Real Estate App Development: Features, Tech Stack & Cost

As a real estate company owner, it may seem difficult to devote many hours to producing leads and managing properties. This is especially true if you’re not using technology to streamline your real estate activities.

Like many other fields, the technology industry is expanding at an incredible rate, and the residential real estate market is no different.

In a time when the need for technology has grown exponentially, you’re still following the traditional method of listing your properties in magazines and newspapers.

For that, you will need an online presence through the creation of a website or mobile app. These online platforms will be the face of your real estate company.

However, you should consider whether your prospective customers have gone to the web or not. The study shows that 74% of prospective buyers begin their online search for homes on tablets and smartphones.

If you want to increase your real estate business to the next stage, investing in a mobile real estate application will be an exciting option for your company.

We’ll discuss the creation process and explain why you should consider investing.

Why is Real Estate App Development a Famous Trend?

The real estate industry is growing quicker than imagined. It is impossible to make mistakes with it. It is beneficial to meet all the requirements of your clients. Otherwise, you could be out of the race. If that happens, the real estate app will be a must-have weapon for your rivals.

The most important reasons to choose real estate app development solutions:

• With a faster sales process, personalized software for real estate can be used, which includes digital signatures, virtual tours, transfers, and advanced search options for accommodations.
• A round-the-clock messaging option within the app facilitates short discussions and reduces waiting time.
• Customers are delighted to save and list their top properties, receive details about the neighbourhood, get quick access to a mortgage-related calculator, look through 3D homes, and more.
• Home buyers benefit from speedy document exchange, the filling in of details regarding the property, and automated answers generated by chatbots.

Types of Real Estate Apps

The real estate industry’s ecosystem combines everyone from sellers to renters, landlords, brokers, and buyers. Therefore, an app developer needs to look around and find how the real estate app can solve different problems related to these parts of the ecosystem.

Based on the application service, they are classified into the following categories.

Rental Home/ Apartment Search Apps

It is the most popular real estate search application that lets users browse property listings by specific criteria, such as location, city, rent, etc.

Example: Zillow and Nomad.

Real Estate Agent Apps

These apps allow real estate brokers and agents to offer their services to potential buyers. Most apps offer a 3-D tour of the property and help with property documentation and other processes involved in purchasing and selling the home.

Example: Calendly and Quickbooks

Real Estate Investment Apps

The apps are in huge demand from investors, and they’ve made the market for real estate more accessible than it has ever been.

Example: Arrived Homes, CityVest

Features of Real-Estate Mobile App for Customers

Features are paramount in the creation of real estate apps. If your app lacks features, users will leave in one minute. If you’re unsure what features you need to include in your customer’s app, here are some options to consider.

Complete Property Listings: When developing a mobile application for real estate, be sure to include specific property details, including the location, square footage, the number of rooms, price, and much more, to aid renters and buyers in making educated decisions.

Gallery of High-Quality Photos and Videos: When showcasing properties or other related information photographs and videos, high-resolution images and video tours are essential to provide visitors with an unobstructed picture of the property’s design and layout before a visit in person.

Virtual Tours: These allow visitors to explore a virtual tour of their home from their mobile devices, offering 360-degree views of interiors and, sometimes, even the exteriors, improving the viewing experience.

Interactive Map Views: Interactive maps are a different feature that should be included in apps that provide an image representation of the location of properties on a map. This allows users to view the exact location, nearby areas, and details regarding local facilities.

Favourites, Saved Searches, and Bookmarked Properties: This feature allows customers to store their preferred properties and search results so they can be returned to them in the future. It is helpful for quick comparisons and checking of listings they are interested in.

Review and Ratings from Users: This site offers feedback and reviews from former tenants or buyers about homes and neighborhoods, as well as real estate agents, to create trust among users and assist them in making the right choice.

Mortgage Calculator: These calculators assist users in estimating the potential monthly mortgage payments based on the cost of the house as well as the down payment, interest rate and other financial variables that can aid in budgeting. This is an additional feature you can use to make your user’s lives.

Push Notifications: When it comes to applications for mobile devices, the function of push notifications is helpful as it allows users to receive quick updates and alerts directly on their mobiles regarding updates to listings and price changes or other information by their preferences or saved searches.

In-App Messaging or Chat: Also, integrate the option of messaging in-app, which facilitates communications between potential buyers/renters and sellers/landlords/agents directly in the app, improving the negotiation process and interaction.

Advanced Search Filters: With the advanced search filters available in the real estate mobile app, customers can effortlessly refine their search results according to different criteria, including location and price, bedroom count, property type, and many more.

