Top Real Estate App Development Companies

Real estate app development is – possibly more than any other app niche – directly influenced by the prices and values of properties on the housing market. Also – the incredible growth of the volume of real estate business is staggering and influencing both the app offering and user behavior.

It is estimated that one-fifth to one-fourth of people are using real estate app development companies’ products to look, buy or sell properties. This cutting out the middleman – real estate agents or brokers – prompted the owners of real estate businesses to develop their own real estate mobile apps. Simply put – the real estate app is a direct bridge and an immediate connection between a buyer and a seller.

It is this ease of conducting business that defines these several main virtues of well-executed and elaborate real estate apps:

• Lightning-quick search for any property no matter the location, price and configuration: Owing to numerous search filters, users seeking to buy or rent a house or any other property can adjust their querries based on house size, price, location etc and furthermore apps will show these users results related to their original search, boosting and alleviating their user experience.
• Fast realization of selling and buying: Because real estate mobile applications contain all the necessary info, data, images and videos in one place, making a well-informed decision without endless back and forth between a buyer and a seller is made possible.
• Getting in direct contact with your clients: You as a real estate business owner can make your life so much easier by having a single channel where all your owners, clients and builders are stored. Because interaction in real estate is non-stop, communicating with as little delay as possible is essential.
• Advertise your business free of third parties and boost your revenue: Your clients and your customers can stay engaged on a single channel that is your app. Your app users can capitalize on exclusive offers and deals only available for them. Since your business app is also your channel to advertise your own offers, getting the right clients AND expanding this base over time is an almost certain thing.

Extrapolating from there, it’s quite easy to derive the benefits of employing a real estate app development company to create an application for your own business:

• You get to be the agent of real clients coming from different social climates
• You’re in direct contact with buyers and sellers
• This lifts you up from your competitors
• Maintaining a healthy business approach leads to customer trust and increase in your brand value
• Management of properties

What To Look For In A Real Estate App Development Company?

Smartphone and tablet applications are perfect media for real estate vertical! It’s slick, fast and immediate – just the qualities a fast-moving world of buying and renting houses needs.

When looking for the right company, make sure they think in terms of making the go-between process that involves realtors, buyers and sellers easier.

Here are some of the most vital points you want to bear in mind.

• Location: Since developing a real estate app can be costly, it might be a good idea to look for a developer outside of your country’s borders. Plenty of these companies come from countries that charge much less per hour, so this might be something to think about. But have in mind that having an offshore developer also makes communication a bit harder.
• Budget: Real estate apps are best developed with a full wallet, so to speak. Of course, you can make it on a low budget and still create a quality product if you find the right partner, but this particular niche should not suffer from small investments. If there’s any vertical where you need the app to be as best as possible, it’s this one.
• Capabilities: Lastly – and most importantly – a quality real estate app needs to be lightweight and fast, even when it works with a massive database of houses and other information. It has to have an edge over all other competitors with its functionalities, features and user experience.

How Do Best Real Estate App Development Companies Create Their Apps?

A high-end and successful real estate mobile app should possess certain staple features around which more customization can be added by the real estate app development company.

• Property search, filter and sorting
• Adding to favorites
• Social sharing
• Add property
• 3D AR/VR overview of the property
• Chatbot for 24/7 service (the surest way for your app to stand out and be unique)

The aforementioned features should go hand-in-hand with more broad functionalities, like:

• Buyer/Seller functionalities, such as log in credentials, verification of the profile, searching for the property by filtering and searching for them according to desired parameters, toggling between various views of the list of properties and properties themselves, getting details by contacting the realtor etc.
• Admin functionalities, such as managing users, seller and brokers and their accounts, management of properties and revenue, conversion of currencies, providing of discount etc.
• Other functionalities, like push notifications, loan and interest calculators, easy posting to social media sites and so on

We’ll talk about the investment in real estate app in a minute, but while we’re on the subject of building an app properly from scratch, here are some more musings to convince you why it’s imperative to have one of these for your business. Produced professionally by any of the companies on our list, of course.

For one, the vertical of real estate is all about doing the job on the go, and sometimes it’s minutes if not seconds, that are decisive and that can make or break a deal. Furthermore, it was way back in 2015 that almost 50% of all real estate, housing and related searches happened on mobile devices – fast forward four years and that number, although unaccounted for precisely, is way higher.

The Cost Of Real Estate App Development And Ways To Monetize

As is the case with virtually all other app development companies, when deciding with your budget, you need to consider the app developer’s hourly rate and the general location, whether they’re an onshore or offshore company.

Of course, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Other factors to be taken into account are:

• The choice of platform (Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android, etc.)
• The level of detail of app design and the level of complexity of its functionalities
• The app’s size of property database 
• Tools and programs used for building it
• Testing and QA
• Project management

With all that said, it is no wonder why real estate app development costs anywhere within a very wide range between $5,000 and $50,000.

But with all the talk about costs, one should not forget that the real estate app should return the investment in a short period of time as possible and start making money.

Here are some of the ways in which you, as the brand behind the product, can earn money from the app developed by one of capable companies:

• Advertisements – by placing relevant ads in your real estate mobile app, you can pull in ad revenue from banks, furniture shops, interior decorators, insurances etc.
• Fee charging to premium members – it is common practice to offer a free trial for a base user with limited access. If they wish full, permanent access to the entire database, the users can be asked to pay a symbolic fee.
• Fee charging to sellers

10 Questions To Ask Real Estate App Development Companies

We’ve established that having a real estate app that covers all required bases helps all parties involved with it, from realtors, over buyers to sellers. Creating a product with your name that puts a very big matter in everyone’s lives to a happy conclusion will result in amazing conversion rates and extended market reach.

When recruiting/hiring a real estate app development company, there are certain important questions that you should ask in the process. The answers to these will give a clearer picture of the firm’s true state of ambition and capabilities.

1. Do you have an extensive portfolio of real estate apps that you have built?
2. Are there any testimonies from some of your previous clients? 
3. Is your team flexible and likely to apply an agile approach when developing this app?
4. What development and technology services do you use when developing an app?
5. How experienced are the team members who will be working on our real estate app?
6. What is your philosophy on user experience and design interface?
7. What policy do you suggest when submitting the app to app stores?
8. What happens after the launch, will you still be in charge of maintaining my app?
9. Are you familiar with this particular niche and its customers and clients?
10. How close will we cooperate and are we allowed to provide our suggestions every step of the way?

No matter how big the scope of your real estate business is – doing it without the mobile app just won’t cut it in an age when our daily lives are dependent on smartphone applications. The sheer nature of real estate vertical is such that its activities are best done via an app developed from scratch with your brand in mind, from one of the best real estate app development companies.

The advantages of this approach to doing real estate business are numerous and all are explained in the above article. We have also detailed the traits that constitute a quality application, its functions and the way real estate app development companies form their prices.

With all said and done, it is now up to you to take that next step. Choose between hundreds of top companies from our directory of firms and be on your way towards expanding your business and revenue. 

Ready To Find A Real Estate App Development Company To Partner With? Scroll Up To Find The Best Real Estate App Companies, Both Onshore and Offshore, In 2020.