How Much Does a Real Estate Website Cost? Template, SaaS or Custom Build

Real estate agencies ask me about price more directly than any other sector, and they're right to. The market is full of offers that look cheap until the second year: a monthly subscription here, a listing-feed fee there, a redesign because the template can't do multiple languages.

This post breaks down what a real estate website actually costs, what drives the number, and when each option, template, SaaS or custom build, is the sensible one.

Three ways to get a real estate website

1. A template on WordPress or a site builder

A real estate theme, a listings plugin, your logo. It's the cheapest way to launch and fine for a small agency with a handful of properties. The costs show up later: plugin licences, updates that break the listings plugin, slow pages full of photos, and a site that looks like every other agency using the same theme. I've written about the hidden cost of WordPress over five years; real estate sites, with their heavy galleries, feel it more than most.

2. A real estate SaaS

A monthly subscription to a platform built for agents: listing management, a website template, often a CRM. It's quick, maintained for you, and good value for an individual agent or a small office in one market. The limits are design (you share it with the platform's other customers), languages, how much control you have over SEO for each listing, and what happens to your site if you leave.

3. A custom website or platform

Designed for your brand, built around how you actually list and sell, connected to the property software you already use, and owned by you. It costs more up front and pays off when you outgrow the first two options. At Unlockd a custom real estate website with listing integration starts from €5,900, and a multi-site platform for several brands from €12,000.

What actually drives the price

Design matters, but it's rarely the biggest line. These are.

The listing integration

Where do listings come from? If your team enters them directly in the website's admin, the site is simpler. If they come from property software, a portal feed or an existing CRM, someone has to connect to that system, map its fields and handle edge cases: sold properties, price changes, photos in the wrong order. On SM nekretnine, the website pulls listings in from the agency's property software and pushes them out again, so nobody retypes them. That kind of sync is real engineering, and it's checked during scoping, before the price is fixed.

Languages

Agencies selling to international buyers need every listing, area page and form in several languages, each with its own URLs, translated meta tags and hreflang. The cost isn't only translation; it's building the content model so a listing exists once and appears correctly in every language. Automatically generated descriptions per language cut the ongoing cost dramatically.

Number of websites or brands

If you run a luxury brand and a local portal, or one site per market, you either maintain several separate websites or run them from one listing database. A multi-site platform costs more to build and much less to run, because a price change updates everywhere at once. I explain how a multi-site property platform works in a separate post.

Search and maps

Basic filters (price, type, bedrooms, location) are standard. Map search, drawn areas, saved searches and alerts add cost. Worth it for portals with thousands of listings; often unnecessary for a boutique agency with fifty.

Team features

Agents, roles, a change log and two-factor login matter as soon as more than a few people edit listings. Who changed this price, and when? On a template, you usually can't tell. In a proper admin, you can.

SEO per listing

Each listing needs its own crawlable page with unique text and correct meta tags, plus area and property-type pages that match how buyers search. Writing that by hand for hundreds of listings is where most agencies give up. Generating SEO copy automatically for every new listing, which SM nekretnine also runs, turns it into a default instead of a chore.

Running costs to budget for

• Hosting: modest for most agency sites; more for large portals with heavy traffic.
• Image storage and delivery: real estate sites serve a lot of photography. Proper resizing and modern formats keep both the bill and the page weight down.
• Feed or software fees: some property software charges for API or feed access.
• AI usage: if descriptions or translations are generated automatically, the API cost is small per listing and billed at cost.
• Changes: optional care plans at Unlockd start from €150 a month; your team edits listings and content itself.

Which option fits you

A template or SaaS fits if you're a single agent or small office, in one market, in one language, with a standard listing feed, and the website is a brochure rather than a lead source.

A custom build fits if any of these apply:

• you run more than one brand or website;
• you sell to buyers in several languages;
• you already use property software you want to keep;
• you want listings to rank in Google, not only on portals;
• several agents edit listings and you need control over who changed what;
• your brand is your main argument, and a shared template undermines it.

For agencies that want the platform without commissioning a fully custom build, the Unlockd Real Estate CMS offers one listing database for every website and language, agents and roles, a change log, 2FA and SEO copy for each listing, set up per agency and quoted on request.

Before you sign anything

Ask every supplier the same five questions:

1. Who owns the website, the domain and the listing data?
2. If we leave, what can we export, and do our URLs and SEO history come with us?
3. How do listings get in, and what happens when our property software changes?
4. How are listings translated, and does each language get its own URLs?
5. What will we pay every month, in total, in year two?

The answers tell you more about the real cost than the first invoice does. If you'd like a direct answer for your agency, send me your current site and the software you use, and you'll get a scope, a fixed price and a launch date.