Key Features of Real-Estate Mobile App for Listers

Here are a few of the critical features that listers can benefit from in the Mobile apps for real estate:

Chat in real-time: Real-time chat with buyers allows direct interaction with interested parties through the app, allowing quicker responses and more effective interaction.

Easy Listing Management: The easy listing management system ought to provide a user-friendly interface that allows landlords and sellers to publish or update their listings for properties and property listings, making the process simple and efficient.

Tools for Lead Management: Be sure to include a comprehensive lead management system. It assists in tracking and managing leads that could be renters or buyers, coordinating responses and communication efficiently, and boosting the conversion rate.

Notifications of Listing Activity: Informs listing owners about any activity related to listings, such as new enquiries, feedback, or scheduled appointments, keeping them up-to-date in real-time.

Analytics Dashboard: Analytics dashboards are essential. They provide insight into how listings perform by analyzing metrics like views, clicks, and inquiries, assisting listing owners in making educated choices about ways to improve the quality and appearance of their listings.

Integration with Social Media: It allows listers to post their listings through social media platforms straight from within the application, improving visibility and enticing potential renters or buyers.

Benefits of Full Stack in Real-Estate App Development

The real estate market is transforming due to mobile app development, which provides users with an opportunity to market, explore, purchase, and sell property. Additionally, creating such custom real estate solutions requires a distinct strategy that involves full-stack development. Here are a few advantages of using a full-stack approach when it comes to creating real estate solutions.

Seamless Integration

What if you’re searching for your dream home, but the app is stuck because of a glitch, slowing your progress? The app’s smooth operation is possible only with complete-stack experience. If you choose to hire full-stack designers to develop real estate apps, they have a complete understanding of the entire system, ensuring that the design is consistent. Functions, data, and functionality flow across all platforms.

Rapid Development Cycle

We all know the value of time, especially when you’re looking for solutions to help your real estate business remain ahead of the competition. Making on-demand real estate app development using full-stack developers who can work across all layers removes communication disconnects and handoffs between the front and backend teams, resulting in quicker development time. Developers can create robust real estate applications quickly.

Budget-Friendly Approach

We all know that having several teams of developers on both ends, the front and back end, can cost more since you will have to pay different groups for the same task. If you hire a full-stack web developer who provides a cost-effective solution, you pay a specific team for the identical. Reduce the requirement for extra staff and streamline the management process for projects.

Enhanced Working Efficiency

When you employ an experienced developer for your project, it will automatically increase the overall efficiency of your real estate business. It will make it simple to use and facilitate efficient property search filters, filtration, and virtual tours of properties. It will ensure a seamless and easy-to-use experience for users. This is one of the primary reasons why you should consider full-stack development to handle real property app development.

Security and Data Protection

Users who download real estate websites or apps must enter their personal information to buy or sell properties. This is why adopting strong security measures is essential. Hire full-stack developers who have experience in backend and frontend security measures and can create apps that are immune to cyber-attacks and security threats while ensuring total data security for users.

How to Build a Real Estate App: Step-by-Step Process

We are now at the development of the real estate app process. In the first place, all mobile application processes of development are similar:

• Study the market
• Create the product
• Launched in a variety of stores
• Keep repeating it.

However, the development of real estate apps has specific characteristics that distinguish them from other apps.

Planning and Strategy Development

The process of creating a real estate app is based on a thorough understanding of the project’s fundamentals. To plan and execute an effective strategy, it is essential to complete an exhaustive analysis of the market you want to target, competitors, market, and any other pertinent factors. This is among the most essential steps you need to follow to ensure the success of your business!

It is essential to be clear regarding the type of app for real estate you’re developing.

• Are you developing a platform for renting, selling, or buying?
• Are you producing anything that is within the guidelines for managing customer relationships?
• Are you working on your investment platforms?
• Are you working on an app that can allow you to calculate the value of your property on the market and the rental income for your property?

If you’re sure of your needs, you can start the real estate application development process. For expert advice and development assistance, you can work with a reputable real estate app development company. They will understand your requirements and assist you in setting the right plan for your application’s development.

Choosing the Right Features

The next step in creating an entire real estate app is integrating the proper features. It is important to know what your clients want and what your ultimate objective is, and then choose the features you want to include.

If your application caters to more than one kind of person, you will need to include features that consider the preferences of the different types of users.

Conduct market research and find out what your customers like and what your rivals are offering, and include the features you need to be able to offer. Consider adding advanced features to help you stand out on the market. But, at the same time, do not overcomplicate the features; instead, try to simplify them.

Pick up the Right Tech Stack

It’s time to choose the platform and stack for your real estate mobile app development plan, whether iOS, Android, or both. This choice is made by identifying the tasks that need to be accomplished to build a technology stack that will yield the desired outcomes.

