Building a Real Estate Website in WordPress – Part 1

April 22, 2008 · 35 Comments

I am designing and creating a real estate website with WordPress, and I’m going to be writing a few articles that detail how it’s done. This article will get you started — please leave feedback with any questions or topic requests for the next installment. Real estate using WordPress Part 2 is now available!

A little background — why use WordPress?

I’m working with a Denver company on a real estate website. Their goal is to showcase their listings in an easy-to-update CMS.

I’ve worked with Open-Realty, and — to say it bluntly — it’s a huge pain in the ass. When you scratch the surface of OR, you begin to realize how cobbled together it is. Customizing the code to work as it should requires a steep learning curve. The templates are relatively simple to work with, but the administration section is horrible. The Open Realty user experience is just awful.

WordPress is my CMS of choice currently, and it’s so easy to develop for that I recommend it to many of my clients.

Starting off in WordPress real estate websites

So the obvious first step is this: real estate websites have a LOT of information on them.

Real Estate websites have this basic content:

(Alphabetized, none-the-less!)

Address
Basement type
Basement finished %
Bathrooms
1/2 Bathrooms
Bedrooms
Brochure (PDF)
Car Storage Type
# of Car Storage
City
Construction Type
County
Country
Latitude
Longitude
Lot Size
MLS #
Neighborhood Name & Website
HOA Fees
HOA Includes
Price
Roofing Materials
Schools
- High School Name & Website
- Middle School Name & Website
- Elementary School Name & Website
Status of Listing (Sold/Under Construction/Pending/Active)
Square Feet
Taxes
Utilities (Avg.)
Year Built
Zip Code

It would be tough to ask your client to create Custom Fields manually for each listing for each one of those items.

Using Custom Fields for Real Estate in WordPress

UPDATE:
I have updated this tutorial without using Freshpost (now Flutter). It’s way too complex. Instead, use the More Fields plugin.

More Fields is essentially a WordPress plugin that allows you to define custom sets of Custom Fields to be included in a post.

By using More Fields, it’s simple to create an administration template for creating a new listing. Just set up the fields above, and then use More Fields’ super-simple code (ex: meta('zip code'); to insert that information into your template.

Planning your Real Estate website in WordPress

Once you’ve got the capabilities provided by FreshPost, a WordPress real estate website is more realistic, and less daunting.

The next phase is planning. Realty websites are an interesting challenge because users are going to be interested in finding a listing many different ways — and your client will want to be SEO friendly for searches about the neighborhoods they work in.

Structuring the website: flexibility is key

It’s important that the website will be able to handle listings in different counties, zip codes, cities, and potentially states. As such, create a category structure that mirrors real life.

For example, let’s have the following sample listings:

In Denver, Colorado’s Cherry Creek neighborhood – Zip code: 80023
In Littleton, Colorado (a suburb of Denver, CO) – Zip code: 80211
In Albuquerque, NM’s Sandia Heights neighborhood – Zip code: 87101

The website may be structured like so:

Once basic capabilities are set up…

Now that you can have tons of Custom Fields with More Fields, and have set up hierarchal category structure, you’re able to set up a basic Real Estate website.

Some possible next steps:

On a Single listing page, you could dynamically add those articles about the neighborhood

So, as you can see, using WordPress as a Real Estate CMS makes a lot of sense, and has fewer barriers than you might expect.

As my project continues, I will write another article detailing the process of creating the WordPress real estate website.

Please let me know if you have questions or requests!

If you’re having trouble making WordPress work for your RE website, please let me know in the comments — I’ll try to answer your questions.

What topics do you want the next WordPress Real Estate article to cover?

Real estate using WordPress Part 2 is now available!

Categories: Code · Design
Tagged: CMS, Code, Coding, Real Estate, Real Estate CMS, Real Estate Websites, Realty, Template, Theme, WordPress

35 responses so far ↓

Christoph // April 22, 2008 at 7:41 pm | Reply

Take a look at the Sitemap generator plugin from Dagon Design. It adds an additional navigation otion for your site. It’s not a sitemap you submit to Google or so, but rather something a visitor can use to navigate the website.
Zack Katz // April 23, 2008 at 6:44 am | Reply

Are you suggesting using a sitemap to navigate listings, or cities and neighborhoods?

I’ve used that plugin in the past; it does a nice job of collecting site content.
Alex // April 24, 2008 at 7:27 pm | Reply

Have you tried ExpressionEngine? There’s a lot of buzz about it but once I tried it I was kinda disappointed, it’s the biggest pain in the ass CMS I’ve seen. I’m talking about setting it up (templates and stuff). I should switch to WordPress.
Zack Katz // April 25, 2008 at 8:45 am | Reply

Hi Alex,
I remember when it seemed like all the “biggies” were using ExpressionEngine, but the only one I can remember is Veerle.
It seems less intuitive than WordPress.

