WordPress for Real Estate – Is It Any Good?

Whether you need a new real estate website or would like to switch or improve your existing one, you will come across WordPress at some point.

And if you are considering making any changes now, you might wonder if WordPress is good for real estate.

WordPress is good for real estate when it comes to its lead generation capacity; because of the vast possibilities to tailor its functionality and design to a particular real estate marketing strategy.

Would you like to learn more about WordPress for real estate, its six benefits for real estate, 36 free and premium WordPress themes, and if it supports IDX? 

Then check out the rest of my article.

What Is WordPress?

There could be some confusion when we hear of WordPress. This is because there are two; that is, wordpress.com and wordpress.org.

WordPress.com is similar to any other paid website builder that uses the WordPress source code.

It is self-hosted, and you have to pay monthly fees for different plans depending on your desired functionality.

WordPress.org, in turn, is a free, open-source content management system (CMS).

The code is written in PHP and uses MySQL or the MariaDB databases.

A content management system is software that helps you create and manage digital content without creating things repeatedly from scratch. 

Therefore, the use of a database is essential in this context.

This is especially helpful when you need to create pages such as blog posts or property listings that don’t differ in terms of layout and page elements but differ in content.

Suppose before the times of content management systems, you wanted to create a new property listing within your property listing page. 

In that case, you would have had to copy the page elements to create a new one and then input the new content for the particular property (e.g., property listing text and images).

With a content management system such as WordPress.org, the repeating elements can now be stored in a database, used, and loaded dynamically when necessary.

So when I talk about WordPress for real estate in this article, I mean the second one, WordPress.org, and not the first one.

6 Benefits of Using WordPress (for Real Estate)

What would I do if I had a pistol to my head and asked to name only two main benefits of WordPress?

In that case, its high customizability, and it works very well with search engines such as Google.

But since I don’t have a pistol to my head, I have the chance to name a few additional benefits and can explain the two already mentioned a bit further.

1) It Always Comes With a Blog

Suppose you freshly install WordPress but want a real estate website with your main property listings on the main page.

And the blog page you would like to have as something optional on a separate page.

In this situation, you will need to do some customization work.

Why?

Because by default, WordPress.org will be installed with a blog as the main element.

So the main page will be the blog and its blog posts. This is because its main aim was to be a blogging platform.

So it comes with everything you need for a blog, such as RSS feeds, comment areas, an RSS feed, and more.

2) Google and Other Search Engines Really Like It

One of the main benefits I see in WordPress is search engine friendliness and that search engines like it. But why is it like that?

Its clean code makes it easy for search engines to crawl and index the content.

Besides that, you can add different meta tags, titles, and descriptions to the media you add, such as images.

3) No Web Development Skills and Software Needed to Manage and Edit Content

Even though it will be helpful to know a bit of HTML, it’s not a must if you want to add new pages, upload images and other media files, and format text.

You can do all these tasks directly via your browser without FTP software.

This also means you will not need a web developer for every little task.

4) Highly Customizable With Themes and Plugins

The second core benefit I already mentioned is that you have sheer unlimited options to customize your real estate WordPress website in terms of design and functionality.

Design and functionality customizations are usually done via free and premium WordPress Themes and different free and premium plugins.

Most of the themes have their focus on design aspects.

This is usually a package of different files containing style sheets, graphics, and code that can change your website’s overall design and layout.

Some themes also offer additional functionality.

But extending the functionality is usually the job of plugins.

For example, a website chat would be an extension of the basic functionality of your real estate website.

In that case, you must install a chat plugin to use this functionality.

The fact that it’s highly customizable also makes WordPress more scalable.

This can be useful when your real estate website starts growing, and you need to increase the web server capacity.

This also ties in with the benefit of being the owner of your website (benefit 6).

5) Many User Accounts Possible

Suppose you are in the position and can delegate your content marketing or update your real estate website to a freelancer or your own staff.

How can WordPress help with that?

You can create several different user accounts with additional access rights for each, which the administrator can only do.

They can then access the WordPress backend independently and, for example, add new blog posts or property listings.

6) You Are the Owner of Your Website

Technically, WordPress.org is free (the code); still, you will need to buy a domain and pay a hosting provider where the free code will be deployed.

So saying that it’s completely free is a bit of window dressing.

The advantage of using your own hosting provider is that you will own your website.

In other words, you will be more of the owner than if you use website builders such as Squarespace or Wix, which is self-hosted, and your real estate website could be easier just turned off.

Sure, a hosting provider could also decide to cancel your service.

However, it would need more government involvement in that case, and you could still move the code to another hosting provider more easily.

Is WordPress Good for Realtors?

You might wonder whether WordPress is good for realtors because you want to change your current real estate website or create a new one.

Since I don’t know what you mean by “good,” I assume you mean the capacity to generate leads. Why?

What else should a website do if not generating leads and getting you new business connections?

Regarding lead generation capacities, WordPress is good for realtors.

It gives excellent options to tailor your WordPress real estate website’s functionality and design to your overall marketing strategy. 

And if one of your marketing methods is content marketing, you will get an additional bonus from Google and other search engines for crawling reasons.

36 Free and Premium Real Estate WordPress Themes 2021 and 2022

You may now consider switching or starting with a WordPress real estate website.

So I prepared a small overview for you of 36 different free and premium real estate WordPress themes.

When you look at the overview table, you will see several real estate WordPress themes marked with “yes” for “IDX third-party integration.”

It is important to know that the theme you choose can integrate third-party plugins that make the IDX integration of your MLS possible.

In this article,  I discussed integrating your MLS into WordPress via IDX plugins.

You don’t want to just select a free theme and later find out that you must manually add and update all your MLS property listings.

Does WordPress Support IDX?

This leads to our next fundamental question. Does WordPress support IDX?

You may have already deduced this from what I discussed previously and could understand that you can almost unlimitedly customize and extend a WordPress-powered website.

When you start with a clean slate and first install WordPress on your web server, IDX is not yet supported.

But this changes once you install one of the many plugins that extend the functionality and thus make IDX support possible.

12 WordPress Real Estate Website Examples

To conclude this article, I would like to show you some examples of what WordPress real estate websites look like. You can find my small list below.

To find them, I searched different websites that mentioned “best real estate websites.”

I am not sure how “best” was defined or how they were qualified (e.g., user-friendliness, conversion rates, etc.?), though.

While on these websites, I then used a Google Chrome extension called “Wappalyzer. “

With this tool, you can check websites to a certain degree and find out with which technology they were built.

So without further ado, here comes the list:

• Ernemann Real Estate
• Susan Breitenbach 
• NJLux
• The Pratt Group  
• Ryan Serhant
• Jason O’ Beirne
• Katrina Campins
• Debra Smalley
• Debra Dobbs
• Guy Yarkoni
• David Coffey
• Nancy Saedi

This article has been reviewed by our editorial team. It has been approved for publication in accordance with our editorial policy.

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Tobias Schnellbacher

Tobias is an internet entrepreneur with a passion for digital marketing and copywriting, particularly in the real estate sector. He also likes cats and fitness. For nine years, he operated an international online referral real estate agency serving U.S., Canadian, and German sellers and buyers, which resulted in multiple seven-figure property sales.Learn more

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