What are the features
that a good real estate platform
should offer? This is the primary question that we be answering in
this blog post. To attract users a real estate website should offer
more features than a list of available properties. Let us take a look
at some of the most important features.
Search filters
Think about what you
could offer the buyers to make the search as easy and comfortable as
possible. Examples of core search filters are:
Listing type (buy,
sell, rent)
- Location
- Price
- Number of bedrooms
- Home type
As for additional
filters, the most common ones are:
- Floor space (square feet)
- Bathrooms
- Year of construction
- Date when the house was added to the website
Find out what the main
problems are with real estate in your area based on that real estate
website should offer more filters.
Listings feed
There are 2 main listings
feed designs – a feed and a map. You can either have them both
separately or combine both.
Maps
A map with the location
of the properties is one of the most common feature in a real estate
website. People are used to using google maps. So it’s a commo
solution to use google maps api in the real estate platform. Yet
another feature of google maps is the street view where people can
check how the buildings look apart from the photos. Also people can
check out the neighbourhood including the location of parks shops
etc. this saves a lot of time for prospective buyers.
Photos
Photos are one of the
main aspects of a real estate website. It’s common knowledge that
the more you like the way house looks, you will be more interested in
buying it. A real estate platform should provide requirements for
photos such as size, format, and resolution to be able to manage a
huge number of images.
Favourites
This feature lets buyers
save their top choices and return to them to do a comparison when
needed. It avoids the need to search from start each time they login.
Agents can see the favourite houses of their clients and accordingly
provide the best property to the client.
Local info
Information about the
neighbourhood will help people select houses based on facilities
available on the neighbourhood and also the type neighbourhood.
Platforms should have the option to add this information. For example
the type of shops, parks, schools etc available in the neighbourhood
may be an important consideration for buyers.
Payments
Yet another feature to
look forward to in a real estate platform is a payment gateway
option. Paypal is one the most popular payment gateway available.
Think of the area your website focuses on to select the best payment
gateway for your website. One important aspect to take care is that
you will be responsible for credit card data security if you
integrate payment gateway api in your website.
Messaging
Communication is one of
the most important aspect of a real estate business. The best way to
enhance communication is to add a messenger to your website. This
helps buyers ask doubts and clarifications if need be. It also helps
you deliver messages to the user. Platforms should offer instant
messaging solutions for this purpose.
Calendar feature is
important so that real estate agents can communicate to buyers when
their properties are available for showings. It saves time checking
for showing times. A real estate platfor should have an option
integrate calendar apis from either google or Microsoft in the real
estate website.
Registration
All real estate platforms
should offer websites which has the registration feature both via
email and also social media like facebook or twitter. Users who have
created profiles must be able to switch between buyer and seller if
needed. Also there must be other roles like renter, landlords etc.
also real estate agents must be provided with a separate registration
feature as they will use other features other than buyers and
sellers.
