The importance of an effective real estate website design cannot be overstated. Your design, being the initial contact with your business a customer has will either draw them in to read what your business is about, or turn them away due to lack of professionalism, clutter, or slow loading pages. Most importantly however, you need to realize that a real estate website is not like other websites. A real estate website needs to be interactive and database driven. Due to these technology complexities, effective real estate websites will be more expensive to host and design than other “business card” style websites.

Real estate website designs need to be operated through what is known as a Content Management System (CMS). A CMS will allow you to quickly and effectively manage your properties, send newsletters, let your website users sign up for accounts to be sent automatic notifications when new properties are added, and much more. While many websites are built simply as a glorified business card (i.e. “about us” and “contact us”), a real estate website needs to be so much more.

The fact of the matter is that 80% of people look for homes online before contacting an agent. This is because it’s easy and risk free to look before making the commitment to call the agent or website operator. Similarly, the real estate browser can view hundreds of properties if they wish, sort them into price categories, see countless pictures, figure out mortgage rates (by using a mortgage calculator), and compare home prices against each other. They can also look through the properties of various agents at once without ever making a commitment to anyone. This allows the home shopper or home renter to equip themselves with as much information as possible before picking up the phone and calling an agent.

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