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Three Great Real Estate Website Templates from the Pros

By Michael Heiligenstein

Services for Real Estate Pros

November 05, 2015 11:54 PM

Looking for a new website template for your site? Your website is going to be one of the biggest ways home buyers look at your listings. So an attractive site is essential to showing off your properties. We spoke with a number of realtors and experts about their choices for real estate website templates.

You can read more and find our own recommendations at the full guide to Real Estate Website Templates at Fit Small Business.

John and Melissa Steele, Steele San Diego Homes

I use the Realto wordpress template from ThemeForest for my real estate website and really like what I was able to do with it. It has been very easy to customize and work with and it gives my business a very professional presence on the web.

I chose it because I knew that I wanted to use the wordpress platform, as it is one of the best website/ blogging platforms, and this theme had all of the features that I needed. It has a very nice presentation of properties, built in contact features, IDX capabilities, and has visual composer built in which makes building custom pages very easy. It is also responsive which is extremely important in today’s age with many users using phones or tablets.

Trevor Ewen, pearoftheweek.com

I write personal finance and investing advice for Pear of the Week. I’m a big fan of Placester. The prices are reasonable, they know their market, and they’re small and agile. I have a friend who works with the team, so I may have a slight bias.

Melannie Hay, Beachwalk Properties

Without a doubt Placester. You can check out ours at Beachwalk Properties. The templates are clean, fresh and idiot proof. With choices for color logo etc you can leave it simple or tailor it to your needs.I think it makes us look like a big shop rather than a 5 agent indie start-up. Its slick and user friendly and if you are not tech savvy you can pay them $100 to set it up for you.

In addition we have a built in CRM which basically can run itself and there is also a built in marketing platform which can walk you through what to many would be complex ideas.

https://placester.com/real-estate-agent-marketing-solutions/

You could pay a FORTUNE for someone else to build you a website which wouldn’t be as nice as this. I was quoted $2800 – $5700 without bells and whistles. Probably too effusive but if they had marketing merch I would be tempted to buy it.

Looking for more? We have more expert recommendations of our own in our full guide to the top real estate website templates at Fit Small Business.

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Comments(15)

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Mark Daly

Group One Mortgage - Jupiter, FL

Timing is everything, I have a realtor friend that is looking to upgrade website. I will forward them your info.

Nov 06, 2015 07:18 AM

Raul Rodriguez

Covenant Partners Realty - San Antonio, TX

Looking out for the client's interest and not my p

I have to look into finally getting a website...being a babyboomer does not help.

Nov 06, 2015 07:58 AM

Shanna Hall

Hall Way Realty - Kirkwood, MO

I love selling houses!!!St. Louis, MO 314-703-1311

I have been looking for one of these- bookmarked and will check out next week!

Nov 06, 2015 08:00 AM

Shanna Hall

Hall Way Realty - Kirkwood, MO

I love selling houses!!!St. Louis, MO 314-703-1311

Had to leave another comment so I could follow your post;)

Nov 06, 2015 08:01 AM

Dolores "Dee" Mauriello

Keller Willaims - Wayne, NJ

Realtor, Homes For Sale Wayne NJ

This is great info. I am going to look int Placester. Thanks

Nov 06, 2015 08:12 AM

Vivian and Todd Knight

Star One - Cincinnati, OH

Real Estate Agents serving the Cincinnat, OH area

Thank you for the information. I bookmarked it to look into this weekend.

Nov 06, 2015 08:42 AM

Kimo Jarrett

Cyber Properties - Huntington Beach, CA

Pro Lifestyle Solutions

Great post. Do you believe in changing the look of your website from time to time and if you do, what benefits would it create?

Nov 06, 2015 04:42 PM

Diana Dahlberg

Pleasant Prairie, WI

Ron Aguilar

Kimo, you could say that people do not like change such as a website. Keeping your page easy to navigate and the load speed is key. Changing colors, pics and some layout items will keep your site fresh and usually excite the end user.

