Turnkey WordPress websites for the not so savvy
So if you’re sick and tired of paying ridiculous monthly fees for seriously ugly and outdated real estate websites, a powerful WordPress CMS may be the solution for you. CMS is simply short for content management system, and WordPress has proven itself as a disintermediating force in the bill’em monthly solution.
WordPress is simple to host and install, easy to theme, and over the course of a weekend, a beginner can launch a beautiful new WordPress blogging website, themed and ready to go- and even if you’re not that savvy, you can have it done for you at a fraction of the overall cost of some real estate content solutions.
WordPress isn’t just for blogging anymore!
The Real Estate Theme (demo)
“The theme allows you to create property listings of two types – Buying and Leasing – each with a details and listing page. Additionally, you can create pages like this one to hold general content and submenus so that the site is largely extensible.
The Real Estate theme features:
- Searchable listings
- Editable homepage content via a customized WP-Admin panel
- Simple, clean CSS to easily update colours
- Flexible page structure that can accomodate a large amount of content
- Easy to create “listings” from WordPress posts”
Real Estate Theme (demo)
WP Pro Real Estate is a clean and simple theme designed for WordPress installations. It allows you to create a dynamic content managed site for use in the real estate business. It’s very simple to get up and running, and includes many features allowing for complete customization.
- Custom Theme Administration Panel – Allows you to edit template and home page content including the logo, home header image, company tagline, home page verbiage and link text as well as many other options. No need to go searching through code to make template changes.
- Custom Write Post Panel – Adds all the necessary detail fields to your write post panel i.e.(price, location, sq ft, etc…) without the use of a plugin. This is built in and ready to go once you activate the theme.
- sIFR 3 – All headings are rendered utilizing sIFR, this allows the use of the custom font without having you or the end user to have the font installed on your computer.
- Dynamic Image Resizing – Never worry about having to re size your images, upload large images via the WordPress admin and the theme takes care of the rest generating thumbnails, medium and large size images on the fly with caching.
- Searchable listings – listings are searchable by address or description.
- Utilizes Clean and Semantic XHTML and CSS – everything is commented and very easy to update.
- Very scalable page structure – allows for accommodation of large amounts of content without breaking the layout
- Five nice large stock photos are included as well.”
Agent Theme (demo)
Benefits include the Agent theme, unlimited theme support answered by experts, customization techniques with detailed theme tutorials and professional design services available by their list of recommended designers.
Features:
- Support
- Multiple variations of property categories
- multiple variations of page templates
IReal Estate Theme (demo)
Straight forward real estate WordPress theme with loads of features. Simple and easy to customize.
Features include:
- Easily customizable
- Integrated blog
- Home page template
- Wide layout for content heavy sites
- Widget ready sidebars and feature areas
- Drop-down navigation
- Search engine optimized
Bel Air Real Estate WordPress Theme (demo)
This is an awesome WordPress theme from the small team or broker perspective as it comes as a complete turnkey ready for launch solution. Load your listings, agent mugshots, a little bit about who you are and your services and you’re off!
Features Include:
- Easy Listings Management Look like a Pro
- Five Color Schemes
- Photo Gallery
- Agent Image / Biography
- “No Custom Fields”
- Featured Properties
- Property Search Options
- Payment Calculator
- Ad Management
- Affordably Priced
- Rebrandable – No credit links required
Smooth Real Estate WordPress Theme (demo)
Finally, designers are beginning to get it as the evolution of the real estate WordPress theme continues. Have you been wanting Google Maps and other big site search features? Well here they are and a whole lot more.
