Real estate is a fast-paced business — where you must work hard to speed up decision-making for buyers and sellers to close deals.

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The sales cycle is lengthy and involves large transactions. Hence, before even speaking with your sales team, customers will:

• Research detailed property information (photos, documents, location) before visits,
• Scrutinize your online presence to gauge credibility,
• Expect personalized first interactions for queries,

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Digitizing your operations via a web portal for the real estate marketplace solves the above problems. 

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However, real estate app development is expensive and requires technical expertise.

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There is a high chance your property will sell off with that long sales cycle, but your app will still be in development mode!

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No-code app builders help launch a real estate app in a couple of hours, with zero dollars, and negligible technical knowledge.

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Softr’s no-code real estate app builder makes this promise a reality — by the end of this guide, you will have a publish-ready real estate app portal, all without a single line of code.

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Why build a real estate app?

A real estate app centralizes back-end operations and streamlines customer relationship management. As a result, it reduces the property sales cycle timelines. This, in turn, brings visibility into the performance of your property listings so that you can focus on closing faster with more profits.

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You can either digitize complete real estate management operations or focus on specific areas like:

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• Inventory management to track property available for sale and new additions.
• Vendor management for real estate if you run a real estate marketplace.
• Contract management to digitize real estate contract lifecycle.
• Real estate client portal to handle customer queries, sales, and support.
• Project management if you’re into the real estate construction business.
• Digital payments for faster payment cycles and secure large transactions.
• Rental management to manage recurring contracts, digitize payments, and reduce customer churn.

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With Softr, you can build all of the above real estate app types using its no-code app builder at a fraction of the cost of traditional code.

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Learn more about no-code vs traditional development for building a real estate app.

5 benefits of building a real estate app:

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As the younger generation enters the workforce to purchase/rent real estate, they seek and trust digital-first brands. A real estate app digitizes your operations to capture this market, and this leads to key operational benefits as follows:

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• Streamline property listings by showing interactive photos, property information, contract terms, prices, brand credentials, and more.
• Increase responsiveness to interact with clients instantly for sales, support, or feedback.
• Improve user experience with personalized features like using recommendation systems for property searches, scheduling recurring payments for rentals, tracking contract progress, etc. 
• Save time for customers and your operations team by automating appointment booking, property price alerts, email marketing, lead follow-ups, etc.

Generate insights on customer profiles, market trends, sales channels, target geographies, etc.

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Checklist: 9 key features an effective real estate app must have

When choosing a real estate app builder vendor, check if it can help you design below non-negotiable for a real estate property management app features:

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1. Property listing: To create listing pages with provisions to add property images, descriptions, and prices. Separate pages help with SEO and allow customers to research options before connecting with the sales team.
2. Admin dashboard helps track, manage, and optimize KPIs for property listings to meet customer expectations.
3. User profiles for potential customers to save favorite properties, set price alerts, check notifications, manage payments, message sales or support, etc. 
4. Advanced search to filter property listings based on location, price range, property type, etc.
5. Live chats or contact forms allow customers to instantly connect with the sales team for queries.
6. An appointment booking system automatically schedules meetings, notifies participants, and shares meeting summaries to clarify preliminary customer queries.
7. Maps integration allows customers to view and research property locations, check neighborhoods, and pay a visit on their own.
8. A resource section to publish blogs, property-buying guides, answer FAQs, etc.
9. Payment gateways for advance deposits, schedule rent payments, allow one-time payments, etc.

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How to build a real estate app using Softr — a step-by-step guide

Softr’s no-code development platform provides a simple drag-and-drop interface to build custom real estate apps. You can mix and match 100+ building blocks to design the app. If required, you can use custom code for further customization.

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Before getting started, here’s what you need:

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• Real estate app design
• Business KPIs and required app features to achieve them.
• (Optional) Professional plan of Softr — purchase here

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Follow this step-by-step guide to get started:

Step 1: Define your app’s purpose and audience

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Jumping directly into Softr’s interface builder will only increase your development time due to rework.

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First, speak with potential and existing customers to learn about:

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• What problem they are looking to solve,
• List existing solutions/competitors used by them to solve the problem,
• Issues they face from these existing solutions/competitors,

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Then, brainstorm real estate app features that would make customers choose your brand over existing solutions/competitors used.

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Prepare a customer-problem research table as follows to finalize the required real estate app features. This helps align with customer needs and design an app that truly solves their problems in navigating the real estate market.

Now, create design mock-ups for your real estate app based on the above features. 

