Searching for Estate House Agent software

Can anyone recommend a service that can be used to manage the searching of homes for sale and display of homes for a single independent agency, that could be integrated on a RW site.

This seems to be a very active side of the web software market but it is difficult to understand what each service offers and exactly how it is integrated into a web site. Most appear to be Wordpress plugin based that the vendors claim can be used outside Wordpress if you write your own integration software. Also they all seem to offer everything an estate agent would ever need such as mortgage applications, appointment booking, regional searches, etc., which is overkill for this application.

Specifically the client need a way to add, remove and edit properties to the “database” and teh front facing web site created in RW needs:

  1. A search facility for all of the normal criteria.
  2. Access to a gallery of properties
  3. Access to specific property images

I’ve looked hard at this and decided nothing (that I’ve found) ticked the boxes.

The one that got closest didn’t have a sort by price option, which is madness.

The Wordpress options I’ve seen were all pants.

My conclusion was there are so many good real estate platforms out there that this is the way to go.

Such as what though? That’s precisely what they want to do.

Gosh, on my phone now so don’t have links, but just google “real estate website” and you’ll find them.

Word of warning about the client…

Sooner or later they might (will) ask about adding a XML feed from another agent to their site, this is pretty standard. So ensure this is covered with whatever you go with. The good ones do this, but these are the ones that tend to charge around $150 a month.

Caveat… the feed thing might not be an issue with UK agents, my experience in this sector is with Irish and Spanish agents.

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does this suit your need?

https://www.phpjabbers.com/property-listing-script/

I have had this live with a few modifications for an estate agent for a few years, and they are very happy with it

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Thanks for that.

That one has no sorting options.

Maybe other users are different, but for me a property listing with no option to sort as an absolute minimum “most recent”, Price: Lowest first" and “Price: Highest First” is useless.

When I was chasing the real estate sector I put a demo of that in front of loads of clients, all said no to it for this exact reason.

Gary: I’m messaging you.

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Those are exactly the options I had added to the program

I also forgot to suggest that EasyDB can do much of what you need for this. I am only just starting to use it to some of its potential, but as long a you have planned your set-up it can look good with the free form version

Just an update on this. My client has signed up to a fully featured service, paid and sent staff on a week long training course on the assumption that the advertised service would be easy to integrate into their current RW site. The issue I have, is that the software system is only supported by their WordPress plugin and to integrate in RW would need a considerable skillset of experience and knowledge of PHP or ideally Angular. Also taking on that level of bespoke integration could be significant amount of support.

On further investigation, it seems that the Estate Agency market is firmly embedded in WP.

Here is an example of a plugin provider that provides many Estate Agency WP plugins:

Does anyone have experience of the Property Hive WP plugins?

Just to update this, I have now bought into the WordPress Property Hive system and it is exactly what I was looking for.

Reading the About Hive page their first point is " To disrupt the estate agency software industry" - I like their style.

They have a basic Property WP plugin and a free demo template theme which will build a perfectly good estate agents site or rental property site for small numbers of properties. I needed integration to the Dezrez Rezi system and therefore, got the Property Import plugin - ÂŁ150, which will integrate with all the big systems and pulls in the property details. The free plugin has a search which you can fine tune in great detail with another of their free Template Assistant.

There is nothing like this available for RapidWeaver, but it I can’t help thinking that it would be very interesting if RW could export WP Themes.

Why the obsession with something “made for Rapidweaver”?

Plenty of property systems will work in a RW site, as they will in pretty much anything.

If anyone made a property site stack the first thing they’d do is hobble it by removing the need for a database, as most devs seems to feel that RW users (rightly or wrongly) that RW can’t cope with databases.

What are the ongoing costs of a Hive/WP setup?

I just wanted to make clear that this is nothing to do with RW, and requires WordPress, to avoid any confusion from Weavers.

Initial setup is COMPLETELY FREE using the free Honeycomb Theme and the free property Hive plugin. This provides the search that you can define all the parameters and it then creates a new page of search results.

Backend demo at https://honeycomb.wp-property-hive.com/wp-admin/
go to Property Hive on left to enter Property details.

Frontend demo at https://honeycomb.wp-property-hive.com

Also you will be up and running in minutes.


If you need to import from:

  • BLM’s provided via FT (including zipped BLM’s with associated media)
  • BLM’s available at a remote URL (media must be provided as URLs)
  • ExpertAgent XML
  • Jupix XML
  • Dezrez One XML
  • Dezrez Rezi JSON API
  • Vebra API XML (currently version 9)
  • Citylets XML
  • MRI Software RAW Data File (Thesaurus)
  • MRI Software (Aspasia/Qube XML)
  • AgentOS
  • Decorus
  • JET
  • Reapit
  • Agency Pilot
  • Realla
  • Rentman XML
  • REAXML (including zipped XML’s with associated media)
  • 10ninety XML
  • Acquaint
  • SME Professional XML
  • Kyero XML
  • ReSales Online XML
  • WebEDGE / Propertynews.com
  • Estates IT / PCHomes XML
  • VECO JSON
  • Loop API
  • Juvo XML
  • Utili API
  • Arthur Online API
  • Manual BLM upload
  • Manual CSV upload

Then you can use the Property Import plugin for ÂŁ150 - one off. There are loads of other very useful plugs such as the Radial Search where you specify a location and search for properties within a radius - ÂŁ35.

Or the Facebook Marketplace Export to automatically Export Properties To Facebook Marketplace - ÂŁ30