5 Easy Steps to Build a Real Estate Website in 2023

March 22, 2023
14 min

The real estate web application development market was valued at $3,805B in 2021 showing a CAGR of 9% during the 2020-2024 period. Amazing, isn’t it?

There are multiple reasons for such rapid growth, but most of them are coming from the benefits entrepreneurs and real estate brokers get through real estate web application development.

The most vivid pros of building your own proptech software solutions are sales and marketing management, business process automation, property listing acceleration, and many others.

For these reasons, we prepared an in-depth guide on how to create a real estate website including:

  • How can you benefit from real estate web application development
  • Essential real estate mobile app features your platform should have
  • Fundamental steps to build your own real estate app
  • How to monetize your real estate software solutions.

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How to Benefit From Real Estate Web Application Development

The core goal of real estate software development is to leverage all the advantages proptech software provides to your business.

Let’s find out the key benefits you should get when you build your own real estate app.

 

Advanced Contact Management Automation

The real estate industry is fully about communicating with multiple entities, tenants, landlords, representatives, and many others. This means accurate and time-efficient contact management is one of the highest priorities for your business to stay competitive in the market.

Here comes real estate web application development into play to help you take over and automate contact adding, storing, managing, and status updating. This way, you greatly save tons of time on daily routine tasks thus focusing your main resources on converting leads into deals and others.

 

Powerful Lead Generation Automation

Processing daily requests from potential clients may take dozens of hours to organize, store, and manage manually. Working with hundreds of papers containing crucial lead information sufficiently slows down most business operations giving your market rivals lots of chances to succeed and close even more deals.

For these reasons, lead generation and management automation is a must-have and beneficial option you can leverage through real estate web application development.

Technology solutions provide efficient drag-n-drop features, powerful account filters, shortlisting, secure deal and collaboration rooms, and much other useful functionality that can boost your real estate business.

 

Real Estate Marketing Automation

One of the secret sauces of any successful real estate business is the efficient and customer-oriented marketing strategy. The better you promote properties and listings, the more revenue you generate to grow your real estate company and provide best-in-class services to clients.

Real estate software solutions help you automate most marketing activities including sales funnel generation and optimization, new client portraits creation, lead database mass emailing in a few clicks, building of new marketing campaigns.

Accounting/Financing Automation

Any business should have a structured ecosystem for financial and accounting operations thus leaving no blind spots to lose funds or make incorrect payments. And your real estate business is no exception as the current market competition requires providing next-level payment opportunities for clients which means that your financing and accounting directions should work flawlessly.

Here come powerful real estate software solutions that help you build an automated centralized ecosystem for creating, analyzing, managing, and streamlining your financing operations including payment processes, transactions, recurring payments, and building financial statements.

 

Enhanced Analytics & Report Automation

The real estate business reality is when brokerages and top proptech companies having deep analytics and reporting tools lead the market through predictive insights and the fast decision-making process.

It’s not enough to just collect and store tons of valuable data as you should have powerful analytics opportunities to convert them into future revenue.

And real estate web application development is what you really need for deep analytics and insightful reporting. Leverage all the benefits of real-time dashboards with customizable charts and graphs, custom fields and presets, and generate insightful reports with single click ease.

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Essential Real Estate Website Features

 

Powerful Search and Filters

As we mentioned earlier, real estate business is about processing large amounts of data daily which requires a powerful search functionality to find, process, analyze, and manage data in a time- and cost-efficient way for your company.

For this reason, advanced search features are a must-have attribute for your real estate web application. It should also include customizable filters and operators that help you search for required objects using different criteria and tags you assign to records.

 

For example, our Ascendix Search software provides powerful search operators and filters functionality along with an ability to define multiple conditions like “between”, “in”, “starts with”, “is not blank”, etc.

This way, you can level up the daily search operations of your managers enabling them to work with various data on an advanced level.

