A listings portal brings the buyer in, and then shows three competing properties from the same street right next to yours. That is not an argument for dropping the portals - in this trade you cannot work without them, because that is where buyers start looking. The point is what happens next: someone who liked a flat types your agency name into a search engine to work out who exactly they are about to hand their phone number to. That is why a real estate website is not a brochure with an “about us” tab. It has to catch that visit and turn it into an enquiry about one specific property.
What I usually find instead is the same pattern. Listings live in the agency software and on the portals, while the website sits beside them showing a dozen properties typed in by hand, half of them already sold. Nobody keeps it current, because keeping it current means writing the same description for the third time. How I approach building sites like this I described under business websites - here I lay out what has to work for the site to stop being a cost and start bringing enquiries in.
Why bother with a site when the listings are on portals
A portal is a marketplace where you stand next to everybody else. The website is your office, and there you decide everything: the order of the listings, what sits on the first screen, and whether the buyer leaves their details with you or with the intermediary.
The second reason is trust. Buying a home is the largest transaction most people ever make, and all they know about you is one advert. Before they call, they check that the agency is real: how long you have been trading, who will actually handle the sale, what the team looks like, whether the address exists. A site with names, photographs of your agents and your licence details answers all of that before a conversation starts.
The third reason gets overlooked and earns the most: sellers land on your site too. An owner thinking about handing their flat to somebody does not browse portals by property - they look for an agency. A separate section for sellers, setting out the process and how your commission works, wins you instructions to sell rather than one more buyer chasing somebody else’s flat.
A website for an estate agency - listings, filters, enquiries
Someone arriving on an agency site comes with one of two intentions: they want to look at one particular property they saw on a portal, or they want to go through everything you have because they already know the area. The site has to serve both, which means three things in plain view:
- a list of properties showing price, floor area and location - on the list itself, not behind a click, because that is how people sift
- filters above the list, not in the footer - visible immediately, because nobody scrolls through a hundred properties
- an enquiry form on every property - a form and a tappable phone number right where the buyer is looking at the flat they like
Take any of those three away and the site works as a catalogue to browse rather than a sales tool. The buyer looks at the photographs, closes the tab and goes back to the portal, where the contact button was under their thumb.
Filters that genuinely narrow things down
In this trade, filtering is your front desk moved onto the website. The working minimum is price, floor area, number of rooms, location broken down by district or parish, and property type: flat, house, plot, commercial unit. Add new build versus resale if you handle both.
A few details decide whether filters help or annoy:
- Results without a page reload. The buyer drags the price slider and sees straight away how many properties are left. Every full refresh that throws them back to the top of the list is a reason to leave.
- A visible result count. “7 properties found” tells someone whether to loosen their criteria before they start changing them blindly.
- An address you can send. The chosen filters belong in the page address, so an agent can email a ready-made shortlist and the buyer can show the same one to their partner.
- A “no results” screen with suggestions. An empty list is a dead end. Show the nearest matches beside it: slightly pricier, slightly smaller, the next district along.
- Filters that work on a phone. On mobile they have to collapse into a panel that does not cover the results and does not demand precise aim at a slider.
Each of those points covers a moment where the buyer either stays on the list or leaves. I wrote about where else sites lose enquiries in the piece on low conversion on a company website.
Integration with your agency software instead of retyping
This is the heart of the subject and the usual reason the previous agency website died. Listings have one source - the agency software - and they have to reach the site on their own.
Most estate agency systems export listings to the portals in a fixed file format, usually XML. The same file that goes to the portals can be read by the website on a schedule: hourly, or once a day, depending on how fast your stock turns over. Where the software offers an API, meaning a direct connection between the two systems, I use that instead, because it carries more data and fewer surprises.
One rule I do not bend: the flow goes one way. The software is the source of truth and the site only displays. Agents carry on working in the one tool they already know, and the site never drifts away from reality.
Four things have to be settled before the build, because each one changes the scope:
- How often listings refresh, and whether the price should update separately and faster than the rest of the description.
- What happens to photographs. Thirty shots straight out of the camera per property is normal here, and it is also the most common cause of a slow site. Images have to be resized and converted as they are pulled in; how to do that without losing quality is in the piece on image optimization.
