The real estate market has seen a boom lately, and so has the competition on it. To surpass rivals, realtors must focus great efforts on decent promotion of their services. In the modern age, running a full-featured website is a must to reach more home seekers. And this real estate agent WordPress theme will help you create one.
Over the last decade, the sphere of commerce has become digital, which is the tendency defined as ZMOT (Zero Moment of Truth) by Google. Instead of visiting stores, people surf the web in search of desirable products or necessary information about them. They watch instructive videos, look through galleries of product images, read authoritative reviews or just other consumers’ testimonials. This trend has also to do a lot with the audience of the real estate market.
According to the report made by Realtor.org analysts in early 2015, the first step the majority of home buyers (55%) take is enter the web. Among them, 43% search for on-sale accommodation and 12% scan through tips on the home buying process. At the same time, only 15 % contact realtors and even less seek advice from friends and relatives (7%), consult bank or mortgage lender (6%), visit open houses (3%), and look for the info in newspapers or magazines (the lowest rate of 1%). As you can see, traditional ways of advertizing have already gone out of date.
With the Internet becoming the foremost destination of home buyers, websites have turned into business cards of realtors. A real estate site should be pre-built with special functionalities to show off the available property and connect with customers much more effectively. They include advanced search option, agent profile page, Google map integration, mobile-friendly design, as well as pages with property detail listings and photo galleries.
Imagine for a moment that your site has all these features. How easy would it become to run your business online? And it will if you use this responsive WordPress websites for real estate agents powered by Bootstrap and Cherry Framework. So, let’s figure out what makes it the right solution to your realty company and how it differs from other 300+ WordPress realestate themes available in the TemplateMonster inventory.
dsIDXpress plugin
Unlike other TM themes, this one is integrated with dsIDXpress. The plugin gives customers an opportunity to explore MSL real estate listings right on your site. MSL is a popular web resource highlighting new and resale houses, apartments and other types of accommodation. You can embed that data into your posts via shortcodes and add it to sidebars using widgets. Moreover, search engines will show the MSL listings from your website domain on results pages, which will bring it more traffic and increase its SEO ranking.
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WPL Real Estate
The next plugin embedded into the theme’s functionality is WPL Real Estate meant to manage the database with property listings. Supplied with multiple options and add-ons, it can handle sites of both small startups with a few agents and large companies with many employees. Let’s take a close look at what you can do using this plugin. Here are some of its functional capabilities:
- add, edit, delete or deactivate fields with property details;
- hide fields with null value automatically;
- add and revise property listings;
- define property types according to your needs, e.g. apartment, office, shop, studio, etc.;
- add different room types;
- choose a measuring unit system suitable for your country;
- change your profile details such as name, contacts, logo, etc.;
- set a different level of access to your system for each website user.
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List & Grid Switcher
Enable customers to explore your property offers in the most comfortable way for them. By means of a grid view mode, they will be able to look through images of lodgings in a user-friendly table. As for a list view mode, it shows descriptions of houses in addition to their pictures.
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Sort Option
For easier browsing experience, visitors will be able to sort properties by such criteria as listing ID, built-up area, price, pictures, and date.
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Google Map
Mark each property available for sale or rent on the interactive Google map. It will let customers see its exact location and surroundings to understand whether there is everything they need in the neighborhood. This convenient functionality will foster their decision-making process.
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Advanced Search
Implement this option to help your website visitors narrow down their search. They will be able to filter it by sum, property type, zip & postal codes, street, garden, pet policy, kitchen, Internet, and many other things that let them find the house of their dream in no time.
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Property Details Page
This real estate agency responsive WP theme is equipped with a page highlighting detailed information about each property:
- basic details (property type, area, price, year of building, number of bedrooms, bathrooms, etc.);
- features (garden, fence, balcony, basement, swimming pool, Jacuzzi, heating & cooling systems, fireplace, etc.);
- appliances (fridge, microwave, washing machine, dishwasher, telephone, TV, satellite, Internet, etc.);
- address (country, state, floor number, latitude, longitude);
- nearby places (town center, shopping mall, hospital, police station, airport, etc.), approximate time to get there, and the type of transportation (by car, by bus, on foot).
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Agent Profile
There is an agent profile in the theme’s package to help you make a special introduction of every realtor working for you. It is designed to display a photo, email, phone and images of properties managed by that realtor. The profile is also prebuilt with a contact form allowing home buyers to get in touch with your agents.
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User-Friendly Navigation
Make it easier to navigate your site by means of a sticky dropdown menu and back-to-top button. Being fixed to the header, the menu gives an instantaneous access to all the website categories while page scrolling. As for the button, it allows visitors to reach the top of the page from its bottom or centre without any scrolling.
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Multimedia Options
To let you showcase lodgings more effectively, this WordPress template for real estate comes with a full package of multimedia options. It is integrated with audio & video and includes 4 gallery scripts such as Isotope, Accordion, Slider and Carousel.
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Social Media Integration
Provide extra promotion for your agency due to social media integration. Sharing buttons, particularly G+, Pin It, Tweet and Like, will help you deliver your content to users of social networks. There are also icons that will let your website visitors proceed to your social profiles and subscribe to them.
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Commenting System
This system makes it possible for people to leave their comments on your content, arousing heated discussions on home buying issues. Thus, your web resource will be much more interesting and trustworthy to new visitors.
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Testimonials
Add testimonials of loyal clients to your online portal in order to boost its reliability. Such an initiative will improve people’s confidence in your services and stimulate them to entrust their accommodation needs to your agency.
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Badges
Use badges to indicate the status of properties, e.g. featured, hot offer, open house, and fore-closure. Each badge is marked with its own color for easier differentiation.
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Blog Integration
Running a blog on your site, you will have an opportunity to show yourself as an expert in the real estate sphere. Moreover, posts with keywords will give search engines more content to index, which will make your site more visible to the audience.
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Responsive Design
As a result of the research mentioned above, analysts of Realtor.org have found out that more than half of online buyers use mobile devices to search for lodgings on the web. For that reason, this theme features a responsive layout to provide impeccable viewing experience for users of handhelds.
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On top of everything, this real estate agency responsive WP theme is WPML-ready, which will let you extend your business reach on a global scale. As you can see, the theme has everything required to turn your site into a one-stop place for home buyers. Just give it a try and be ready for a more intense interest in your services and a significant growth of your customer base.