Estate: Your WordPress Real Estate Solution

Written by Mark Forrester on July 20, 2010 Product News.

More than just a theme!

Estate (formerly known as Realtor; R.I.P.) – the WordPress real estate theme solution is finally here!

The WooTeam (especially Jeff & Cobus) have spent months in perfecting Version 1 of Estate and we’re so excited to now hand this over to all the awesome WooFans to try it, experiment with it and obviously: build your next WP-powered real estate website using Estate.

One of the main reasons that Estate took a little longer, and required more love (in comparison to our other themes), is the fact that we’ve included quite a bit of niche functionality that we had to develop specifically for Estate. So it wasn’t just a case of mixing & matching code from our existing themes; nope, we had to develop Estate from scratch. The other reason for this development process relates to all the new custom post type & taxonomy goodies in WP 3.0 that we’ve utilized, because we wanted to release a real estate theme unlike any other WP theme that you may have encountered up until now.

Estate’s (special) landing page covers all of its features in detail, but we wanted to highlight a few of the most awesome features right here…

Custom Post Types & Taxonomies

We built Estate using the latest WP 3.0 functionality, which allows us to create a specific post type (a property listing) that can be published with specific taxonomies (for example: locations, property types & additional features to the property). This also means that property listings won’t be confused for blog posts / articles, as they exist within a whole different sphere of your WordPress installation.

Advanced Search

If you’ve been a WordPress user for a while, you’ll know that the default search functionality isn’t overly advanced. So we developed our own search functionality that allows the visitor to search for different properties based on whatever search criteria they desire.

Google Maps

By now you should now that we love Google Maps and no real estate theme can claim to be a proper real estate theme if it didn’t include some form of map integration. The beauty of Google Maps just makes this easy…

OH… And did we mention that we included an optional space which can be used for a Virtual Tour? 🙂 Any Flash embed code will work just fine in there!

Design Controls

Everybody loves Canvas, because it includes so many design controls which are great for easy customization of the theme. We have therefore included some of these controls in Version 1 of Estate to allow you to modify your site on the go, without hacking into the template’s code.

You’ll also see that there are a bunch of template pages (such as single property listing, archives / category listings, & search pages) that has two alternative layouts available to you. This is just further building on our aim in terms of making Estate super-customizable & easy to use.


There are probably quite a few other features that we have neglected to mention here, but there’s a few more on Estate’s landing page. You should also definitely have a play with Estate’s demo if you want to see some real awesomeness in the works.

As mentioned before: this is the first version of Estate and once we’ve seen it working in the wild (i.e. once you guys & girls start using it & hack it to shreds… hehe), we’ll start working on implementing a few more features that we have on our to-do list. So at this stage, grab your copy of Estate and fire away with any suggestions or feedback!

NOTE: Estate also introduces, and justifies a new price point on WooThemes: $200 for it’s themepackage. This package includes the PSD files for the theme, but does not include any bonus themes. Both Standard & Developer Club Subscribers do however also have access to Estate; so grab that from your account if you’re a subscriber.
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75 Responses

  1. Kevin
    July 20, 2010 at 4:33 pm #

    Version for Drupal please?

  2. Scott Webb
    July 20, 2010 at 4:34 pm #

    Brilliant! Literally it has been a while in production because I remember him showing it back when I was trying to help with beta testing.

    I can’t wait to see how custom posts types were done – I’m going on a spree and spamming real estate agents. okay maybe not spam but I’ve gotta ask some if they are happy with their site now!

    This this theme and many others are the exact reason WooThemes is awesome. Pushing yourselves to new limits and making use of the great things WordPress has to offer. Truly building upon the work that has gone into it.

    Congrats on this release!

    • Mark Forrester
      July 20, 2010 at 4:37 pm #

      Thanks for the kind words Scott. We believe this a powerful tool for developers/designers to approach real estate agencies with. There certainly is plenty of money to be made in this space!

  3. Michael Lovelock
    July 20, 2010 at 4:36 pm #

    I feel I should immediately go hassle a bunch of estate agents into a new web site if only so I get to try this out. Looking nice.

    • Adii Rockstar
      July 20, 2010 at 4:47 pm #

      Looks like you & Scott have the same idea… 🙂

      • Michael Lovelock
        July 20, 2010 at 4:55 pm #

        Yep, nice to have a tool to inspire… and not that I’m rushing you on from this one, but it makes me wonder what’s next for the WooPress 3.0 machine?

