With so many available WordPress real estate plugins, how in the world do you know which ones to use on your website? The answer depends on what types of functions you’d like your website to perform.
Your WordPress Real Estate Website
To use any WordPress real estate plugin, you first must have a WordPress real estate website. WordPress Plugins are exclusive to WordPress websites.
There are two kinds of WordPress websites, and you must distinguish between them. WordPress.com is a free WordPress website, which is not ideal for your professional website or plugins. Instead, you’ll need to pay for an account with WordPress.org, which allows you to point your domain name to your website instead of having a URL with your name followed by dot WordPress.com. It’s more professional and gives you more control and functionality regarding what goes on your website.
For your WordPress website to be live and accessible on the internet, you’ll need web hosting, which you can get through companies like GoDaddy.com, FlyWheel.com, or from the business that builds out your real estate website for you.
You’ll also need a WordPress theme. The theme is the bones, the foundation of your website. It’s how you design and layout your information. All professional WordPress websites must have a WordPress theme installed. There are thousands of WordPress themes available.
Once you’ve got your domain name, your WordPress account, web hosting, and theme, you’re ready to start adding the functionality to your website. You do that with plugins.
WordPress Plugins
A WordPress theme paints the exterior of your website – the font colors and styles, sidebars and columns, headers and footers, and other cosmetic elements.
A plugin is a piece of software that you install into your website’s back end that adds functionality to your website. Plugins can enhance your website by displaying properties, offering home valuations, creating forms, posting email opt-ins, improving SEO, increasing site speeds, lead capture, and more.
A plugin allows you to expand your website’s offerings without having to know a single line of code. You just install the plugin and go. The nice thing is that you can mix-and-match plugins to tailor a website that’s unique to you and operates smoothly as a lead-generating machine.
There are thousands upon thousands of unique WordPress plugins, some free, some paid. Many are designed and offered through WordPress, while others are from third-party developers. While they can add a great deal of value to your viewers and your SEO, they can also have a negative effect if you use too many or if you choose a heavy plugin that will weigh your site down.
A bloated plugin, or too many plugins that slow your website speed, will increase bounce rates, and decrease search engine authority. Statistics say that a website must load in less than three seconds, or the viewer is likely to click out and move on.
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The Importance of Updating Themes and Plugins
There’s a double-edged sword in using themes and plugins. First, they absolutely must be updated, or you run the risk of having a security breach and room for hackers to access your website. But second, updating your themes and plugins could accidentally damage your website.
One way to monitor the effects of updates is to perform each one manually rather than automatically. By the time the auto-update is done, you won’t know where the problem lies if the site isn’t functioning.
Updates should be done at least once a month, but twice a month for best performance.
The best way to handle themes and updates to avoid dealing with complex technical issues is to allow a professional to manage updates for you. It’s worth the expense for maintenance.
Plugins Do Not Replace Content
You can have all the bells and whistles through plugins throughout your site. But an IDX listing of properties or offering home valuations isn’t going to bump your site up in the search engines. Your site is still driven by the quality of content you provide.
Consider creating informative articles for buyers and sellers, community pages, or hyperlocal content in addition to using plugins. You can use your written content to attract buyers and sellers online, who will then be able to access the resources you’ve included in your website via plugins.
Here are the top ten WordPress real estate plugins.
Keep Your WordPress Website Themes and Plugins Up to DateOne: Estatik
Estatik was designed with your success in mind, offering a user-friendly, lightweight, multilingual plugin crafted with search engine optimization fundamentals. That’s why it’s among the best of the best for WordPress real estate plugins.
This plugin is compatible with the Elementor Page Builder.
It comes with widgets and tools such as a search feature, mortgage calculator, slider, map view, CVS import, social sharing, extra layouts, and more. Use the Smart Builder to customize every field or section with a complex Fields Builder. And pull real MLS data that’s automated or manual, synchronized, has agent mapping, and more.
With Estatik, you can add a network of agents, including agent profiles, properties, and a listings management panel. You can also charge agents and collect payments through PayPal.
Estatik is recognized for its attentive support team, standing behind its customers.
There are three memberships to Estatik, including the free version, Pro, and Premium.
Two: Easy Property Listings
Easy Property Listings makes it to the top of the list because of its flexibility in use. It’s got a simple design, so it’s beginner-friendly with a listing management interface, but it also has advanced features and add-ons, and the API documentation is available to give more experienced developers more freedom.
The highly customizable plugin is mobile-friendly for listing templates that display properties as a single listing page or in a grid layout.
Easy Property Listings comes with hundreds of theme templates and delivers over 150 custom fields for listing customization interface, although the listings don’t need much customization. It also integrates with WordPress frameworks, such as iThemes Builder, Headway, and Genesis.
The company has also worked hard to earn a solid reputation for offering outstanding customer support.
10 Best Real Estate WordPress Themes [2021]Three: IMPress
IMPress is both easy for beginners and yet flexible for more advanced users. There’s a complete listing management system with MLS integration and status tags.
Showcase a featured listing widget, automatically insert maps, and add unlimited details with images and video support for every listing. You can add customizable dropdowns for things like the number of bedrooms and baths, property types, and locations.