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Then, showcase them to your potential and existing customers to iterate design based on feedback to meet desired business goals.

Step 2: Decide if you want to build a native app or progressive web app

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Native apps are platform-specific apps that follow design and development guidelines specific to that platform. They are written in languages native to the platform (e.g., Swift for iOS; and Java for Android).

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While Progressive Web Apps (PWA) deliver the app experience via the browser itself using a single codebase. Learn more about PWA apps — we have shared 10+ PWA examples in 2024

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For a real estate app, PWA lowers the development costs, distributes platform risk, and speeds up go-to-market to gauge customer response. 

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Softr allows you to launch PWA without investing in additional development resources.

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Here’s a detailed comparison to help you make an informed choice:

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Step 3: Choose a no-code platform that lets you build your app for free

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If you’re new to digital experiences, you must prioritize building a minimum viable product. This means, launching a real estate app with features that are sufficient enough to help customers start engaging with your brand.

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Then, based on customer feedback, you can iterate by adding/removing features and automating manual tasks for operational efficiency.

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It is not smart to go all in and attract massive development costs or invest in expensive SaaS apps at the early stages of real estate app development.

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Instead, choose an affordable, ideally, free real estate app builder to develop a functional product. This provides enough room to experiment with design and iterate to meet customer expectations without investing heavy resources.

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Softr is not only an affordable no-code app builder but also provides a generous free plan. You can build a real estate app that’s fully functional and free for up to 10 users and publish it over a custom domain.

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Showcase this app to your customer groups, collect feedback, and iterate on the design. When you have a minimum viable product, scale it with Softr’s affordable paid plans starting at only $49/month.

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Get a sneak peek into what it’s like to build a real estate property management portal with Softr:

We have listed more options to explore the free real estate app builder market:

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• For building apps without coding: 5 Best Free No-Code App Builders in 2024
• For real estate agents: Top 7 Software Real Estate Agents Use
• For customer management: 7 Best Customer Communication Management Software
• For vendor management: Best 8 Vendor Portal Software
• For customer support: 6 Best Customer Support Platform Portals
• For inventory management: 7 Best Free Inventory Management Software

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With so many options, here’s a simple checklist to choose a suitable real estate app builder vendor:

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• Flexible free plan capable of building and launching a functional real estate app,
• Strong and large user communities and learning resources indicate mature software adoption and support ecosystem,
• Proactive customer support to help build an effective real estate app,
• Flexibility to use code to implement complex customization,
• Scalable pricing plans that grow with your real estate business without scope creep, vendor lock-in, or pricing shocks,

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Softr nurtures a vibrant no-code community of experts, founders, and enthusiasts who help each other build and launch apps. If you ever get stuck, you can always connect with Softr’s customer support team or hire a Softr expert to build your real estate app.

Step 4: Create a free account on your selected no-code app builder

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From this step, it will take a couple of hours to launch the first version of your real estate app using Softr.

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Softr helps you build a front-end on top of 14+ databases(with 2-way real-time sync) like Google Sheets, Airtable, HubSpot, monday.com, Notion, BigQuery, SQL databases (MySQL, SQLServer, MariaDB, PostgreSQL), etc.

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This means — if you were using these databases for your real estate operations, Softr makes them usable and scalable by building an intuitive user interface using its drag-and-drop builder — all without code.

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Softr’s simplicity makes it easy for any non-technical real estate professional across real estate agents, startups, landlords, SMBs, and enterprises to launch scalable business apps. You can build business internal tools (e.g., dashboards, employee directories) and external-facing apps (e.g., client portals, customer apps) to manage end-to-end real estate business processes.

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First, sign up for a free account with Softr by clicking on ‘Try for free’ here: Sign up for free

Step 5: Choose a template that best fits the app you want to build 

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Softr has 90+ ready-to-use templates, which include general and operation-specific use case templates. You can simply copy the required template and edit it to start building your real estate app:

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• To manage real estate documentation: Document Manage System Template
• To set up a property rental website: Property Rental Website Template
• To manage customer relationships: Commercial Real Estate CRM Template
• To manage real estate or rental contracts: Contract Management Template
• To list properties: Property Listing Template
• To manage visitors at the property site: Visitor Management System Template
• To create business quotations: Business Quote Generator Template
• To manage multiple rental properties: Property Management Template

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For our guide, we will use a comprehensive real estate client portal template that covers the majority of the above-mentioned specialized templates’ features:

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• Manage property listings
• Create customer profiles with onboarding
• Booking management system
• Manage real estate documents
• Manage real estate projects
• Digitize invoices and payments
• Create dashboards and generate reports
• Build a help and resource section
• Review operational insights using a dashboard
• Sign up/login for different user groups

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Click on ‘Start with template’ to copy it — Copy Real Estate Client Portal Template

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Then, it will take you to the ‘Client Portal Template’ page — click on the ‘Use Template’ button:

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You can also access the template from your Softr dashboard.