 

Ascendix-Search-real-estate-web-app-search-operators

Ascendix Search Real Estate Web App Search Operators

 

Besides, we recommend empowering your real estate software solutions with the related lists and saved search functionalities. The first enables your agents to gather multiple data records and instantly build insightful lists filtering objects by different filters.

Saved search features allow your employees to access previously stored search lists instantly thus improving the real estate web app user experience eliminating any data loss risks.

 

Ascendix-Search-real-estate-web-app-saved-search-functionality

Ascendix Search Real Estate Web App Saved Search Functionality

 

What’s more, you can implement advanced search tools that will allow you to navigate through the data of graphs thus providing you with a visually-appealing data representation view for further analysis.

Below you can see an example of chart/graph data filtering functionality available in our Ascendix Search solution helping real estate companies to navigate through all system record types using customizable operators and filtering criteria.

 

Ascendix-Search-real-estate-web-app-chart-graph-filtering

Ascendix Search Real Estate Web App Chart & Graph Filtering

Enhanced Marketing Automation

As stated above, marketing is the heart of your successful real estate business as it allows you to reach potential leads, efficiently collaborate with investors, and provide extensive listing services to landlords.

All these benefits make the marketing automation tool one of the must-have real estate mobile app features for your platform.

First, we recommend building a powerful and professionally-looking property listing portal which improves your marketing activities by times. Let’s briefly list the core features for your platform:

  • Easily create a new property listing with multiple fields in a few clicks
  • Add as many property images as you need
  • Attach multiple availabilities to each property listing
  • Provide detailed data on each listing including building details, expenses, area, ownership, etc.
  • Upload crucial listings documents like a detailed floor plan, technical documentation, etc.

 

Below you can see Marketspace – our own software for real estate developers delivered to boost marketing and help brokerages and agents promote property listings and availabilities efficiently.

 

MarketSpace-real-estate-web-app-listing-portal

MarketSpace Real Estate Web Application Listing Portal

 

Apart from a property listing tool, we recommend implementing powerful mass email automation functionality which should include:

  • Creating precise email lists with multiple criteria
  • Mass emailing leads and contacts from saved searches, system views, Ad-Hoc lists, search results, or selected records
  • Inserting images, adding attachments from your computer or using a cloud storage
  • Using saved templates to increase the efficiency of marketing activities
  • Exporting email lists from your real estate web app to Excel.
  • Saving last mass email dates and other crucial data through to mass edits.

 

Below you can see an example of mass emailing the saved list with contacts using Ascendix Search – our software for real estate developers.

 

Ascendix-Search-real-estate-web-app-saved-list-mass-emailing

Ascendix Search Real Estate Web App Saved List Mass Emailing

 

What’s more, you can implement a lightning-fast and intuitive brochure generation tool. It will help you create visually-appealing and insightful property reports with the required information in a few clicks.

This way, you can simply generate the property report requested by potential tenants or investors and instantly email it to them right from your commercial real estate development software.

We recommend including the following functionalities:

  • Generating branded property brochure and flyers within a few clicks
  • Automatically pulling all data and images right from your property listing porta
  • Sending generated reports to multiple recipients right via emails or downloading them in various formats
  • Sent emails are tracked as activities in Salesforce.
  • Use prebuilt report templates to generate the reports or brochures. New templates and microsites real estate website features are coming soon.
  • Available for anybody who is a subscriber to Salesforce’s Sales or Service Cloud.

 

Lead & Deal Management

One of the crucial real estate web application functionality is deal lead and management automation as it helps you process multiple operations automatically and efficiently.

First, we recommend implementing secure collaboration room functionality which allows you to discuss properties and availabilities with tenants and investors in a lightning-fast, secure, and intuitive manner.

So, real estate web app collaboration rooms allow your employees to:

  • Invite multiple entities to the collaboration room
  • Add, manage, and share sensitive documents, statements, specifications
  • Chat with tenants and investors in real-time answering their questions on availabilities and listings
  • Sign NDAs and confidentiality agreements securely in real-time.