        • Adii Rockstar
          July 20, 2010 at 5:01 pm #

          There’s a bit of teasing info here… http://woo.com/2010/07/adding-3rd-party-value/#comment-36235

          • Chris
            July 20, 2010 at 6:27 pm #

            As said before this has to be one of the most exciting themes that you guys have coming out. Please make this your next release 🙂

            Using Custom Post Types to make a WP shop by Woothemes is the ultimate dream 😀

  4. Matthew
    July 20, 2010 at 4:41 pm #

    Wow, you really pushed the limits of WordPress with this one! WordPress is definitely way more than just a blog engine … now I need to find a Realtor who wants to make a new site 🙂

  5. PremiumThemeClub
    July 20, 2010 at 4:45 pm #

    The best real estate theme so far, great work !!!!! Congratulations to WooTeam.

  6. Dan Stevens
    July 20, 2010 at 5:10 pm #

    Hi,

    How well does this theme translate to the UK property market? I noticed some of the terminology and functionality has a distinct antipodean feel.

    We tend to have the 1st / default search option as postcode over here. Any scope for doing that?

    cheers

    Dan

    • Adii Rockstar
      July 20, 2010 at 7:40 pm #

      Is that the only change you would suggest to make it less antipodean? 🙂

      • Dan Stevens
        July 20, 2010 at 11:48 pm #

        Well I suppose my general point is that it doesn’t “feel” like a UK estate agent website from a usability perspective.

        Typically the search options would be like this:

        http://www.rightmove.co.uk/

        On your theme there is no prompt in terms of what to search for. Do I type a town, city, county, postcode?

        Cheers

        Dan

        • Adii Rockstar
          July 21, 2010 at 7:32 am #

          Mmmm… Looks like we just need to re-think the UI a bit in terms of including further information because any of the criteria’s that they have listed under their search box can also be used with Estate. It might not be completely as accurate in returning results (that is something which we can address in future versions), but the functionality is already there.

          We’ll take a look at this for V1.x.

  7. Alexandru Vornicescu
    July 20, 2010 at 5:22 pm #

    Very cool theme! Very innovative, and thanks for PSD files 😉

  8. Charlie Jewitt
    July 20, 2010 at 6:02 pm #

    Looks great! I’d love to see the icons/taxonomy made clickable, so all properties with 2 garages etc could be listed at the click of a button.

    A search by distance feature would be a nice addition.

    • Chris
      July 20, 2010 at 6:28 pm #

      A Search by distance would be good. Somewhere you could add a Zip or Postal Code. And if there is nothing in the Postal Code Area, you search 2mile distance.

    • Adii Rockstar
      July 20, 2010 at 7:40 pm #

      Thanks for the suggestions guys; they will be taken into consideration when we start working on V1.1 of Estate.

    • Alex
      July 21, 2010 at 4:32 am #

      Hey! Why you copied my avatar image? 😀

  9. Jay O'Hare
    July 20, 2010 at 7:37 pm #

    This looks like a great theme but if I understand correctly it will only display/search properties entered manually by a single company. Has there been any thought on MLS integration? Real estate buyers want to see everything in a market not just one company’s listings. This method would be unmanageable. Maybe I’m missing something?

    • Adii Rockstar
      July 20, 2010 at 7:39 pm #

      The method isn’t unmanageable we think… Why can’t a real estate agency take control of their own listings? Estate is specifically aimed at democratizing this control and allowing any agency (irrespective of their size) to have a proper website that sells their listed properties.

      That said, MLS & IDX integration is something we will be exploring going forward. 🙂

      • Jay O'Hare
        July 20, 2010 at 7:50 pm #

        You are right – agents are taking control of their own listings however buyers want to see everything in a given price range. I’m in a very small market and we have several hundred listings at any one time. I certainly could see a broker leveraging this to highlight their listings but MLS IDX integration would be key. Believe me I’d love to deploy this today.

        There’s some great thinking & UI that’s so refreshing to see in an industry plagued with horrible design.

        • Adii Rockstar
          July 20, 2010 at 9:16 pm #

          So are you suggesting a solution whereby a small agency would display both their own listings + a MLS / IDX integration listed within certain sections on the site?