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Click on the ‘All Templates’ or ‘Create New’ button to access the template library:

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Search for ‘client portal’ and click on the search result to get started:

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Step 6: Connect Softr with your data source 

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First, let’s finalize where you will store your real estate app’s existing and new data.

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Softr currently supports 14+ data sources, namely, Google Sheets, Airtable, HubSpot, SmartSuite, BigQuery, PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server, MariaDB, Xano, Monday.com, Supabase, Notion, REST API, and others.

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You must choose a suitable data source as per your real estate company’s needs. 

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For example, if you are already using Google Sheets so far, Softr’s template will act as a front-end interface on top of your existing worksheets. You can make changes on the real estate app and it will automatically sync data with your Google Sheets.

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You can also choose a new data source if you’re starting from scratch or moving away from existing data sources.

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Click on ‘Add another data source’ to choose a new source of data for your real estate app. It will showcase available data sources — click on your choice to proceed by clicking ‘Continue’.

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In our example, we will use ‘Google Sheets’ as our data source.

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Step 7: Connect Softr with your database 

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Now, follow the next steps by Softr to connect with your chosen database.

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In our example, Softr connected with my Google account to access data and permissions.

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Once the data connection is complete, click on ‘Go to application’ to start customizing the client portal template with your chosen data source as the app’s database.

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Step 8: Review your data source connection

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Head to ‘Settings’ on the left panel, and choose ‘Data Sources’. 

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You can review your databases by clicking on ‘Manage’ as shown here:

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Further, do check the Google Sheet created in your Google Drive. You will see sample data that you can replace — but after the app design is complete (Step 13). Right now, focus on aligning the fields with your app design. You can also make changes to the sheet’s naming conventions as followed by your brand.

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Step 9: Set up user groups

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Head to the ‘User’ option on the left panel — and click on ‘User Groups’.

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User groups allow you to customize your real estate app as per user profiles of your choice. You can restrict access to data and customize the interface shown for each of these user groups depending on your company policy, or app design.

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Under Softr’s Professional plan, it has already created 5 user groups —  Logged-in user, Logged-out user, Administrator, Client or Customer, and Employee.

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To edit these user groups, click on the ‘Edit’ icon.

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Explore edit options on the pop-up to rename and add conditional logic as required.

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The free plan allows only 2 user groups, while if you want to add more custom groups, you can upgrade to a higher-paid plan.

Step 10: Edit the template’s global theme

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Softr takes care of building an app that adheres to your company’s branding philosophy. 

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Head to the left panel and click on ‘Theme’.

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Start editing the font style, sizes, colors, page widths, etc based on your brand guidelines.

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You can also change the favicons — go to ‘Settings’ on the left panel, click ‘General Settings’ and upload your brand’s favicon.

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Step 11: Customize your app 

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Now, let’s edit this template to suit your business requirements defined in Step 1.

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8.1 Review the real estate client portal’s pages and customize blocks

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Softr’s real estate client portal template has already created pages that can execute various real estate app functionalities discussed in Step 5.

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You can add new pages by clicking the yellow ‘+’ icon.

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You can edit each of these pages existing building blocks by clicking on the desired section. 

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For example, let’s edit the real estate app dashboard.

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Click on the ‘My Projects’ section, and it will open the block panel on the right side. It allows you to:

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• Review data sources: If you made any changes to your Google Sheet database in Step 8.1, check if it reflects on the block.

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• Change content: You can change the title, add subtitles, align positions, add or edit item fields, and style each item as per your real estate app design.

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• Edit actions: This helps you add buttons and design interactive elements for various fields. For example, you can define what happens when one clicks on a project — as per the template, it takes you to the project details page. You can change this as per your brand’s real estate app design.

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• Change style: Edit the block’s styling by changing background colors, adjust padding, add/remove borders, etc.

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• Define block’s visibility: Softr allows complete visibility control based on device size, user groups, and conditional logic.

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8.2 Add more building blocks to increase the real estate app’s capabilities

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Softr provides multiple dynamic, container, and static building blocks across lists, forms, tables, maps, AI, kanban boards, charts, and many more. You can add to the existing template to meet your real estate app’s decided functionalities in Step 1.

