Want to see more clients in your Real Estate business.  A website is one key to success for Realtors®.  If you don’t have one, then you have a real problem.  If you do have a Real Estate Website, the ask yourself if i

WordPress and Realtors Web Sites

t’s modern, easy to use, pleasant to look at and easy to find things that the prospective client would want to know.

One big problem with the real estate industry is that agents get sold on websites from franchisors or affiliates. These include franchisors like ReMax and Baird and Warner. Many agents partner with companies like these, and they get all sorts of incredible benefits. Unfortunately, however, the websites usually aren’t good at all.

However, you can still be associated with your real estate company and make your own WordPress website. This way, you have complete control over the design and functionality, and you can boost your sales by utilizing the best WordPress real estate plugins. The plugins, or extensions you install to add functionality, include highly advanced property listing plugins, options for adding mortgage calculators to your site, along with integrations with Zillow.

If you are just getting started, one of the best things to know is don’t just go out and buy a theme.  My suggestion is to start with the Divi Theme.  This theme can be so flexible that you can change anything on your site and it will keep growing and never get outdated.   I used to go around and buy themes for clients, install them and then spend hours customizing the theme.   Now I can just install Divi and build about anything the client wants.  You can find out more about Divi here.

Since many people reading this article are new to WordPress altogether, it helps to explain the elements that will go together to create the ideal real estate site. We’ll be listing the best WordPress real estate plugins below, but you’re only going to select maybe one or two of them for your website.

The rest of the plugins you decide on won’t have a direct relation to real estate. Instead, they’ll protect your site, make it faster, allow for social sharing and give you marketing options. Since you shouldn’t install too many plugins, it’s important to stick with the reputable essentials.

Here is a few things you need for any wordpress site

• Domain Name
  • Choose a domain name that is easy to type
  • Keep it short
  • Use keywords that describe you or your business area
  • Target your area
  • Avoid numbers and hyphens
  • Be memorable
  • Research it
  • Choose a domain name extension that fits
  • Protect and build your brand
  • Act fast
• Hosting
  • I recommend my hosting because they have great customer support.
• WordPress Installed with basic recommended plugins (These are my go to plugins to get started)
  • Akismet
  • WPMUDev
  • Classic Editor -> I don’t like the block editor especially with the Divi Builder
  • TinyMCE Advanced
• WordPress Theme
  • I recommend Divi Themes by Elegant Themes.  This is the most versatile and responsive theme I have found.  I can do anything with this theme.

Real Estate Plugins

• • Estatik – Estatik is definitely the king of all real estate plugins, seeing as how it offers a wide range of features in one plugin. Yes, you get the listings and multilingual support. Yes, you receive a responsive layout with a photo gallery. Yes, you can create a slideshow or integrate with social media.
  • Real Estate Pro – The Real Estate Pro plugin comes highly recommended for a few reasons. First of all, it’s one of those rare plugins where the settings, pages, and templates are all configured right after installation. You truly don’t have to touch anything for it to look pretty nice.
  • IMPress Listings – IMPress Listings is completely free, but you do have the option to buy some listing templates. The basics behind the plugin include a full listing management system, an MLS integration and status tags for all of your listings.
  • Responsive Mortgage Calculator – The Responsive Mortgage Calculator is a jQuery widget and short code that’s designed to fit easily into any theme, on any device, at any size. Just what every “Real Estate Agent on the go” needs. This plugin is, optionally, relying on www.mlcalc.com service to show calculation results.
  • Easy Property Listings – The Essential Real Estate plugin gives you a lot of premium features in their free version of the plugin. You can easily customize and override the layout and functions. It supports global payments, single list properties, single agents, and more.
  • Essential Real Estate WordPress – This plugin essentially has everything you need to start a Real Estate website. It also has an impressive 5-star rating on the repository! It has custom post types, taxonomy features for properties, agents, packages, user packages, invoices, and even transaction logs. You can add new listings, edit them, and much more.
  • WP-Property – The WP-Property WordPress plugin has been around for a long time and is one of the most downloaded real estate plugins on the repository. It allows you to create and manage highly customizable real estate, property management, and completely custom listing showcase websites.

In conclusion, let me say that the best money you can spend is to give me a call for consultation.  I offer reasonable rates and know everything real estate.