Listings are displayed in a beautiful grid layout, while a single listing page gives users the chance to gather all the information they want, including maps.
IMPress supports automated social media posts, a real estate directory, lead management features, and email capture, an entire functioning system for real estate agents. And you can import listings from your MLS database and IDX integration. You can migrate your AgentPress listings to IMPress, too.
Four: WP-Property
The WordPress plugin that was expertly designed for real estate agents is WP-Property. The plugin was crafted exclusively with real estate agents in mind but has evolved and expanded to encompass a wide variety of uses for various businesses, services, and products.
First and foremost, it’s a complete real estate management system that’s expandable and customizable with premium features.
Features include free add-ons and themes, localized Google Maps, Customizable templates for different types of properties, SEO-friendly URLs, and customizable widgets, including:
- Child properties
- Featured properties
- Latest properties
- Other properties
- Property attributes
- Property search
- Property gallery
- Property Overview
- Property Map
- List attachments
There’s also a shortcode cheat sheet, and you can add a neighborhood WalkScore to your listings.
7 Ways to Find the Best WordPress Web Design CompanyFive: Realtyna WPL Real Estate
WPL Real Estate is primarily for agencies with a small number of agents instead of a single agent website. You can list agents, post agent information, share photos, share agent listings, and easily connect with MLS. The customer support is good, too.
Expand your online presence with easy-to-integrate add-ons. You can tailor your website to your needs, completely customize your design 100 percent, and publish a plethora of indexable listings pages, which is also good for your website’s SEO, or search engine optimization.
Widgets include:
- Search
- Carousel
- Bookmark/favorite
- Agents
- Shortcodes
Six: Essential Real Estate
Essential Real Estate is a powerhouse plugin designed for agencies. With a website powered by the Essential Real Estate WordPress plugin, you can:
- Allow users to register
- Users can apply to become agents so they can manage properties, communicate with buyers, and manage their agent profile
- Accept multiple paid submission types
- Process three methods of payment
- Advanced search
- Saved search
- Mortgage calculator
- Compare properties
- Manage invoices
- Allow a “my favorites” list
- Incorporate Google Maps property markers.
Seven: WP Amortization Calculator
This nifty little plugin is a great lead capture tool because it helps people calculate the costs of getting a mortgage by offering a downloadable, printable PDF report. You’ll then get a blind copy of the email and PDF reports sent to your website visitors to see the type of loan they’re looking into.
You can use your own logo and branding and use the widget repeatedly on different pages of your website.
It’s got Elementor integration and is compatible with any standards-compliant WordPress theme.
Eight: WP Real Estate
WP Real Estate is another comprehensive website management system that includes IDX/MLS integration, list or grid layout views, Google Maps, a search feature, and contact forms.
You can further customize your online presence with shortcodes and widgets that allow you to display other listings throughout your site or create landing pages for single properties.
The pro version is compatible with all WordPress themes, includes an advanced search form, a related listings feature, compare listings, agencies listings, an import and export option, custom widgets, images, and gallery.
When it comes to money matters, WP Real Estate Pro allows users to pay to list their property, supports PayPal and Stripe payments, and has clean and secure code.
15 of the Best IDX Real Estate WebsitesThe pro version also includes a mortgage calculator widget.
Nine: WPCasa
WPCasa is a flexible framework to create highly functional WordPress real estate websites and easily manage property listings. This plugin leans more toward use by developers as it’s promoted as having been made with developers in mind for well-documented, readable code with ample actions, filters, and templates to use.
You can add searchable listings by location, property type, number of bedrooms, and bathrooms with the base version. You can create stellar single listing pages, too.
In addition, you can offer a listing PDF, featured listings, listing labels, favorites, email notification of new property, advanced search, and multiple forms, including a contact form.
Ten: Home Value WordPress Plugin
Another great way to capture seller leads is by offering a free home valuation tool. With the Home Value WordPress plugin, you can capture a viewer’s name, email address, and other pertinent information.
The plugin also integrates with Zapier webhooks to pull data into virtually any CRM.
The plugin has excellent customization options to tailor your tool to your taste. It’s easy to set up, includes free, up-to-the-minute data, lead management capabilities, address autocomplete, and phenomenal customer support.
Choose Your BREW [Ballen Real Estate Websites]Bonus Plugin: Not real estate related, but critical for the success of any website on the internet is Yoast SEO. The Yoast SEO plugin helps you edit and modify any piece of content so that it’s easier to read, is appropriately formatted, uses separate titles for search and social, and allows you to implement keyword strategies.
Conclusion
To get your WordPress real estate website up and running with features your buyers and sellers will love, you’ll need your website, domain name, and web hosting, as well as a theme. Those are the nuts and bolts of your web presence, the bare bones with no content, no properties, and no lead capture tools like home valuations or home mortgage calculators. To give your site all the power it needs, you’ll use plugins.
Plugins add functionality to your website by allowing you to post listings, offer items of value, helping with search engine optimization, and more. Be careful with how many plugins you pick; although 30-50 isn’t abnormal, choose them sparingly so they don’t weigh your site down. Update your plugins and themes frequently.
Have fun exploring all the possibilities available by using WordPress real estate plugins. Ask your web developer for more information.
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