Nov 06, 2015 09:41 PM

Ron Aguilar

Gateway Mortgage Group - Saint George, UT

Mortgage & Real Estate Advisor since 1995

I like the John and Melissa Steele site, it makes good use of white space.

Bookmarked

Nov 06, 2015 09:44 PM

Karen Fiddler, Broker/Owner

Karen Parsons-Fiddler, Broker 949-510-2395 - Mission Viejo, CA

Orange County & Lake Arrowhead, CA (949)510-2395

I've set up a Placester until I can determine what to use on a permanent basis. Not sure it's giving me any internet presence, but it's clean and a nice place to send people for now.

Nov 06, 2015 11:36 PM

Lyn Sims

Schaumburg, IL

Lyn Sims

When I put feature listings on the front page of my Placester site, Google indexes them in 10 mins.

Nov 11, 2015 12:03 AM

Kathleen Luiten

Resort and Second-Home Specialist - Princeville, HI

Kauai Luxury Ocean Home Sales

Lots of good information here, Michael. Thanks for sharing this with us,

Nov 07, 2015 02:21 AM

Ernest Villafranca

Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate - Oakland, CA

3923 Grand Ave. Oakland CA, 510-418-9443

I have a Placester website and I like it. $5/mo for NAR members. Can't beat that. My MLS charges me $10/mo to provide the IDX :(

But Placester still needs some work in the search field. People can't enter the direct address to search for one. I've mentioned it to them and they've said they were working on it.

Nov 07, 2015 02:24 AM

Lyn Sims

I've never had that problem. Could be your template selection or MLS feed.

Nov 11, 2015 12:02 AM

Diana Dahlberg

1 Month Realty - Pleasant Prairie, WI

Real Estate in Kenosha, WI since 1994 262-308-3563

There is so much available to us as agents, and we have to look at the different platforms until we find the one that suits us best. And the one that is the best is always the one we will actually use! Thanks for sharing this information!

Nov 07, 2015 01:20 PM

marvin shelley

Marvin Shelley, Broker - Fayetteville, AR

Rural - that's all - NO subdivisions, HOAs, POAs.

Website for a small unknown firm is a waste of money. They are propbably ok for well known names.

I am a small one-person firm and had a website for 12 months. Had one inquiry. Waste of money.

If XXYZ Realty is new, who knows about it to even search for the website?

Don't throw your money away. As I said, I do not have a website and usually carry 25-50 listings at all times. With that many listings, I surely do not have time for social media or showing other agent's listings.

Get yoresef some listings, you'll see what I mean.

Nov 09, 2015 05:33 AM

Lyn Sims

Schaumburg, IL

Real Estate Broker Retired

I love Placester. They have good tutorial videos that help immensely & the price can't be beat.

Don't listen to Marvin above, he could do with some mental updating. Every agent should have some sort of site & if you're not a member of a big franchise, this is the ticket. I forgot what template mine is.

www.SchaumburgHomes.net

Nov 11, 2015 12:01 AM

Michael Heiligenstein

The good news about websites is that it's actually gotten easier, not harder to make/manage one. We have our own recommendations on real estate website builders, which I'll sum up here:

Placester is an excellent, easy-to-use web service for making attractive custom pages for your real estate listings. They're less expensive than many of their competitors, but you could also build a site using WebsiteBox for a one-time fee of $99 (that doesn't include domain name costs). If you want a beautiful custom site you can check out StyleAgent, though they get somewhat pricy IMO.

Does every realtor need a website? The benefits can be huge, but I'm still inclined to say not necessarily. If you're an established realtor with enough leads reliably pouring in from other sources, online listings aren't mandatory. If you're looking for more leads or just started recently, online can be an excellent source. I'd be interested in hearing what the trend is among home buyers, but I would guess that more and more are looking online, especially initially. Long-term, it can't hurt to at least be familiar with finding and managing leads online.

Nov 12, 2015 03:55 AM