Montenegro Sotheby's International Realty: Surgical migration of a luxury real estate website from WordPress to Next.js
- Client
- Montenegro Sotheby's International Realty
- Year
- 2026
- Location
- Tivat, Montenegro
- Sector
- Luxury real estate
A surgical migration from WordPress to Next.js: every old address mapped one by one, with one aim, not to lose a single position in Google. Designed and built by Unlockd. Now live.
Montenegro Sotheby's International Realty sells villas, sea-view apartments and waterfront homes on the Montenegrin coast, from its office at Porto Montenegro, Tivat, to buyers from the UK, US, UAE and across Europe. Unlockd designed and built its new website and moved it from WordPress to a custom platform. The site is live.
Visit live site: sothebysrealty.me
The challenge
Before: An international luxury brand whose buyers decide from a phone screen, often abroad, long before they ever visit.
High-net-worth buyers don't browse specifications; they judge prestige, discretion and competence in the first seconds, usually on mobile and often from another country. Every slow image or generic layout costs credibility the Sotheby's name has spent decades building.
The new site has to carry a global brand's standards, present large high-resolution galleries without slowing down, and turn quiet interest into qualified enquiries from serious investors, not casual traffic.
What we built
The move from WordPress to Next.js was done surgically, address by address, with one aim: not to lose a single position the old site had earned in Google. Before anything was moved, every old URL was listed and given its own decision: keep it, redirect it or retire it. The layout and the texts were carried over, and sold properties stayed on their own addresses.
The experience is designed around a trust architecture: the brand, the office and a human advisor visible from the first screen, a property search built around how buyers actually filter, and a discreet, direct line to an advisor on every page.
Behind the site is a serious admin. From it the team manages the hero images, which listing is featured on the home page, and translated meta tags, without a developer. The owner adds and manages agents, every change is logged with who made it and when, and logins are protected with two-factor authentication.
Around it sits aspirational storytelling. A warm palette drawn from the Adriatic coast, elegant serif headlines (Playfair Display) paired with a clean sans-serif for reading, and listings presented as places to live, not lines in a database. Performance is part of the luxury: high-resolution galleries are lazy-loaded, so pages open fast even with dozens of photographs.
The site runs in English, German, Russian, Turkish, Arabic and Serbian, with Arabic laid out right to left. New on top of the old content: pages for towns and property types, buyer guides, and a map of the whole offer that shows places, never exact addresses.
Scope
- UX and information architecture
- Website design
- Web development
- Property search
- Custom admin
- Property database
- Agent management
- Change log
- Two-factor authentication
- Performance
- Lead capture
- WordPress migration
- Multilingual site
- Property map
- Buyer guides
Surgical WordPress to Next.js migration
Every old address mapped one by one before the move, with the aim of keeping every Google position the old site had earned.
Trust architecture
Brand, office, credentials and a human advisor visible before a buyer scrolls: the signals a high-net-worth client checks first.
Aspirational storytelling
Warm coastal tones, elegant serif typography and generous white space that let each property lead.
Curated discovery
Search and filters shaped around location, property type, price and bedrooms, so buyers reach the right home in a few taps.
Fast with high-resolution galleries
Lazy-loaded images and a performance budget set from day one, so large galleries never slow the first view, on any device.
Full control from the admin
Hero images, the featured listing on the home page and translated meta tags are all set by the team in a custom admin, without a developer.
Owner controls and audit log
The owner adds and manages agents, and every change is logged with who made it and when.
Two-factor login
Every login is protected with two-factor authentication, the security standard a global luxury brand expects.
A modern custom stack
Moving from WordPress to a custom Next.js and React build: uncompromising speed and a far smaller attack surface.
The result
The new website is live at sothebysrealty.me. The team publishes and edits listings from the admin, and changes reach the site without a developer.
No figures are published for this project.
Stack: Next.js · React · Custom admin · Property database · Two-factor authentication
Related services: Website design & development · Custom software & internal tools · WordPress to Next.js migration
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