When I discovered WordPress, it was a breath of fresh air; the WordPress motto is “Code is Poetry,” and when you dive deeper into the structure of the platform, you realize how true it is.

I would definitely recommend you try out WordPress; it’s wonderful to develop for, and templates are super-easy to make.

This article only begins to show the flexibility of the WordPress platform.
Karl K // April 25, 2008 at 12:15 pm | Reply

Zack,

I’ve been working on a package with a theme (wp-magazine.com) & plugins for realtors, etc.

I’m currently setting it up so that realtors can upload 3 (raw or jpg) fisheye photos and have the server stitch those into a high-quality virtual tour.

This could save a realtor some money in paying someone to do it for them or key fees like ipix…

Lots of upside to doing it this way..

Karl
Alex // April 29, 2008 at 4:16 pm | Reply

Zack, I didn’t dig into either code yet but you’re right about being intuitive. Also, EE’s down side IMO is their manuals. Materials on their site are poorly structured.
Zack Katz // May 5, 2008 at 8:55 am | Reply

@ Karl — There are lots of cool features you can add to a default install of WordPress to make it flashy. One recommendation: pare down the CSS & JS files that come with multiple plugins. Instead, combine them as one file. This will save you a considerable amount of load time.

@ Alex — The WordPressDocumentation is quite thorough, and if you have a question, you can generally find your answer searching Google.

The WordPress Plugin directory is quite large and active. If you’re interested in expanding your site’s functionality, you’ll most likely be able to find the feature you’re looking for there.
Ken Sac // May 18, 2008 at 7:53 pm | Reply

Hi Zack,

I am very interested in using wordpress for Realtor sites (as well as a CMS and Yahoo style directory). I have been researching all three. Your site is the first with actual help for a realty site. . . thanks.

I too have used open-realty . . . it is kinda a pain, but it does work. I am attracted to WordPress for the SEO, and I agree ease of use is impressive.

I have also built a few sites with Joomla (currently working on another with 1.5). It has a tough learning curve but many plug-ins.

How are you handling pictures on the WP realtor site?
Zack Katz // May 19, 2008 at 8:55 am | Reply

@ Ken -
I’m glad you found this article helpful. I’m getting ready to talk about Part 2, which is how I’ve been handling the picture gallery.

Here’s a hint: for the gallery, I’m using a modified version of EasyPermGals and incorporating it with a modified version of jCarousel Lite. That’s coming up on Part 2!

Open Realty’s templating system is very frustrating, and when you start looking at the code, you wonder who the heck created it. Not very elegant, which WordPress is. Joomla is a better platform than Open Realty, but it’s so “big” that it’s hard for me (let alone my clients) to use for a basic real estate website.
Jamie // May 27, 2008 at 9:55 am | Reply

This is great! When is part 2 coming? I’m waiting! Great work so far. I’m following along.
Zack Katz // May 27, 2008 at 10:01 am | Reply

Part 2 is coming real soon — I’m launching the WordPress real estate website on/before the 28th of ~~June~~ May (I wish it was in June!), so give me a little bit to clean up the code, write the articles, and share it with you all.
Jamie // May 27, 2008 at 10:48 am | Reply

Awesome! I can’t wait!! This is exciting!
A Bulletproof SEO Strategy for Real Estate Professionals // May 29, 2008 at 12:12 pm | Reply

[...] manage their site as needed. There are several great examples of how WordPress makes the best real estate [...]
Paul // June 1, 2008 at 6:51 am | Reply

This is great…. keen to read part 2… I am currently attempting something similar – and although I am slowly getting my head around all the various listing configurations and their backend management… It is the management of different user’s which has me a bit baffled. ie. I want different users to see different versions of the admin interface (this might be easy, I just have never had to do it)… anyway, great article..

Cheers
Zack Katz // June 1, 2008 at 9:43 am | Reply

@ Paul – All you need is the Role Manager plugin — and FreshPost plays nice with it!