- What happens to a sold property. You do not delete it from the internet, because its address may sit in emails and in search results. It becomes a page saying the property is no longer available, with similar ones listed next to it.
- What never reaches the public site. The software holds things that are not for buyers: the exact address, the owner’s phone number, agent notes, properties still being prepared. What goes out is decided once and written down.
You can have it both ways - listings automatically, with the option to edit a description on the site. You just have to decide which version wins at the next refresh, or the edit quietly disappears overnight.
An enquiry about one property, not a general contact form
A form on the “contact” page does not collect property enquiries. The form attached to the property does, because it already knows what it is about. The reference number should travel with the message, so the agent never has to ask which flat this is and the buyer never has to copy it across.
Three more things change the number of enquiries you get. A tappable phone number on every property, because some buyers will never fill in a form and simply call. A line saying when an answer will come, because silence after a form is the worst thing an agency can hand someone who is about to trust it with a life-sized transaction. And spam protection that does not make the buyer solve puzzles.
Enquiries should land where the agency actually works, not only in one person’s inbox. If your software accepts leads, the site should put them there. Email is the backup copy, not the channel - a message in an inbox gets buried under the rest of the post, especially on a Monday.
Content that works while the listings change
Listings turn over. Content stays, and it is content that gets you found before anyone sees a single advert. People do not search for “an estate agency”; they search for flats for sale in one particular district, or for an answer to what paperwork a sale needs.
So an agency site earns its keep on two kinds of material you cannot produce on a portal. The first is a description of the areas you cover: districts, estates, price brackets, transport, schools, what is changing nearby. The second is the process seen from the client’s side - how a sale runs step by step, what documents a seller gathers, what to expect with a mortgage, how commission is calculated and when it falls due.
Property is as local as a trade gets, so your maps profile works alongside the site: category, address, opening hours, photographs of the office and reviews. How to put that together I collected in the piece on local SEO and Google Maps.
What it costs and what comes back
I work fixed-bid, which means a written quote before the start and no hourly billing. I give the quote after a conversation and bill the project in stages, and an estate agency usually needs more work than an average company site - not because of the design, but because of the machinery: pulling listings, filters, handling photographs, pages for properties that are gone.
Three things move that figure most: how your software hands over its listings (a ready-made export, or a connection written from scratch), the number of filters and the weight of the photographs, and a second language if you deal with buyers from abroad.
I will not give you a payback figure, because nobody here knows your commission or how many sales you close in a year, and any number I invented would be exactly that. In words, then: in a trade where one completed sale pays a commission counted in thousands, the bar a site like this has to clear is low. The real question is not whether it pays for itself, but how many enquiries already pass the agency by because the buyer never found a way to send one.
Where to start
The order is usually the same, even when the budget comes in stages. Listings pulled in automatically first, because without that the site starts ageing in week one. Then filters and the per-property enquiry. Local content and the seller section last, since that is what brings in new instructions.
If you already have a site and want to know exactly where it loses enquiries, send me the link - I will run a review and come back with a list of what to fix first and why that. I also build these from scratch, listings feed included; the scope and the terms are on the page about websites for companies.
Common questions
Does an estate agency need a website when it has the portals? Yes, because the portal handles the property search and the site handles the choice of agency. Somebody who saw your advert checks the agency before calling, and a seller looking for someone to handle their flat does not browse by property at all. Without a site you lose that half of the market.
Do listings have to be retyped onto the site by hand? No, and that is the main reason to build this properly. If your software sends listings to the portals, the same export can be read by the website on a schedule. The agent keeps working in one tool and the site updates itself.
What should happen to a sold property’s page? Keep the address and show a note that the property is no longer available, with similar ones beside it. Deleting the address turns every link to it - in emails, in search results, in messages between clients - into an error page.
Should prices and full addresses be published? Price always - the buyer sees it on the portal anyway, and leaving it out looks like concealment. The full address usually not: the street or the estate is enough, because the exact address is information for a client who has signed an agency agreement, not for everyone scrolling a list.
Need something like this on your side? I design and build websites for B2B companies - from scratch or as a rebuild of what already stands. Let’s talk about your project.