 

This way, tenants and investors can review listings, availabilities within your property listing portal, and provide feedback to your brokers in a real-time chat including/excluding certain records from a list.

Below you can see an example of a robust collaboration room in MarketSpace – a real estate web application by Ascendix.

 

MarketSpace-real-estate-web-app-collaboration-rooms

MarketSpace Real Estate Web App Collaboration Rooms

 

Second, we recommend building safe deal room functionality which helps you transform the communication with leads and deal close processes into an efficient and mature infrastructure.

So, here are some benefits and features that deal rooms provide:

  • No need to send multiple email chains to clients and investors
  • Perform all communication and collaboration with them in one place
  • Ability to create a new deal room choosing the specific account and sending autogenerated invitation accesible by the link only
  • Upload, store, edit, share sensitive data and discuss deal details in real-time being fully secured with top encryption protocols
  • Invite as many users as needed simply clicking one button to specify an email to send autogenerated invitations
  • Pull the required property and availability to display it right in the room which makes these real estate website features an all-in-one space for deal management
  • And many more.

 

MarketSpace-real-estate-web-app-deal-management

MarketSpace Real Estate Web App Deal Management

 

Advanced Analytics Functionality

Analytics tools help you transform raw data and numbers into an insightful view which helps to analyze multiple directions and business efficiency. This way, real estate software solutions can help you greatly boost the decision-making process as you catch trends and insights through informative and customizable graphs and charts.

For these reasons, we recommend implementing advanced analytics functionality within your real estate web application. Analyzing the dashboard statistics should become an essential part of your daily business routine.

First, your managers can monitor high-level KPIs like new leads, closed deals, matching preferences, revenue generated, and many others.

Second, you can get detailed statistics on your collaboration and deal rooms activities including the number of discussed listings, participants, accumulated investors’ time spent, etc.

Third, you can review and analyze marketing campaign activities based on the sales funnel you’ve created including such metrics as an overall awareness, number of leads and deals acquired by marketing, and so on.

 

Right here is an insightful analytics dashboard presented in MarketSpace – Ascendix marketing software for real estate developers – with charts, graphs, funnels, and other statistics.

 

MarketSpace-real-estate-web-app-dashboard-analytics-ascendix

MarketSpace Real Estate Web App Dashboard Analytics

 

Seamless Integration

To be successful in the real estate industry, you should promptly adapt to the market conditions and constantly emerging customer requests. This becomes possible through utilizing multiple tools and technology solutions, but is there any way to make them centralized within your real estate web application?

Sure. Powerful real estate software solutions provide multiple integration opportunities thus enabling your employees to use dozens of apps and tools right in one place.

Below you can see an example of integration opportunities offered by Freshsales – one of the top CRM software solutions.

 

Freshworks-real-estate-web-app-crm-integrations

Freshworks Real Estate Web App CRM integrations

How to Build a Real Estate Website: Must-Have Steps

Property website development is a complex and multi-component process that requires great dedication from your team and experienced technical specialists to transform your requirements into a full-featured real estate web application.

Now, we want to guide you through the key steps of real estate management software development so that you clearly realize how to build your own real estate app after reading this content.

 

Define your business goals

Start by asking yourself ‘why do I need a real estate web app’ and ‘what challenges and goals should it help me solve and achieve’. The matter is that real estate software solutions will bring value to your company and business only when you have a clear vision of business goals you want to achieve through property website development.

Once you get a transparent understanding of current technical challenges, you can automatically proceed to choose the right real estate web app type and real estate website features.

 

Choose the software type

Based on your demands and requirements, the type of real estate software solutions may greatly vary.

Here is the list of the most popular real estate web application types:

  • Customer relationship management (CRM)
  • Enterprise resource planning (ERP)
  • Real estate management software
  • Property listing platform
  • Marketing automation software
  • Real estate software suite.

 

For example, if you want to improve and automate lead, deal, and contact management, then real estate CRM software is what you really need.

In case you want to enhance lead prospecting activities, then real estate marketing software is the right choice to meet your needs.