Learn more about WordPress Roles and Capabilities too.
Paul // June 9, 2008 at 10:48 pm | Reply

Hi Zack,
Thanks for your response… I got the role manager plugin up and running shortly after posting that comment… But now I am up to my neck in the Fresh Post plugin, and while it is quite powerful – the styling leaves quite a bit to be desired. One particularly frustrating point is the default ‘FreshPage Panel’ heading for every custom field you create, instead of using the heading you define when creating a new custom field…?
Jay Myers // June 16, 2008 at 1:14 pm | Reply

I am an agent, and just determined to do my site all by myself, and to use WordPress. I could do it all freehand in html, but really would take away from the ease of updating (I HOPE) and the SEO. My main confision is also wrapping my head around all the WordPress backend, and presentation. So I too am looking forward to the future parts of this article.
Creating a Real Estate Website in WordPress — Part 2 « Denver Web Design & Denver SEO - The Katz Web Design Blog // June 18, 2008 at 11:28 am | Reply

[...] you find this article helpful, please share it, or Digg it! In Part 1 of Building a real estate website in WordPress, you learned about a plugin called FreshPost that we used to set up the basic structure of your [...]
Zack Katz // June 18, 2008 at 11:44 am | Reply

Part 2 is available!
San // July 9, 2008 at 8:49 am | Reply

I am looking for wp-magazine .. can somebody share ?
Zack Katz // July 14, 2008 at 5:22 pm | Reply

Are you talking about the WP Magazine Theme?
links for 2008-09-04 | hansi.unblogged // September 4, 2008 at 8:00 pm | Reply

[...] Building a Real Estate Website in WordPress – Part 1 « Denver Web Design & Denver SEO &#8… I am designing and creating a real estate website with WordPress, and I’m going to be writing a few articles that detail how it’s done. This article will get you started — please leave feedback with any questions or topic requests for the next installment (tags: wordpress realestate real plugins howto estate tutorial immobilien) Gelesen: 1 · heute: 1 · zuletzt: 01.01.1970 [...]
kiwi freelancer // January 9, 2009 at 2:54 am | Reply

Part 3 is available or not
Sean // January 11, 2009 at 2:30 am | Reply

Reall nice solution, allthout I think that the FreshPost plug-in that is now called Flutter is a little overkill for such usage and could be done better with a custom plugin that added the required fields. Flutter is like lego…
Denver Real Estate Website - Blue Sky Development Group « Denver Web Design & Denver SEO Blog // January 26, 2009 at 3:54 pm | Reply

[...] pages are a preview to the WordPress real estate website I’ve been working on. The complete site will be coming soon, including some nifty features [...]
dicinox // February 10, 2009 at 12:36 am | Reply

Hi, im trying to use wordpress to make my RE website, your post really help me but, im really having troubles using Freshpost (actually flutter) can you make a tutorial how to use flutter? sorry for my english…
eric // February 15, 2009 at 7:05 pm | Reply

Hi am following your steps and downloaded freshpost/flutter… I have the custom fields all set up but need to “call” them using: , where do I place that line of code?
Zack Katz // February 16, 2009 at 9:35 pm | Reply

@Eric @dicinox – I’ve updated the tutorial because FreshPost (Flutter) is ridiculously hard to use and is larger than what is needed in this tutorial.

Instead, use the More Fields plugin.
real estate // March 7, 2009 at 1:55 am | Reply

Hi Zack, that’s a whole bunch of useful relevent posts. I am rebuilding PropertyNow and would love your input.

I’m just about convinced to leave Open Realty and Joomla, although they are finally improving. I think your posts have swayed me a little more towards WP. Thanks.
Matthew Kettlewell // March 9, 2009 at 1:32 am | Reply

Have you seen Rogers real estate plugin for wordpress?

http://www.rogertheriault.com/agents/plugins/great-real-estate-plugin/

I’ve used in on a site, and it’s pretty slick – I was looking for Flutter documentation when I stumbled on your post here.

Great information – Thanks!
BlogInstall // March 11, 2009 at 3:44 pm | Reply

The great real estate plugin is a nice idea, but is lacking some basic functionality and style. We need a single plugin that will do all the work, updated and maintained. I am actually thinking of taking this task on…
scottiegrace // April 23, 2009 at 1:34 pm | Reply

This must be only for wordpress.org….I have already started one with .com and am thinking baout switching it to self hosted.

Zack Katz // April 28, 2009 at 11:06 am | Reply

Yes, it’s only for .org. If you want to customize your site at all, .com will make you pay for it, and will limit what you can and can not do.

For something like a real estate website, it’s important to have a .org site.

บ้านมือสอง // April 24, 2009 at 6:53 am | Reply

Hi. Do you have a real estate plugin?
I want a wordpress to sell home.

Zack Katz // April 28, 2009 at 11:31 am | Reply

Hi, no I don’t…since the plugin would be a Custom Field plugin, it doesn’t make sense for me to replicate what is already out there.

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