          • Jay O'Hare
            July 20, 2010 at 9:22 pm #

            Yes – that’s how almost all real estate companies are displaying listings. Essentially the local board manages all the listings through thier MLS service then all brokerages under that board get a feed of all listings which is often spun through a third party for formatting & functionality since the feed is usually raw data.
            Take a look at these guys:
            wordpressidxplugin.com/
            Third party integration with them would be hot!

          • Adii Rockstar
            July 20, 2010 at 9:45 pm #

            Hehe, we’re already talking to the developers there. 🙂 Expect some news in this regard soon!

          • Jason H.
            July 28, 2010 at 3:50 am #

            In the span of six comments, you guys go from “great idea” to “yeah, we’re already talking with people, expect something soon.”

            How awesome is that? I love WooThemes.

          • Adii
            July 28, 2010 at 8:10 am #

            That’s just how we roll! 🙂

  10. Ryan Oelke
    July 20, 2010 at 7:53 pm #

    You guys are so BOSS it’s ridiculous. PRO. This will be a huge offering for my business in Boulder, Colorado. Thanks for bringin’ the thunder, like always.

    • Adii Rockstar
      July 20, 2010 at 9:14 pm #

      Our pleasure!

  11. jeffikus
    July 20, 2010 at 10:46 pm #

    I’m loving the feedback! 🙂 looking forward to building some of the suggestions into the next version!

  12. Jim Wu
    July 21, 2010 at 12:09 am #

    The functionality is awesome. The looks are meh. The price is way off the mark.

    • Magnus
      July 21, 2010 at 12:46 am #

      Do you think 125USD for a subscription is a lot to pay for over 70 themes including this one? It is aimed at professionals that can generate business by using this theme for clients, so isn’t it a fair price to pay for something that will potentially make the customer more money?

    • Adii Rockstar
      July 21, 2010 at 7:30 am #

      See my comment (responding to Hans) below about the design of Estate.

      Also – the pricing point for Estate is geared towards earning a ROI. If a Real Estate agency can’t earn a proper ROI after spending $200 on a great theme, then I doubt that they have the business savvy to run an agency. Estate is specifically priced more than our other themes, because it includes niche functionality aimed at a specific business industry who will be profiting from the use of the theme directly.

  13. Hans
    July 21, 2010 at 1:03 am #

    Hi guys. I’ve awaited the real estate theme, but I’m thinking you released too fast. Design is (in my humble opinion) really not sharp enough, no styles, ‘more properties in area’ is too simple, Google maps with alternatives would be good, list view vs. map view etc. Perhaps some ‘Inspire’ design coolness and some ‘City Guide’ functionality will make things come together. Sorry guys, but I’m a bit disappointed. I’ll look for updates before I purchase

    • Adii Rockstar
      July 21, 2010 at 7:28 am #

      The design has been kept specifically minimal, because this allows more agencies to customize it more easily for their needs. As mentioned – Canvas has been our best-selling theme this year and it is due to its minimal design & attached design controls.

      Design also being subjective, we hear you with regards to your preferences in this regard and we can understand that this may not be overly *flashy*. But that’s not what we were aiming for here.

      V1.x will definitely start including more features and yes, City Guide’s more advanced Google Maps integration will eventually make it into Estate as well. At this stage though it is about getting Estate into the wild and building on top of the feedback we get from users.

  14. Spaze
    July 21, 2010 at 7:41 am #

    Hi,
    Its really good theme to attracts the people and amazing tools and use of google map which makes your blog more attractive and effective.

  15. Didier Wolforg
    July 21, 2010 at 9:27 am #

    Hello,
    I’ve translated this wonderful & useful theme in french today. The files are in the Basecamp 🙂

    Best Regards and Keep the Pressure 🙂

  16. pedro67
    July 21, 2010 at 11:33 am #

    why can´t I download the theme?
    I´ve got a developer Club account since a long time. Infos please

    • Adii Rockstar
      July 21, 2010 at 12:06 pm #

      Drop us a mail and we can look into the issue for you. 🙂

  17. James
    July 21, 2010 at 1:42 pm #

    I love it and see potential to use it as affiliate product site, bit pricey for that purpose but may join the developer club to get my hands on it.

