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Website Design - Real Estate Portal General Help and Tips Wanted

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  • Website Design - Real Estate Portal General Help and Tips Wanted

    Hi Guys

    As most of you know i own a wholesale office supplies company, but i've be asked to be part of a new project by some business associates of mine that we hope to set up as another company. The project involves Real Estate, and my task is to build a Real Estate Portal similar to http://www.rightmove.co.uk/ - Now the portal idea was suggested by one of my associates, but i fail to see how that would achieve what we are wanting to achieve as a portal is merely a search engine.

    Now obviously i can not go into details as to what the project entails etc. But want i need help and tips on is how to build a real estate portal. I know some scripts are already available as software/script packages, but we want something different from the majority - obviously for SEO and search engine ranking reasons.

    Basically we want for both private and estate agents to be able to list properties for sale, rent/lease where they can list for a fee or list in bulk for a set fee determined by number of listings. Now i have done some research and i have seen about IDX and MLS listings, but they are not what i think we need, as we want is for real estate agents to come to us directly by offering them better value, rather than have the same listing feeds other sites use, where they merely earn a advertising commission for successful sales like an affiliate would earn.

    So if anyone has any experience in this field or website design or in real estate itself, then please feel free to post away with any help, advice or tips. You may have, or if you know of any software/script packages that are fully customizable, then please post details. I have googled but myself not knowing much about the real estate industry means am not having much joy finding out what i need to know to build the site. I have plenty of experience with building eCommerce sites etc, but a portal is something i have never attempted before, and as i said, am not convinced a portal is what we actually should be building.
    Please note that this advice is given informally, without liability and without prejudice. Always seek the advice of an insured qualified professional. All my legal and nonlegal knowledge comes from either here (LB),my own personal research and experience and/or as the result of necessity as an Employer and Businessman.

    By using my advice in any form, you agreed to waive all rights to hold myself or any persons representing myself of any liability.

    If you PM me, make sure to include a link to your thread as I don't give out advice in private. All PMs that are sent in missuse (including but not limited to phishing, spam) of the PM application and/or PMs that are threatening or abusive will be reported to the Site Team and if necessary to the police and/or relevant Authority.

    I AM SO GOING TO GET BANNED BY CEL FOR POSTING terrible humour POSTS.

    The Governess; 6th March 2012 GRRRRRR
    Tags: None

  • #2
    Re: Website Design - Real Estate Portal General Help and Tips Wanted

    I think portal may be the wrong direction tbh. I see what you are trying to achieve and all though it sounds good on paper there is a lot of background work to it.

    Saying that - the fact that you are offering some sort of affiliation for them maybe the icing on the cake. MLS is a good example actually and they are one of North americas biggest firms for house listings.
    Right move is OK but you will find in a lot of the more rural areas that the solicitors have their own place to list stuff.

    But as you say portal is just a search engine and thats not what you want. You want something more concrete. I have noticed recently (since house hunting) that there are a lot of new property pages like zoopla, findmyproperty etc which really piggy back off of right move.

    Comment


    • #3
      Re: Website Design - Real Estate Portal General Help and Tips Wanted

      Thanks Daisy

      The thing is, we want UK house listings primarily - So MLS and IDX, being they are more suited to US real estate listings might not be the best approach. As its UK Estate Agents that we would be targeting as our main customer base, by basically informing them of savings they could make by listing through our site compared to others. Or that's the jest of it that i got when the other 2 tried explaining it in brief. Both of whom know nothing or have limited knowledge on website design and the real estate industry.

      One of the other problems is the 2 business associates haven't yet fully explained to me what it is they are wanting to do or achieve. All i know is they want a site where they can estate agents can list their properties for rent/sale etc and make money from the fees we will charge. So i really don't as yet have a full picture of what they have in mind. Though we have a meeting tomorrow hopefully, so will have a better understanding then of what it is they require.

      But yeah the more i looked in to portals, the more i think its not the way to go, based on what they have already told me they hope to achieve or want.
      Please note that this advice is given informally, without liability and without prejudice. Always seek the advice of an insured qualified professional. All my legal and nonlegal knowledge comes from either here (LB),my own personal research and experience and/or as the result of necessity as an Employer and Businessman.

      By using my advice in any form, you agreed to waive all rights to hold myself or any persons representing myself of any liability.

      If you PM me, make sure to include a link to your thread as I don't give out advice in private. All PMs that are sent in missuse (including but not limited to phishing, spam) of the PM application and/or PMs that are threatening or abusive will be reported to the Site Team and if necessary to the police and/or relevant Authority.

      I AM SO GOING TO GET BANNED BY CEL FOR POSTING terrible humour POSTS.

      The Governess; 6th March 2012 GRRRRRR

      Comment


      • #4
        Re: Website Design - Real Estate Portal General Help and Tips Wanted

        If you are looking for a good, easy-to-use website design package, TB, I can recommend WebPlus. Go to www.serif.com and download a free Starter Edition. Serif is a British company, based in Nottingham. I've used their products for 10 years and found them very easy to use.
        Life is a journey on which we all travel, sometimes together, but never alone.

        Comment


        • #5
          Re: Website Design - Real Estate Portal General Help and Tips Wanted

          Thank BB

          Will have a look. Designing a site is not the hard bit, its knowing how to go about it creating one for real estate, and not a standard eCommerce site that am more skilled in. Off course it helps if i knew exactly what the my business associates are wanting from a the website.

          ADDITIONAL POST:

          Right i had a look at that BB, its not what am looking for its basically just a design tool and only real estate template, for your own listings, with no MYSQL database, which is what will be needed for real estate agents to register, add listings etc and basically have full functionality.
          Please note that this advice is given informally, without liability and without prejudice. Always seek the advice of an insured qualified professional. All my legal and nonlegal knowledge comes from either here (LB),my own personal research and experience and/or as the result of necessity as an Employer and Businessman.

          By using my advice in any form, you agreed to waive all rights to hold myself or any persons representing myself of any liability.

          If you PM me, make sure to include a link to your thread as I don't give out advice in private. All PMs that are sent in missuse (including but not limited to phishing, spam) of the PM application and/or PMs that are threatening or abusive will be reported to the Site Team and if necessary to the police and/or relevant Authority.

          I AM SO GOING TO GET BANNED BY CEL FOR POSTING terrible humour POSTS.

          The Governess; 6th March 2012 GRRRRRR

          Comment

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