WordPress for Real Estate | Reviews and Pricing | 2024
WordPress is not actually a website provider. It is a free, open source content management system (CMS).
There is also still the misperception that WordPress is just for “blogs”. WordPress is for anything. In fact, over 30% of every website in the world is a WordPress site, including real estate sites.
WordPress is easily the most flexible and scalable website option for a real estate agent. Not only can it be a cheap option to compete with single-agent website options, but you can scale and develop it into a major team, brokerage, or even enterprise-level website.
It also takes more work and attention if you are going to build it yourself. You can also hire a website developer to build and manage a site for you, although that option starts becoming more expensive quickly.
Welcome to your one-stop-shop for WordPress reviews as a real estate website platform!
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Use WordPress if…
- You’re on a budget but want something you can get started with and stick with even as you grow
- You are a perfectionist and want to have control over every detail of your website
- You don’t want to be stuck with a particular website provider – your website is yours and moves with you
Skip WordPress if…
- You hate technology and don’t have the budget to outsource your website development (consider Easy Agent Pro)
- Your budget is limited and you want a starting place for your online business (consider Placester)
- You want a higher end WordPress site without having to build it yourself (consider Agent Image)
View Other Agent Website Providers
Design
Below are some examples of WordPress real estate websites and what they have chosen for their designs. But again, WordPress is highly customizable depending on your theme provider or if you hire a designer. There are few limitations on you except time and money.
Most WordPress users will likely use themes to create their designs, which are much cheaper than hiring a designer to write your CSS for you. You will likely want to limit yourself to real estate themes, which is a narrow fraction of the market and doesn’t always have the best or very well updated selection. As your website grows, hiring a designer is probably in the cards if you want a website like these below.
Norhill Realty
Norhill Realty has a fun homepage design, and also emphasizes content marketing with a regularly updated blog. The design is a little bit busier than City Chic.
The BREL Team
The BREL Team in Toronto, ONThe BREL Team website was a source of inspiration for my own WordPress site early on (their tools and resources section, specifically). This is a fantastic example of content marketing as a real estate agent, and how you can accomplish that with WordPress.
Best Features
Customizability
WordPress is the most customizable real estate platform, bar none.
When building your site, you can select or buy existing themes to create your desired design, or hire a designer to modify your CSS. Anything is achievable.
Regarding website features, WordPress has what are called plugins. Many plugins are free, including all of the ones you would want to get started with. Plugins can add features or modify your site. Examples include plugins for improving SEO, adding columns, integrating your IDX, using maps, creating sophisticated forms, making popups, and more.
SEO
WordPress is a perfectly good platform for SEO.
Like all SEO strategies, you likely will have to put some work into it. If you don’t have a designer/developer doing it for you, you will have to learn about technical SEO, on page SEO, local SEO, and more. There are numerous resources for this, including popular plugins like Yoast SEO.
Biggest Pitfalls
More Work
Unless you are hiring someone else to do it, WordPress can take some work to set up. You have to choose a host, map your domain, pick a theme, integrate IDX, download plugins, and then start building content and putting pieces around.
Too Much Information
WordPress the most widely used website platform in the world. I just typed “WordPress tutorial” into YouTube and got 6,260,000 results. There is an entire industry built just on helping people with their WordPress websites. If you have a question, the answer is out there!
But that’s both a pro and a con. There is such a thing as too much information, and that is a fault of WordPress. There is no central WordPress support or authority. You have to hope that the information you find is current to your version of WordPress, and trust that different plugins will play nicely together.
WordPress Pricing
- Your likely bare bones costs would be $400 to get set up and $60/mo after that for your IDX.
- There are lots of optional features you might spend money on after that depending on what you want for your site
- At the enterprise level, you can hire designers and developers to build custom features and get the look exactly how you want it
WordPress is free!
While that is technically true, you have to buy the tools to actually implement it, including hosting, a domain, IDX, theme, and an SSL. You can get started on the website, a real estate theme, and 3 years of domains and hosting for about $400. $130/yr is pretty great!
IDX is the most expensive aspect of owning a real estate website, and you can expect to pay about $60/mo for your site’s IDX feed so that properties show up. So now we have a startup cost of about $400, and $60/mo after that.
Then, to get the most from it, there are other items you may find yourself wanting subscriptions to, like a stock photo site, premium plugins, analytics software, live chat, and more. These aren’t necessary for your site to function well, but can be.
Then, there are plugins for most things you might want to implement to customize your site. But as you grow, if you want to really fine tune your CSS (your website’s design), or develop sophisticated, custom features and apps for your site, you will likely be looking for website designers and developers. These can cost a few thousand to tens of thousands depending on how much work you have for them.
WordPress Websites
If you aren’t interested in DIY sites, you can have someone build a WordPress site for you!
You can do that by hiring a designer, or by using a out-of-the-box website solution that is built on WordPress. Below are some website providers who use WordPress for their platform.
My Personal Recommendation
I have built my own real estate website on WordPress, and the website you are looking at right now is also a WordPress site. I highly recommend strongly considering building your real estate website on the platform.
I love WordPress as an option because it can be just as powerful as any other website, but you can get started fairly cheap and just put more into it as you have time and resources. You are not stuck with any given provider and can bring folks in to help – or not. It’s all entirely up to you. You completely own your website and everything about it.
But it does take a lot more work if you are going to do it yourself. And while the point of a CMS is so that you don’t have to do coding and HTML, you are likely going to be using and learning a little HTML and CSS along the way. It is not the best solution for agents who are allergic to the computer.