To make the best decision, you should partner with the most reputable real estate mobile app development firm. They will know the details of your app and assist you in selecting the most appropriate technology stack.

Designing Stage

The app’s function is crucial; however, its design will help users decide whether to delete or keep the application. Apps that prioritize simplicity and user-friendliness perform well in a competitive real estate market.

Be mindful of the user when creating a specific design to get the most effective and customized outcomes. Not only will a well-targeted design attract customers, but it will also improve the level of engagement and retention.

The overall user experience on your mobile real estate app must be smooth, simple to use, and easily accessible. The navigation must be easy. Therefore, you must avoid using awkward menus and concealing complicated navigation. Also, make sure you make sure to use your company colours when designing your site.

Development Stage

Once the design has been finalized, the development team begins to build an effective backend system to handle the security and data construction front so that the app appears and functions according to the design. This is a time to focus on developing the app’s capabilities and ensuring that every component works well in conjunction with each other, creating an excellent foundation for the following testing and deployment steps.

Utilizing the appropriate technology stack and keeping customers in mind, you can develop solutions specifically for your users. To achieve the highest quality results, engage skilled developers and use the best mobile app development solutions.

Testing & Deployment

After creating the app, the next step is to utilize QA testing services for thorough testing and deployment. Before deploying your real estate application to your customers, you must test it to find and fix any bugs or issues.

After the testing and debugging, you can make the app available via the Play Store and the App Store for people to purchase. You must optimize the app for search engines to boost ranking and downloads.

To make an application a lasting success, it is more than just creating it. Offering regular assistance and support services is also essential to ensure that your app is current and up to date.

Tech Stack for Real Estate Application Development

Here’s a rundown of the key tech stack components that our tech team utilizes to create real apps for real estate:

Sign-in/sign-up

You could utilize Facebook SDK, LinkedIn SDK, and Google Sign-In to allow users to sign in and share their posts on social media.

Listings and Databases

• Be sure to follow your Internet Data Exchange (IDX) policy. IDX is a set of guidelines, technology standards, and standards that real estate professionals adhere to to monitor the process by which data flows between an MLS database and their mobile or website.
• Then, incorporate real estate APIs, such as the RESO Web API, SimplyRETS API, ATTOM Property API, or Mashvisor API, to obtain adaptable data from MLS websites.

Advanced Filtered Search

To provide your users with an array of filters, you’re going to require:

• CoreLocation allows users to track their location
• CoreData and Realm to get the list of properties that have been saved
• Elasticsearch allows you to customize, smooth and fast search that is that can be based on a variety of factors

Mapping

This is why you should utilize third-party APIs:

• GeoNames is a no-cost database with more than 11 million location names.
• MapBox SDK and Google Maps API for creating custom layers and maps
• Google Places API to add details about the neighbourhood from Google Maps
• Google Maps SDK for Android heatmap utility as well as iOS developer library for showing map overlays that incorporate heat maps
• Attom Data Solutions, Spatial Neighborhood and Data.gov APIs that allow the local populations, demographics of the population, as well as other open-source information

3D Virtual Tours

To create 3D home tours in your application, you could use a program like EyeSpy360.

Backend

• You must ensure that your app can upload videos and images. Tools such as AWS Lambda can help you host the backend logic of your real estate application development work.
• Additionally, you require a place to keep information on property users, their information, and any updates. You could integrate mobile app databases such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, or Redis to do this.

Costs of Developing a Real Estate App

The cost of creating a mobile application for real estate is contingent upon several variables. One of the most important factors is the degree of complexity of the app you plan to develop. However, creating an app for real estate can cost between $20,000 and $50,000. It can go up between $75,000 and $100,000 if you add advanced features.

It is, therefore, crucial to understand your app’s scope and have realistic expectations of your developers. Many developers can assist you with this process. However, knowing the process and comparing the expenses is the most effective method of approaching the process. Keep your app simple and rich in features.

Conclusion

This is the complete guide for creating a stunning mobile application for your real estate company. It’s the ultimate guide covering all the features and procedures of the various types of real estate apps and the costs of creating a real estate mobile app.

We hope that you’ve found this blog beneficial in developing an easy-to-use, feature-rich real estate mobile application. Remember to keep your app updated, taking into consideration your customers’ needs and market trends. Suppose you’re in search of an industry-leading real estate app development company that can comprehend the needs of your business and offer the most efficient solutions. In that case, AddWeb is the ideal partner. Our team of highly skilled developers and designers has extensive knowledge of the industry and can help you find the most effective solutions.