By 2030, the market for real estate worldwide will be valued at $5.85 trillion. A market trends survey found that 50% of real estate agents and 88% of all sellers utilized multiple listing services to promote their homes online.
Real estate software development services that speed up the process are accessible to buyers and sellers, resulting in more home transactions, etc.
Let’s look at how you may design client real estate software for your company.
A Guide to Developing Customer Real Estate Software
To create a real estate market application, follow the procedures below for bespoke software development.
Select the Real Estate Software program type.
You must first choose the kind of real estate software you wish to create for consumers. There are typically four categories of real estate software:
Real Estate CRM Applications
Real estate organizations may effectively manage their customers’ information and connect with them thanks to a real estate CRM solution. Many routine actions, like sending emails and SMS messages, may be automated.
It helps manage contracts, business dealings between buyers and sellers, etc.
Real Estate ERP Applications
Managing various real estate business operations is aided by an ERP program or enterprise resource planning. Owners and managers of businesses may keep tabs on daily operations, identify project hazards, and assess company development in terms of sales, commissions, etc.
The ability to quickly access all the crucial information in one location helps in tracking the development of individual brokers, real estate agents, etc., as well as the real estate industry.
Real Estate Managing Program
By effectively managing procedures like accounting, rent from properties, buyer and renter agreements, etc., management software aids in increasing efficiency.
Such real estate software solutions reduce the time needed to do tasks manually.
Multiple listing services and virtual tour software for real estate
Brokers and real estate agents advertise homes for sale or rent to potential buyers using multiple listing service software. On the listing site, buyers may examine all the property information and even take a virtual tour using 3D movies.
Home buyers typically utilize these programs since they can quickly narrow down the residences they are interested in without personally visiting each one.
The contact details of a property owner or real estate agent facilitate effective communication between the parties involved.
Choose the features for your specialised real estate application.
Choose the features your real estate software will have after choosing the bespoke software you want to create. The following are some of the key components of a real estate application.
Location Lookup
A sophisticated location search tool to identify real estate directly on the map. Thanks to this, users may more quickly navigate the property’s location and the surrounding locations.
Virtual Property Tour
Adding 3D images and movies of the property feature. This will make it easier for potential purchasers to see the floor plan, including the rooms’ layout.
Real Estate Listing
A comprehensive list of homes that consumers may readily search. Each listing for a home will include all pertinent details, like the number of rooms, the house’s age, extra features, net area, etc.
Interest Rate Calculator
To provide different information, particularly to real estate agents and sellers, such as overall income, rent multipliers, return on equity, etc.
Chatbot
An artificial intelligence-based chatbot is available around the clock to help consumers with their questions. As a result, sellers and dealers will have a shared workload. Additionally, users will get immediate support on your platform.
Planning and requirement analysis for a client real estate software development project
Do market research at this point to see how your rivals are faring. Additionally, choose the business needs your real estate app will satisfy.
Your project team will be assisted in selecting development technologies, frameworks, and application architectural patterns that satisfy your project’s functional and non-functional requirements by a project definition document finished at this stage.
Build a Team
- Your team of developers consist of the following:
- A Business Analyst
- A UI/UX designer
- Backend and Frontend developers
- A Quality tester or Quality Assurance Engineer
- A Project manager.
Implement Infrastructure for Real Estate Software Development.
Now, you must provide your engineers and designers with the necessary resources to start working. Your app storage, servers, databases, networking infrastructure, and other development platforms and tools will all fall under this category.
Today, businesses often create and maintain software apps utilizing cloud-based infrastructure.
Cloud computing offers the necessary computational resources through cloud servers and several benefits, including access to the newest technology, simple resource scaling, improved resource management by experts, etc.
We suggest you design applications using cloud infrastructure. Your software developers won’t have to worry about doing backend resource installation, maintenance, and upgrade chores. As a result, they will be able to focus only on developing applications.
To learn how cloud computing service providers may assist you with your backend infrastructure needs, visit Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and IBM cloud computing.
Choosing a Software Development Methodology
Choose a software development methodology and associated frameworks to plan and manage your software development process before your designers and engineers begin to work.
Today, the agile technique is mostly used to create software applications. The Scrum methodology is highly popular with the construction of interaction systems, such as online or mobile apps. Scrum is helpful since user needs on such systems often change.
The whole development process is divided into manageable little development iterations or sprints in Scrum. Small, cross-functional development teams produce a deployable product after the sprint. In this respect, it is comparable to Agile. Still, Scrum gives the team greater autonomy so they may decide how to carry out the best and most effective development process possible.
The product is made available to users, and reviews are gathered. The user experience data is considered in the next iteration and aids in enhancing the program as a whole.
Create the software program.
Your UX/UI designers will begin creating the application layout after the backend infrastructure is set up, and sprint planning is complete. The user interface has to be engaging and follow UI standards.
Prototypes and mockups are tools that designers and frontend developers use to create the first layout of various application components. This enables users to quickly see their concepts and determine if they make sense regarding the location of the pieces, color scheme, brand theme, etc.