Click on the black ‘Add Block’ ‘+’ icon on top right, just below the ‘publish’ button:

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You can explore multiple static and dynamic blocks available on the right panel. Click on them, and it will open the same block editing options in Step 8.1:

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8.3 Set up search and filtering tools for easy navigation

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Softr’s real estate client portal uses multiple list blocks for properties, clients, invoices, tasks, and more.

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It is helpful to create a search and filtering option to help quickly search data.

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Head to the ‘Clients’ page — click on the client list block and over the right panel, open the ‘Content’ section. Here, you will see the ‘Search bar’ is toggled on, and ‘Filter’ is already implemented as a part of the template.

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You can edit this by adding more search parameters and filter types as required.

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Similarly, you can add such filters and search bars across the pages of this template.

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We have provided a tutorial on — Setting conditional filters in your Softr app which will help you design complex flows.

8.4: Integrate maps to display property locations

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For a real estate app, it is useful to have maps to search for available properties — and Softr allows you to do that!

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Click ‘Add Block’ and choose ‘Maps’ from the dynamic blocks section:

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In Softr’s default Google Sheet with sample data, make sure you customize it to add a property list with address information (city, country, etc).

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Now, go to the ‘Features’ section and select the search parameter as required (in our example, its ‘address’).

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Go to the left panel and click ‘Settings’. Then, click ‘Integrations’. Scroll down to find ‘Google Maps’ and enter your Google Maps key.

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Then, head to the ‘Features’ section on the right panel of the maps’ block and scroll down to ‘Map Options’ to further customize it (title, size, zoom ratio, etc).

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It’s not hard at all — here’s a detailed hands-on tutorial you can follow to easily add a map to your Softr app.

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8.4: Enable communication features (e.g., contact forms, chat options)

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Allow customers to directly contact your teams via forms and chat interface — Softr allows both!

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From the building blocks, you can click on the ‘Forms’ dropdown, and it will display 4 form options to choose from. For a real estate app, sales forms with labels will work. Add more fields and edit how the captured data gets saved in your Google Sheets database.

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You can also create a conditional form for more complex form collection flows. For example, you can create a custom onboarding flow for customers to understand their property requirements better.

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Here’s a tutorial on how to build conditional forms for onboarding flows — Softr conditional form for onboarding tutorial 

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You can take a step further to add the ‘Inbox’ block to allow users to chat with your team. Head to the building blocks and under the ‘Dynamic’ section, choose ‘Inbox’. 

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Note that adding Inbox functionality requires Softr’s ‘Professional’ plan.

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Here’s a detailed tutorial on — How to add and customize Softr’s Inbox block

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8.5: Add scheduling and payment gateways, if needed

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Softr’s real estate client portal template already includes an invoice and contract management system. You can further add a payment gateway to allow customers to make payments directly from their profile.

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Head to the ‘My Profile’ Page — and click ‘Add Block’.

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Go to the ‘Dynamic’ section and click on ‘Payment’ dropdown. You will see 3 payment options to choose from:

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Softr allows collecting both recurring and one-time payments! Here’s a tutorial to learn how to use Softr’s payment block.

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You can also allow customers to schedule a meeting with your team — this is already included in the template.

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Head to the ‘Schedule a meeting’ page — it uses custom code to add Calendly by default. You can change it to add the meeting app your company uses.

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Step 12: Create action buttons

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At this stage, you have aligned your real estate app’s requirements from Step 1 by syncing the Google Sheet database with the template, adding/editing building blocks for desired functionality, and editing the app’s styling.

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Now — ensure that all the buttons across the real estate app’s pages and building blocks perform desired ‘actions’. That’s important — your customers will be sharing data and your app must effectively sync and capture the same.

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For this, Softr provides a feature called ‘Actions’. It allows you to update the data captured by building blocks like lists, kanban, calendars, tables, etc to the database chosen.

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For example, the below screenshot shows the ‘My Tasks’ page from the template. When you click on the Kanban block, go to ‘Actions’. The screenshot shows the Edit record - ‘Deadline’ workflow. You can edit the input type, map the data to your Google Sheets database, or change label names. 

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Similarly, for the rest of the real estate app pages, check if the data is mapped properly with the connected database — Softr does warn you about such issues before publishing.

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Step 13: Replace sample data with your custom data

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Once your real estate app is ready, you can ‘Preview’ for a quick look.

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Now, you can start replacing the sample template data and populate it with your operations data. First, start with your operations’ sample data in the Google Sheets to test the app.

