New Agent? Here’s a Guide to Building Your First Real Estate Website

As a newly minted real estate agent, you’re raring to take the industry by storm. There’s one little obstacle, though: it’s a saturated market for REALTORS® these days. As of December 2023, the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) counted over 1.5 million agents in its ranks. And as a neophyte agent, you’re up against not just veterans but also heavyweights in the field.

If you want to stand out and give your real estate career a strong start, your online presence — including your real estate agent website — has to be top-notch.

But what exactly is the best real estate website for new agents? Should you go big or go home? Start simple then scale up? It’s an important question that needs careful consideration. Luckily, we’ve prepared this guide to help you make the right choice!

How to build the best REALTOR® sites for new agents

Don’t forget that your website is a marketing channel. This means that you have to be clear on these three things first so you can communicate them effectively through your site.

• What’s your focus?
  All real estate agent websites have three main goals: build up your brand, attract leads, and showcase listings. You have to decide how to prioritize these different but complementary objectives so your vendor knows where to focus the design. For example, you may want to focus on branding first because most of your leads will likely come from in-person contact at this stage in your career. However, you do want a nice website if people want to do due diligence on you.

• Who’s your target audience?
  It may be too early in your career to pick a real estate niche, but try to be clear about who you want as clients. Are they first-time homebuyers? Dual-income, no-kids (DINK) couples? Growing families? Again, your target audience definitely factors into your website design (e.g. including dedicated portals for first-time buyers).

• What’s your unique value proposition (UVP)?
  As mentioned above, there’s no shortage of real estate agents in the country. What makes you different from everyone else — especially as someone new to the industry? Do you bring a new perspective as a member of Gen Z? If you sell a home and the family realizes they don’t love it, will you help them find a new one?

Major considerations when building a real estate website for new agents

Once you’re done with the pre-work, it’s time to look at the major considerations for website design.

• Budget
  It may be a few months (if not several) before you can land your first deal and earn a commission. With money being a little tight, you have to be practical about how much you can spend on a real estate agent website. Luckily, there are tiers to choose from:

  • Basic: Usually theme-based websites, but can be customized to suit your brand or aesthetic preferences.

  • Mid-Tier: Still primarily theme-based, but you can request fully bespoke design for key portions of the website (such as the homepage).

  • Premium: You get extensive customization and bespoke design — but pay a much higher cost.

  We’ve discussed the pros and cons of template-based versus bespoke websites, so check it out to learn more!

• Ownership
  Just because you pay for a website doesn’t mean you own it. If you choose a software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider, you may save money but you’re effectively “renting” space on someone else’s platform. If the service provider shuts down its service, you’ll not only lose your website but also all the SEO progress you’ve made. For this reason, we recommend choosing a vendor that offers full ownership so you have control of your website no matter where your career takes you.

• Content management
  Your website is a living document that needs regular updating, including uploading your latest listings and publishing new blogs. That’s why you want to choose a real estate web design package that has a simple-to-use content management system (CMS) such as WordPress.

• Scalability
  You may be at the very start of your real estate career, but if you have big ambitions you need a website to match. Choose a vendor that can scale up your website as your business grows. This may include new community pages if you expand your area of operation or even additional agents if you decide to start your own team.

• Maintenance
  Not everyone is a tech whiz. And as a new agent, you’ll be very busy trying to make that first sale. Should anything break on your website, you likely won’t have the skills or time to fix it. When shortlisting companies that make real estate agent websites, ask if they can also bundle site maintenance into their service.

• Regulatory compliance
  Ensure that your website complies with relevant real estate advertising or disclosure laws in your area. You should also inquire about whether a design team is familiar with ADA accessibility guidelines for real estate websites.

Features of the best websites for real estate agents

Of course, no real estate agent website worth its salt would be without these essential features.

WEBSITE FEATURE CHECKLIST

• Mobile-responsive design
  This makes sure that your website looks good and functions well no matter the device it’s being viewed on.

• Intuitive navigation
  As a rule of thumb, everything a site visitor needs should be no more than three clicks away.

• Agent bio
  Spotlight your personal brand and your unique approach to real estate with an agent bio section on your homepage.

• Listings
  Ideally, your site should have a user-friendly CMS that lets you update this section easily.

• IDX Integration
  This powers everything from property searches, to automated comparative market analyses (CMAs), to email marketing, so ask your developer to add it to your site.

• Lead generation tools
  Whether that’s lead capture forms, chatbots, or appointment-booking tools, your website should have features designed to deliver warm leads.

• Blog section
  Search engines like Google reward websites that constantly put out valuable and insightful content, giving them priority in search results.

• Testimonials
  As your client base grows and you get more rave reviews, your website ought to have a place to showcase real-life customer feedback.

• Search optimization
  As a new agent, search visibility is crucial to reaching potential clients. Your website must be search-optimized from the get-go to maximize the traffic it receives.

Ready to make the right moves?

Who you tap for your website is one of the most crucial decisions you’ll make as an agent. If it’s top-rated real estate websites you’re after, work with none other than Agent Image. With our flexible and scalable web design packages, you can get your career off to a strong start!

For a FREE consultation, call 1.800.979.5799
or send a message here.