Features include:
- Google Maps Integration
- “No Custom Fields”
- PSD files included
- Multiple Agents
- Carousel Property Slider
- Logo Uploader
- Easy Listings Management
- Widget Ready
- Custom Plugins
- Photo Gallery (up to 14 images)
- Agent Photo Uploader
- IE6, IE7, Firefox and Safari compatible
- Extensive help and tutorial included
- Banner Management
- Ad your Adsense or Image Link Code
- Turn all-or-individual banners on/off
- Image Auto Resizer
- Gravatar Support
A Few Things a Noob Should Know
Hunting real estate WordPress themes can eat up an entire Saturday and can be incredibly frustrating, but even worse than that, some (not all) free themes are proving to be dangerous. Problems range from some free themes with malicious code, to required or hidden links in the framework to malicious or low ranking (often Google penalized) websites to being so basic that the learning curve is beyond beginner to bring to up to a usable level. I advise anyone new to themeing WordPress to stick with reputable designers- I’ve pointed out a few here and will feature more later.
The themes featured above are Premium WordPress themes, meaning they come either with support, an administration panel that aids you point and click customization, or both and more for a one time price. The themes above range from $25.00 to $120.00.
Some Basics
- Here’s a link to a few WordPress Tutorials to get you started.
- Here’s a list of awesome Real Estate WordPress Plugins
- Awesome Posts on Real Estate SEO
Doug Francis
May 3, 2009 at 11:23 am
I have been establishing a new blog using one of these themes mentioned and it really looks great. A couple of bugs that I am working on today but the feedback so for has been positive. WP has been easy to use… with a little help from some clients who are more proficient (a great way to reconnect).
Matt Stigliano
May 3, 2009 at 1:19 pm
I’ve been using the iReal Estate Theme and it works great. Its pretty self explanatory from the start and looks great. I’m still working on making some changes (and the upgrade is starring me in the face, but when I upgraded it changed a lot of my layout so I need to get to work on that and then get the upgrade installed).
It took me awhile to get a hang of it, but once I did, it helped. The new update has a great feature where you can write new pages, but not include them in the menu – it allows for deeper sub pages or just some good test pages that you want to work on without them being seen by the public.
Duke Long
May 4, 2009 at 8:23 am
Great post. I use word press now.I will use this for research.Great content. I have you in my Google Reader.
Carlos
May 10, 2009 at 7:42 pm
Thank you for featuring the Gorilla Themes Real Estate WordPress products, we have a new theme coming this week for single and multi agents .
Jim Reppond
May 11, 2009 at 9:23 am
The tipping point has come to dump static real estate websites from old template-based companies like Superlative or AdvancedAccess. These WordPress themes make it very easy to migrate over to web 2.0 and control your destiny.
Red Lodge Real Estate
May 12, 2009 at 12:21 am
i am planning to create my real estate blog, maybe i can use these templates.
wordpress themes @ blogicthink.com
May 20, 2009 at 2:04 pm
This is a great news. Since real estate is a BIG industries blogger can optimize their making money online effort using this theme. So they can looks professional and trustee.
WordPress make that possible. Thanks for sharing this info.
Eliese Pivarnik
May 20, 2009 at 10:54 pm
The premium themes really make a difference. I have several websites, and I’ll use the premium templates for future ones.
Mike
July 11, 2009 at 3:42 am
I tried WordPress and some other scripts both free and paid for launching a real estate site and my choice is PG Real Estate Solution. It is not so costy, yet has everything I needed. What I like is that regularly I get updates with new and new improvements, support is also one of their strong points, i would recommend it to my friends.
Doug Francis
July 11, 2009 at 9:43 am
Mike,
When I first started my blog I consulted with some clients (Allyson and Chris) who are more internet savvy. Both have gotten totally into WordPress since I started in January ’09 and they now consult with me… role reversal? They have been very excited about what I have done with my blog going from a 2001 web site to a 2009 WP blog – click above.
Anyway, in a conversation last week I suggested to Allyson that she take a look at Joost de Valk’s blog since he is a WP guru (in my book). Here is his info and I think you will be even more excited https://yoast.com/wordpress/
Have fun!
Cory Lahey
December 17, 2009 at 11:49 am
Check out this theme… reitrainer.com/free-wordpress-themes/ . It isn’t the traditional real estate agent type site with listings. It is more of a squeeze page type thing, made to be a lead generator for real estate investors looking for home seller leads.