect with clients effectively and close deals faster.

Agency real estate web development highlights an agency’s unique services, team, and property offerings. They establish credibility with agent profiles and detailed property information. Such websites enhance brand reputation and provide an effective way to attract and engage potential clients.

Real estate marketplaces combine listings from various sources, offering buyers and sellers a centralized space to explore options. Marketplaces may offer greater visibility, generate quality leads, and create collaboration opportunities with industry professionals.

Real estate investment platforms cater to investors seeking properties or opportunities to fund real estate projects. They provide detailed analytics, investment options, and crowdfunding features. These platforms usually become a great starting point that opens new revenue streams, attracts capital, and facilitates direct engagement with investors.

The functionality you choose for your real estate management website development plays a crucial role in shaping how your target audience perceives your business and services. It’s often recommended to begin with a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) — a streamlined version of the website equipped with essential features for a successful launch and real-world testing. Once the concept demonstrates its viability, you can collaborate with your software vendor to evaluate the need for the implementation of more advanced features.

Even though the final functionality is up to you, here we’d like to focus on the essential feature set commonly included during MVP development services.

This feature streamlines property hunting by letting users specify criteria such as price range, location, property type, or amenities. By narrowing down options, clients save time and focus only on relevant listings, ensuring a hassle-free experience. For businesses, it increases the likelihood of connecting users with suitable properties quickly.

Interactive maps bring a new dimension to property searches, showing locations and nearby amenities such as schools, parks, and transit options. They provide an intuitive way for users to explore the area. As for real estate websites, this feature enhances usability and adds significant value to the customer journey.

Detailed property listings with sharp images and immersive video tours within your real estate website development transform how properties are showcased online. Potential buyers or renters get a realistic feel of the property without visiting it physically. This feature improves engagement, attracts more inquiries, and creates a trustworthy professional image.

With more people browsing on mobile devices, ensuring your website looks and works perfectly across all screen sizes is essential. A responsive design adapts effortlessly, offering a seamless experience. By including this feature, you can increase reach and keep users engaged, no matter what device they use.

These tools simplify communication by letting potential clients quickly inquire about properties or book appointments. Clear and accessible forms ensure no lead is missed. Within real estate web development, they act as channel to convert interest into actionable opportunities.

Personalizing your website with agent profiles and client testimonials helps build trust and credibility. Profiles give insights into agent expertise, while testimonials reinforce the quality of your service. They reassure potential clients that they are in capable hands, focusing on stronger relationships.

We’ve prepared a comprehensive 5-step roadmap to help you navigate through the process of your real estate site creation.

Before even starting property website development, it’s vital for you to get crystal clear on why you need a real estate website in general. What do you want your website to achieve? Generate more leads? Streamline property management? Offer online booking services?

In this way, your primary task is to thoroughly brainstorm and define these goals. Besides, work on understanding your ideal clients. Who are they? What are their needs and preferences? This dive is crucial for building a website that truly resonates with your target audience's needs and expectations.

Finding the right real estate web development partner is one of the most important determinants of your real estate site success. Look for a team that not only possesses strong technical skills but also a strong companion in terms of communication and collaboration and has in-depth experience in developing software solutions for the real estate domain. They should guide you through the process, answer your questions patiently, and ensure your vision is translated into a high-quality website.

Note: Feel free to examine Cleveroad’s Clutch to assess our previous cooperation cases. Besides you can go through our portfolio to make sure your expectations match the level of our expertise.

At this stage, a skilled vendor will help you evaluate your needs and recommend the most suitable feature list and tech stack for your real estate website. By utilizing their expertise you’ll manage to make sure these aspects align with your specifications and are integrated within the project planning.

While we’ve already covered essential feature sets for a real estate site, now it’s time to go through the technology stack. As it also may change depending on your exact case, we’d like to represent the tech stack we at Cleveroad most commonly use to conduct real estate web development:

Your tech partner will lead the real estate web development process, ensuring smooth collaboration and regular communication. They'll handle the website creation, intuitive design, coding, testing, and integration of all the key elements of your best real estate website. Whether you’re working with website builders for real estate or a professional real estate design team, they’ll ensure the platform aligns with real estate companies' standards and supports your real estate sales goals.

Throughout this phase, you'll have the opportunity to provide feedback and adjust your website's content. Whether you make a real estate website from scratch or build your own real estate site using a reliable platform, your vendor will guide you in choosing a reliable real estate solution. They’ll keep you informed every step, ensuring the project stays on track and meets your expectations.

Then your software experts conduct thorough testing, to ensure the platform is functional, user-friendly, and free of errors by identifying and fixing issues before launch. They conduct performance tests, security checks, and usability evaluations to guarantee seamless property searches, secure transactions, and compliance with required domain standards.

Finally, it’s time to launch your real estate website. Your IT partner will assist with the final preparations, including optimizing your site for search engines (SEO), implementing robust security measures, and ensuring a smooth go-live.

But their support doesn't end there. You can freely cooperate with the IT partner for your real estate site to receive ongoing maintenance and support to keep it running smoothly and securely. They'll also be there to help you make updates and enhancements as your business expands.

Real estate website development may pose a question of particular complexities, both organizational and technical. Here are 3 main challenges you may encounter, along with comprehensive solutions provided by Cleveroad experts:

Real estate websites development often relies on data from various sources like property listings from multiple listing services (MLSs), third-party data providers, internal databases, and more. Integrating data seamlessly while ensuring accuracy and consistency may appear to be a significant hurdle.