  18. Greg
    July 21, 2010 at 8:59 pm #

    I’m lucky in that my wife is a realtor, and she’s one of my “clients” so I can pretty much do with her site what I want. : ) I look forward to playing with Estate as an option for redoing her site based on this theme, and hope that this theme, once it’s complimented with some IDX/MLS integration, will serve as a platform I can use to sell/build a bunch of real estate sites here in the area.

    FYI, just looking at the demo site I noticed a few nitpicky oddities that I assume I’ll be able to fix by replacing images and editing php. One example is the term “On Show” that I’ve never heard. It might be some local/regional term, but isn’t used here in California. Another example is describing the number of cars that can fit in the garage as “2 garages.” In common language and even real estate parlance that’s referred to as a “2-car garage.”

    • Adii Rockstar
      July 22, 2010 at 8:54 am #

      IDX integration is coming soon(ish).

      And we’ll look into a way of making terms (which we deemed to be generic, but obviously isn’t) more customizable.

    • Aaron Johnson
      August 24, 2010 at 8:11 pm #

      Yep, without MLS integration (and by that I mean a direct connection to the local board’s MLS feed, not scraped through a 3rd party that is a day late and a dollar short) this will probably only appeal to broker’s as opposed to the Realtor foot soldiers. As a Realtor, I can always have a dedicated page to my own listings, even if it’s a manual-entry, that’s not too unwieldy. Let’s face it; even if you are super-lister with 15 listings at any given time, that’s not an insurmountable issue. That being said, we know our clients are looking at the best house on the MARKET, not just the best house I have listed. I’m excited to have a theme that allows me to be a community resource FIRST, that pulls in prospects because of my content, and then keeps them there through other tools; specifically an integrated MLS search engine. If that search engine vendor integrates (via subscription by the prospect) those prospects into their own, or some of the top third-party CRM providers BOOM! you’ve got a home run. I’ve been waiting 4 years for this type of a solution, and no one has yet put together a strategic alliance between a WordPress theme developer, an IDX/MLS vendor and a CRM vendor.

      I’m just sayin’…

      • Aaron Johnson
        August 24, 2010 at 8:13 pm #

        And while I’m shooting for the moon and the stars, how ’bout Facebook Page integration?

        And, scene…

  19. Murillo Ferrari
    July 22, 2010 at 4:47 am #

    Guys,

    This is for sure the best Real State WP Theme. I can´t wait for next versions with all the upcoming features.

    1 little note:

    you should include some padding to “.entry img, img.thumbnail” (style.css line 423).

    I tried “padding: 0px 5px;” and it worked really well in “MORE PROPERTIES IN THIS AREA” pictures.

    • Adii Rockstar
      July 22, 2010 at 8:44 am #

      Thanks for the kind words. 🙂

  20. Levi
    July 22, 2010 at 11:22 pm #

    Adii,

    Will the price be the same with the IDX integration?

  21. Chris Barber
    July 23, 2010 at 2:14 am #

    Honestly, I’m blown away. Love this theme, great work guys!

    Hope you keep really niche themes like this coming as they’re great.

    Do you have anything aimed at heavy industry / construction / transport companies in the works?

    • Adii Rockstar
      July 24, 2010 at 6:52 pm #

      How would a theme for heavy industry / construction / transport companies differ from our business themes such as Inspire, Optimize & Delegate?

  22. Erlend Sogge Heggen
    July 23, 2010 at 2:54 am #

    Does this mean you’re creating a new custom post type through the theme, not a plugin? I’m not out to start the whole debate again but, does this CPT rely on the theme to work at all?

    • Adii Rockstar
      July 24, 2010 at 6:51 pm #

      Yes, it’s created within the theme and is theme-specific as well.

      Consider that “custom” post type implies that it has limitations with regards to how it can be used and means that its usage needs to be supported in a theme.

  23. wpclubs
    July 23, 2010 at 11:29 am #

    A job very well done. Good luck with this theme!

    🙂

  24. Alex Leiphart
    July 23, 2010 at 6:44 pm #

    So if I signed up for the Club Membership, I’d get $75 off this theme 🙂

    • Magnus
      July 23, 2010 at 6:51 pm #

      Correct 🙂 You would have to stay subscribed to receive updates to the theme though, and the $125 doesn’t include PSD, but you do get all our themes.