We guess you know most of these real estate web application types as they are widely used in many other business domains. However, it’s worth mentioning real estate software suites which stand for all-in-one full-featured platforms designed to meet all requirements you may have in the real estate industry. From property listing and lead management to employee and financial asset management.

 

Identify core features

Once you choose the right software type, you should define the list of core features you want to have within the real estate web application to boost your business efficiency.

As we have discussed most must-have real estate mobile app features earlier in greater detail, let’s now just briefly list the most essential real estate website features:

  • Lead, deal, and contact management
  • Advanced search functionality with filters and conditions
  • Property listing and availability management
  • Marketing automation tools
  • Powerful analytics and reporting
  • Seamless integration opportunities.

 

We recommend choosing the most crucial options you currently need to implement them first within your application. This way, it will become much easier to cooperate with a real estate app development company within a project discovery phase so that it clearly realizes what functionalities you need first.

 

Build the MVP version of your platform

The Minimum Viable Product approach is a great development methodology following the Build-Measure-Learn approach which perfectly answers the question ‘how to build a real estate app’.

The BML feedback loop describes the way you can build your own real estate app:

  1. First, you build the must-have real estate website features
  2. Second, you collect valuable feedback from early users and customers and learn data insights
  3. Third, you utilize internal predefined metrics and KPIs to transform the collected data into strictly defined requirements needed to improve your real estate web app.

 

So, it allows you to save your time and costs through launching a real estate web application with the must-have real estate website features only.

Once released, you can collect valuable feedback from your employees and users thus improving your real estate software solutions accordingly by adding, editing, or removing existing real estate website features.

This way, an MVP approach helps you launch your real estate web application as quick as possible and minimize development risks as you get lots of flexibility opportunities in terms of adding, removing, editing your real estate mobile app features in real-time.

 

Release, collect feedback, and scale

Once finished polishing the core features of your real estate software solutions, you need to release it and collect much valuable feedback from your team and early users. You can embed a feedback form on your real estate web app thus giving your community an option to provide their user experience feedback.

Then, you should prioritize the comments collected and transform them into a technical specification for real estate software developers to improve your solution and build full-featured commercial real estate development software with advanced real estate website features.

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Why Ascendix as Your Real Estate App Development Company

Having over 25 years of expertise in the real estate industry, Ascendix is a customer-oriented and technology-driven real estate website development company that has helped multiple niche-specific giants like Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL), Transwestern, Colliers International, CRESA, Calson Properties, STILES, Hanna Commercial Real Estate, and many others.

Let’s now take a closer look at our successful case study for JLL on custom real estate web application development, customization, and cloud migration that helped Jones Lang LaSalle increase their CRM data adoption by 6 times.

 

Six-Time Dynamics 365 Adoption Increase for Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL)

Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) is a leading global commercial real estate services company with offices in over 80 countries and $16.6 bln annual revenue as of 2020.

Initially, JLL contacted and hired Ascendix in 2010 asking for CRM consulting and real estate software development services. Since then, we have implemented multiple technology solutions to simplify their CRM data usage and integrate their assets into Dynamics 365.

In a while, Jones Lang LaSalle asked us to increase internal team productivity and performance thus providing their brokers and managers with a more powerful digital solution for handling daily routine tasks smoothly and quickly.

 

Let’s now check the core challenges we faced while working on JLL real estate software development:

  • Dynamics 365 CRM customization
  • Data search improvement
  • Custom report and PDF generation tools
  • Opportunity management process improvement
  • Deep analytics and dashboards implementation
  • Record deduplication tool development
  • Stacking plan builder implementation.

 

Below you can see the technology solutions we have delivered for Jones Lang LaSalle:

  • CRM real estate software development on top of Dynamics 365
  • Providing white-glove concierge, 24/7 support, and operations teams
  • On-premises to cloud hosting migration
  • Developed a powerful opportunity management application
  • Implemented lightning-fast brochure generation tool
  • Dashboard with graphs and charts
  • Data Import/Export to Excel or CSV.