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Review the real estate app’s data mapping and integrations, again, to make sure it's working.

Step 14: Preview and test your free app

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Your app is almost ready — but first, it's time to test it!

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Preview the app and perform the below tests with a small user group to make sure it is ready to deploy:

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• App responsiveness testing across different browsers and device sizes. You can use Softr’s responsiveness tester for web, tablet, and mobile size (top-middle section) built with the interface:

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• Review user permissions — perform pilots with different user groups to check for visibility and access to data.
• User tests to understand your designed app’s usability and fix bugs.

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Based on the user feedback, iterate your app’s design and functionality to meet your business goals and customer needs.

Step 15: Publish and share your free app

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You can add the custom domain — head to ‘Settings’ on the left panel and click on ‘Custom Domain’.

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Follow the instructions from this tutorial: Add a custom domain to your Softr app.

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You’re ready to roll out your real estate app!

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Head to the ‘Publish’ button on the top right corner of Softr’s app builder interface.

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Now, create an onboarding strategy to bring existing customers to the app. The simplest way is to run an email campaign with clear onboarding instructions and an active support channel ready to handhold them.

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Also, create an app distribution strategy to ensure after publishing the app, you can market it to build a steady stream of new potential customers.

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We have shared web app building and launch best practices here — The ultimate web app development guide, from idea to launch.

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We do feature apps built using Softr — do submit your app on our showcase for a marketing boost!

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How to choose the right no-code platform?

Today, no-code development platforms are a viable alternative to traditional code, where at least 60% of US-based organizations use low/no-code solutions for their business.

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Making the right no-code platform choice will guarantee you never spend resources on traditional code. Check the below key aspects of an effective no-code platform:

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• Usable for non-technical users to build a real estate app. It should also be easy for end-users to adopt the software.
• Scalable features and pricing plans to support complex workflows and user growth without pricing shocks or vendor lock-in.
• Integration options with CRMs, payment tools, and calendars for end-to-end digitization.
• Templates specific to real estate industry use cases with the flexibility to use custom code.

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It’s important to choose proactive brands that not only provide seamless no-code app builders but continue to improve capabilities and support with updates. Here are the top five no-code platforms that fit the bill:

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• Softr — best to build custom business apps across internal tools, marketplaces, portals, communities, and more.
• Bubble — best to build SaaS applications that require complex and custom workflows.
• Flutterflow — best to build mobile apps using Flutter.
• Zapier Interfaces — best to build simple business apps using forms, landing pages, automation, and integration with third-party apps.
• Webflow — best to build apps focused on content management systems.

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Softr reduces the real estate industry’s digital transformation into a couple of hours' job — take the first step today!

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Real estate is a complex industry due to its large ticket size — and building customer trust is a full-time job here.

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Softr helps you build a truly cross-platform business app at a fraction of the traditional development cost. Within a few hours, your real estate business is ready to service customers present across the web, mobile, and tablets.

Our real estate client portal provides a seamless way to make no-code your competitive advantage — Start with the free template.

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FAQ about building a real estate app

1. How much does it cost to build a real estate app?

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With traditional code, the costs for building a real estate app can shoot to more than $83,000 - $100,000. No-code platforms like Softr bring down these massive costs to zero with its free plan that allows building a functional real estate app with a custom domain. You can scale the free real estate app to add more users and functionalities starting with a mere USD 49/month (paid annually).

2. How long does it take to build an app from scratch?

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Timelines to build an app vary based on development mode — ranging from at least 6 months with traditional code to a few hours or days with no-code development platforms. The presence of exhaustive templates, intuitive interface builder, and integrations help speed up app launch timelines using no-code platforms.

3. How to build a real estate database?

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Building a property listing directory is important for real estate businesses to organize their projects for better searchability and accessibility.

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One may opt for no-code databases like Google Sheets, Airtable, SmartSuite, etc. However, the lack of a usable interface hinders the purpose of streamlining listing data. Hence, choose no-code front-end builders like Softr which connects with 14 databases to build functional and usable web and mobile PWAs on top of them.

4. What is the best free app builder? 

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Softr is the best free app builder if you’re looking to build custom business apps like internal tools, marketplaces, portals, and more. You need not code at all — simply drag and drop 100+ building blocks like lists, tables, forms, etc to design custom interfaces on top of databases like Google Sheets, Airtable, Notion, SmartSuite, and more. With its free app builder plan, you can launch a web app with up to 10 users with a custom domain.

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