    • Matt Stigall
      July 24, 2010 at 10:19 am #

      It’s called a hook into subscription business.

      The smart thing to do for a consumer is to get the discount…

      …and then they have your subscriptions as long as the cancellation remains low.

      It’s also called genius;)

      • Adii Rockstar
        July 24, 2010 at 6:47 pm #

        Hehe, thanks for calling us geniuses; we aren’t really, but we do love our job. (And the subscriptions are pretty cool too…)

        • shawn gaffney
          July 28, 2010 at 1:17 am #

          You are not kidding.. The $15/month I spend here is far and above the best investment I have made in a very long time.

          The functionality add ons you give us each month are worth thousands to have custom-built and even then, I’m not sure it would be as solid as your code is.

          Just try to get a quote to have a custom post-type, taxonomy search function built as a custom job and you’ll instantly know what I mean…. Estate isn’t just a theme, it’s a whole new engine.

          keep it up guys, you rock!

          • Adii
            July 28, 2010 at 8:10 am #

            Well said! 😛

  25. Matt Stigall
    July 24, 2010 at 10:11 am #

    How is the customability with using it for non real estate usage.

    Let’s say we want to have a directory of bands or musicians?

    • Matt Stigall
      July 24, 2010 at 2:18 pm #

      Ok, so I have played with it a bit. How can I change the custom post type from ‘properties’ to be whichever post type I would like it to be.

      Also, is there support for more than one?

      • Adii Rockstar
        July 24, 2010 at 6:49 pm #

        This is extremely customizable and Jeff is planning on writing a tutorial on this in the very near future. In the meantime, I suggest you request some help via the forum and we can get a bit technical there. 😉

        • Matt Stigall
          July 26, 2010 at 6:32 am #

          Awesome.

          The custom posts/taxonomies is just asking for a wooplugin that enables us to display the custom post types exactly how we want with a customized search feature.

          Like have canvas like customization for all of the custom post types we would do.

          That. Would. Be. Awesome.

          • Adii Rockstar
            July 26, 2010 at 7:34 am #

            That too is already in the works… 🙂

        • shawn gaffney
          July 28, 2010 at 1:12 am #

          After spending the last few days reading through all the code for estate, I would second a request for ‘advanced’ documentation on how everything works.

          Modifying estate to use a different post types and taxonomies, while maintaining the ability to use the new search feature is VERY involved. Then there is the need to modify the framework to match as well.

          There are a huge amount of interdependencies going on here, and trying to map them all out is quite a task. I actually thought I was pretty good at this until I dug into estate… wow

          • Adii
            July 28, 2010 at 8:11 am #

            This is all on our roadmap, but first priority at this stage is to get everyone using the theme and get some feedback on how we can improve it in the next couple of versions.

  26. Matt
    August 2, 2010 at 10:24 pm #

    It would be really nice to see this sort of thing for vacation rentals. The important thing in this market is the ability to maintain and search available dates.

  27. Martin Gicheru
    August 13, 2010 at 5:49 pm #

    Hallo there, there is one thing i noted with this theme, for starters there is so much i like about it, however the contact seller, not everyone gas their outlook configured, how do you cater for the user who wants to use a contact form instead?

  28. dewald de bruyn
    August 14, 2010 at 8:44 am #

    Agrre with matt’s comments regarding dates and availabliity as it is definately key search for rentals

  29. Mark77210
    August 24, 2010 at 12:51 pm #

    1.Would you recommend this theme as a store locator?
    2.What exactly are the eligible search parameters (City, ZIP, etc.)?
    3.When do you think you’ll have the distance radius search capability in place?

    Thanks!

    • Adii Rockstar
      August 24, 2010 at 2:13 pm #

      1. Nope, not without some customization.

      2. Any of the data parameters that are currently on the post / property listings.

      3. It’s scheduled for probably V1.2 later this year.

  30. rj
    September 11, 2010 at 5:55 am #

    any possibility of building in a directory module where brokers / owners can list their homes for a fee (and pay for the listing) much like another theme I saw recently?

  31. modern toronto homes
    September 14, 2010 at 4:06 am #

    i’ve been working with wordpress for quite sometime now, and think it’s an ideal solution for real estate. i’m interested in reviewing this theme in particular.

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