 

So, our real estate web application development, CRM customization, and cloud migration services helped Jones Lang LaSalle achieve a six-time Dynamics 365 adoption increase and get enhanced customization abilities for hundreds of JLL offices around the globe.

 

Here is what Chad Lisney, Vice President Global IT at JLL, said:

Ascendix are true consultants, meaning they don’t just do as they’re told without providing feedback and input where they feel it would be helpful.

They actually think through the process and are knowledgeable about commercial real estate. Not many consulting firms can offer that kind of expertise and industry knowledge.

- Chad Lisney, Vice President Global IT at JLL

 

Product Real Estate Web Application Development Expertise

The solid 25-year experience in the industry allowed us to combine the services and product expertise we had to build our own software for real estate developers, brokerages, mortgages, and other market players. Let’s briefly overview the real estate software solutions we offer.

 

AscendixRE CRM

It is a CRM-based real estate web application built on top of Salesforce and Dynamics 365 which meets the needs of commercial real estate market players. AscendixRE CRM provides advanced real-estate mobile app features along with world-class experience, security, and up-to-date tools required to prospect, automate, track, report, and personalize the experience of your clients.

 

AscendixRE-commercial-real-estate-crm-key-image

AscendixRE CRM PropTech Software

I am a commercial broker and have used various platforms for CRM. I switched to AscendixRE for a number of reasons. I wanted a platform that would notify me and my clients by email of critical dates, rent increases etc. No other platform was able to do that. The ease of use of the software is also wonderful and the ability to easily customize things has been a huge plus. I also appreciate that the cost of this platform is well below the full Salesforce subscription but it has everything I need to run my business.

- Lora Munson, Executive Vice President at Colliers International Utah

Ascendix Search

It is a real estate web app built on top of Salesforce which empowers users to utilize advanced search algorithms to boost the way you search, process, analyze, and store crucial client’s data. Ascendix Search engages users to create advanced searches in a simplified interface without the help of Salesforce Admin.

 

Ascendix-Search-app-interface-laptop

Ascendix Search PropTech Software

It's a massive timesaver. Before we started using Ascendix Search, it would have taken four hours to go through and look through every Excel file, put the information together and then to check and make sure it was up to date. Now it takes us 10 minutes to do it in Ascendix Search.

- Cormac O'Reilly, Business Analyst at Savills Ireland

Composer

It is a Report Writing tool that helps Salesforce users generate various reports using their Salesforce data.

 

Composer-by-Ascendix-key-image

AscendixRE Composer PropTech Software

Need Technology Partner with Experience in Real Estate?

We speak real estate. We’ve been developing software products for real estate for 2 decades. Speak to Ascendix consultant.

We’ve developed a publication tool for our Salesforce-based version of AscendixRE that allows the end-user to take our robust searching tools and extend their journey by allowing the result sets derived from the search tool to be pushed out to templates ranging from Property Flyers, brochures, and Owner Listing Reports.

- Wes Snow, CEO & Co-Founder at Ascendix

MarketSpace App

It is an advanced property listing portal helping your business to boost promotion and sales activities empowering with collaboration and deal rooms for secured sensitive data sharing and signing.

 

MarketSpace-by-Ascendix-key-image

Ascendix MarketSpace PropTech Software

Ascendix has something special with MarketSpace. The users' feedback has been all-around positive. Our research people, who used to respond to requests for data/reports have seen a significant drop in those and an increase in their capacity to do other work

- Saimir Qalliu, Colliers International Indiana

Bottom Line

Real estate web application development is about transforming your current business needs into an advanced demand-specific and technology-driven solution.

This process may become a great headache, but hiring an experienced real estate app development company is what you need to build and launch full-featured real estate software solutions.

Try Ascendix to build your own real estate app in a cost- and time-efficient way leveraging the benefits of our 25-year expertise in real estate web application development.

Check our case studies and contact us to get a detailed estimate of your project.

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