Numerous crucial processes are involved in designing a software application’s frontend user interface (UI). To get you started, consider the following basic advice:
Design Information Architecture
Learn as much as possible about your target audience’s wants and objectives. To learn more about users’ preferences, habits, and pain areas, do user research using surveys, interviews, or other methods. This information will influence your design choices.
The Information Architecture Should be Defined as:
Organize the application’s structure and content. Make a site map or a flowchart to see the information hierarchy. Identify the connections between various screens or pages and the user interface for the program.
Initial Concept Sketch:
Start with low-fidelity drawings or wireframes to swiftly iterate and explore numerous layout options. Consider where important components like interactive features, content sections, and navigation menus are placed. Think about your design’s overall aesthetic harmony and usefulness.
Make prototypes or mockups
Use design software like Sketch, Figma, Adobe XD, or InVision to make more accurate mockups or interactive prototypes. Be mindful of the font, colors, space, and alignment. Create unique perspectives or screens while adding visual branding components.
Responsive design must be used
Consider how responsive your design is to accommodate various devices and screen sizes. Use a mobile-first strategy or design for mobile devices first. Ensure your layouts and design components adjust and reposition seamlessly across various screen resolutions.
User Experience (UX) as a focal point
Consider the user while designing. Ensure the interface is simple, intuitive, and easy to traverse. Be mindful of usability concepts, including easy action discovery, consistent design patterns, and clear labeling. Reduce mental effort and strive towards effective user interactions.
Visual Hierarchy and Consistency should be used:
Provide a clear visual hierarchy to direct users’ attention and prioritize key information. Use contrast, color, size, and font to draw attention to important components. Keep the application’s design patterns, iconography, button designs, and overall aesthetics consistent.
Iterate and incorporate feedback:
Consult with users, stakeholders, or usability testing sessions for feedback. Develop your design further depending on user input. Based on user requirements, usability, and accessibility factors, continuously develop the UI.
Working with developers
Cooperate closely with the development team to make sure your concept is workable. Recognize the frontend frontend frameworks or technologies’ technical limitations and potential. Work together on animations, interactions, and design implementation.
Check & Verify:
To verify your design choices, do usability tests on actual users. Obtain user experience input and make the required changes. To ensure your design is compatible and responsive, test it on various browsers, gadgets, and operating systems.
Create a specialized real estate application.
Your developers may now begin developing the functionality of the application. You could start by creating a minimally viable product. An MVP is a simple software application with the essential functionality you wish to provide your audience.
A firm begins by launching an MVP with the most important features and then continually expanding it in response to the needs of the target user market.
If you want to learn more, see our article on creating a minimum viable product for real estate businesses.
For a certain kind of bespoke real estate software development, your software experts will use particular software development frameworks.
For instance, you may choose between cross-platform and native app development when creating a smartphone application. It would help if you chose the smartphone OS for which you wish to develop native real estate applications initially.
The creation of Android mobile apps requires knowledge of the Java and Kotlin programming languages and the Android Studio IDE as opposed to Apple, which uses the Swift programming language, the Apple XCode IDE, etc.
Web applications created using technologies like React Native and Xamarin and running within a native app container are known as hybrid apps. The hardware capabilities of such programs, such as security, memory, and processing, cannot be fully used even though they may be deployed to any mobile OS.
Your technological stack will change if you want to create a bespoke web application for your real estate firm. You may create backend applications using Node.js, Ruby on Rails, ASP.Net, etc., and frontend applications using Angular, React, and other technologies.
Depending on the application and its needs, databases like PostgreSQL, SQL Server, SQLite, etc. may be used.
Your real estate app will also get certain integrations from your developers.
Some connectors will be industry-specific in addition to the more fundamental ones like social networking, push alerts, etc. Several property listing services may be accessed, for instance, via Internet Data Exchange (IDX).
Your developers may leverage the REST architectural protocol to provide APIs for app features specific to your real estate software. They can create, test, and document them using technologies like Postman and Swagger.
You will also need some additional knowledge for securing and creatively constructing bespoke real estate software.
Your software engineers should be skilled at identifying online dangers and defending your app’s security. To provide a secure user experience, they will use strategies such as multi-factor authentication, encryption methods, etc.
This is critical since your application will employ user data from buyers, sellers, and real estate brokers.
You may create features for your app that are special and based on cutting-edge technologies with the aid of the most recent technology, such as machine learning, natural language processing, virtual reality, etc.
Test the Software
Your quality assurance engineers and developers will use different tools to test your application. For instance, Appium for hybrid apps, Selenium for web applications, Espresso for testing Android apps, XCTest for testing iOS apps, etc.
To ensure their app code complies with the established criteria, your software developers will also have code review sessions and use test procedures like unit testing, integration testing, etc.
Establish and Maintain
You may release the real estate application for the user market after you are certain it is operating as intended. Your software app developers will send tested software to production using procedures considered industry standards, such as continuous integration and delivery.
Considering Developing Bespoke Real Estate Software?
To create market-competitive and safe real estate applications, contact a custom software development company that has experience in the newest development tools, technologies, and processes.