Cleveroad expert tip: At Cleveroad, we utilize robust data integration platforms like Matillion, Fivetran, or Sticth to mitigate this issue. Such platforms integrate data from various APIs, databases, and file formats seamlessly. They also transform and clean data, ensuring consistency, accuracy, and compliance with required formats. Finally, it implements real-time data quality checks and alerts to identify and address any inconsistencies or errors promptly.

The real estate industry is heavily regulated, with strict rules around data privacy, fair housing laws, and advertising regulations. Non-compliance can lead to severe penalties and reputational damage.

Cleveroad expert tip: During real estate website development, prioritize data security and privacy from the outset. Implement robust data security measures, such as encryption, access controls, and regular security audits, to protect sensitive user data. Conduct regular compliance audits to review and assess compliance with all relevant legal and regulatory requirements. Continuously monitor and adapt to changing legal and regulatory landscapes.

Note: At Cleveroad, we have experience in creating secure and reliable software solutions and are deeply informed on how to align with essential regulations like GDPR, PIPEDA, HIPAA, etc. Besides, we are certified with ISO/IEC 27001:2013, stating our services meet leading data security practices.

Real estate websites often experience high traffic, especially during peak seasons. Ensuring the website can handle traffic without performance degradation is critical for user experience.

Cleveroad experts tip: A proficient tech vendor will help you optimize for the performance and scalability of your real estate site from the ground up. At Cleveroad, we usually leverage cloud-based platforms and content delivery networks (CDNs) to ensure fast loading times and high availability. Besides we implement caching mechanisms to cache frequently accessed data, reducing server load and improving website response times. Optimizing images and other media files to minimize their size and improve page load speeds can also do a great job for the reliability of your solution.

What if you can go further within your real estate management website development? Here are the most popular real estate site development trends you may include in your solution too:

AI-powered chatbots significantly impact customer interaction within real estate websites. The bots can answer common questions, provide property recommendations, schedule appointments, and even assist with basic tasks like property searches. This over-the-clock availability enhances the user experience and frees up agents to focus on more complex inquiries.

The real estate industry is generating massive amounts of data. Big data analytics and predictive modeling allow agents and agencies to gain valuable insights into market trends, buyer behavioral patterns, and property values. This data-driven approach enables more informed decision-making, targeted marketing campaigns, and improved investment strategies.

Virtual tours and 3D visualizations offer immersive experiences that bridge the gap between online browsing and physical property visits. Prospective buyers can explore properties from anywhere in the world, getting a feel for the layout, size, and overall ambiance. This technology enhances engagement and reduces the need for multiple physical viewings.

The creation of a real estate website development costs approximately $75,000 - $105,000+. Anyway, you wouldn’t be here reading about it if this was that straightforward, right? The final cost of your unique real estate web solution heavily ranges due to multiple factors, including functionality selection, chosen tech stack, your development team's level of expertise and location, count of third-party integrations, and so on.

You can examine an approximate estimate based on the feature set for real estate website development we’ve discussed based on $50/h rate, which is typical for our region (CEE region, Estonia).

Note: Depending on your needs and requirements this price can lower or increase. To get a more precise number, feel free to contact us. We are ready to provide you with a consultation and your unique real estate website development detailed cost estimate.

Cleveroad is a property software development company with over 13+ years of expertise in IT. We assist businesses of different scales and domains (e.g., Logistics, Healthcare, FinTech, Real Estate, etc.) in creating modern and reliable digital solutions.

We provide a wide range of software services, including custom software development, legacy software modernization, UI/UX design, Discovery phase, IT consulting, and more. Besides, we offer flexible cooperation models like IT staff augmentation services and a dedicated team, so you can choose the one based on your budget, timeline, and need for exact specialists or the whole team.

Here are what benefits you’ll receive by cooperating with us:

• Cooperation with ISO certified partner with both ISO/IEC 27001:2013 and ISO 9001:2015 certifications, stating the high quality and security standards of our services
• Guaranteed compliance with legal requirements, including ADA accessibility, GDPR, etc.
• Proficiency in integrating cutting-edge tools like MLS (Multiple Listing Service) APIs, CRM systems (Salesforce, HubSpot), payment gateways (Stripe, PayPal), etc.
• Team of 280+ in-house engineers (25% seniors) and 200+ successfully delivered solutions
• Free solution workshop that helps you define project goals, explore tailored strategies, and assess feasibility risk free, without initial financial commitment

To prove our proficiency in delivering solutions for the real estate domain, we’d like to represent our case – a platform for managing investment in property.

Our client, a UK-based property investment conglomerate, needed a provider with industry expertise to build a digital ecosystem for managing funds and real estate investments.

To ensure flexibility, quality, and cost-effectiveness, we provided an expert dedicated development team. By applying competitor analysis and internal focus groups of Team Leads and C-level managers, we’ve managed to provide a robust, customer-centric solution that meets business and market demands.

Cleveroad created a real estate ecosystem that includes mobile apps for iOS and Android, a web-based advisor portal, and a web-based back-office for system administrators. All these included an admin panel for employees to support users and manage investments, a support module to process support requests, an accounting module that covers integration with the individual banking system, etc. The platform aligns with industry standards, facilitating fundraising decisions while ensuring compliance with KYC/AML requirements and Financial Conduct Authority #722801 guidelines.

As a result, our client received a comprehensive solution covering the entire real estate investment management process. The software enabled investors to maximize their fundraising potential through our platform. Official data shows that investment activity peaked at £164.4m, with £7.6m earned in the first operational year and £9.3m in the second.