Why I Can't Tell You How Much It Costs to Build an Online Real Estate Listing
Sometimes when a client reaches out to me, they open with a question like this:
“My real estate company needs a website. We need show our real estate listings. How much will that cost, and how long will it take?”
Here’s why I can’t answer that question for you, and anyone who says they can is lying.
Here’s an example of a real estate listing on a website. 
Here’s another:
Here’s another:
Features that’s on one of these real estate listings, but not the others:
- Large image galleries.
- Responsive design.
- Local school district data.
- contact forms.
- Static maps.
- Dynamic maps.
- Police reports.
- Ability to save the property to review later.
- A virtual tour.
- Public records.
- A list of nearby restaurants.
- Price history graphs.
- Prices of nearby homes.
- Similar homes based on features.
- Similar homes based on location.
- Similar homes based on price.
- Pop-up listings over a fullscreen map.
- More than one font or color.
Other details that can’t be deciphered by looking at a page, but could affect pricing:
It takes a lot more than a list of features to determine the price. You could give a list of features to a group of developers and get the following prices: $750, $950, $1500, “at least $4000”,$5000, and $12,000. Here are some other factors that come into play:
- Who will be entering the real estate data? You, me, one of your employees, another program?
- How often are listings updated?
- How should listings with incomplete information be handled?
- When someone fills out a contact form, what happens?
- What happens when a listing is sold?
- Where are we getting all of this data?
- How are we tracking the effectiveness of the page?
- How many listings will your website have?
- What is the average value of a listing?
- How quickly do you need this work done?
- What is the impact if this work doesn’t get done?
Next time you are thinking about putting out a brief description of your project and asking for a price, instead describe the problems you are trying to solve and the goals you are trying to achieve. Figuring out the cost of features is a conversation, not a question.