Posted by kenuck on November 8, 2007 at 7:49am
Just created a Real Estate Listing module for Drupal 5.x - I need people to do some testing on it and maybe suggest improvements. If you're a real estate agent; I'm willing to help you install drupal and install rListing.
demo site : http://rlisting.netriftsolutions.com
You'll need to contact me for an account. Please contact me at :
http://www.netriftsolutions.com/?q=contact
cheers
k~
Comments
How does it operate?
I am an agent in Missouri and would like to use drupal to build a webiste. I have an Immobel site that is provided free by my local board and I have a "smartbox" set up that cost a small fee but both of these are pretty much identical and are just hosted on someone else's server and I provide the link in my site or point at that site.
I started using drupal to create a community "news" site and realized in the process that drupal would make an excellent real estate tool. I am a commercial agent and my original idea was to create a book called listings and then create page for each listing and sub pages with info about those listings (especially my unique listings like mobile home parks or "package" deals that are otherwise hard to advertise). I was then going to provide the search mls button that just went to my search page and allows people to search the entire MLS. The only thing about this I don't like is I can't make my pages look the same.
In two main ways
Hi Scott,
It works in two main way.
One – in your case as an Agent website
- whereby only you will be submitting the listings.
- thus any member that joins your site will be consider as a “Normal User”
- they'll be able to view and search the listings.
Two – as an Agency website.
- members can be classified into groups ie. Agents.
- The admin of the site would then have to give the agent group permission to submit listings.
- Each listing will be link to member that posted it.
In either case the admin will have the rights to configure the listing modules like add/removing the property feature lists. Setting the posting limits of the agents and so on.
Photos can be attached to each listing as are open houses.
Users can email listings.
There’s a favorite list that members can use and then either print or email.
There’s a search block and featured listing block.
Only the admin can set featured listings.
Let me know if you’d like to do a bit of testing and I’ll create an account for you.
The module itself it’s ready for download as I’m still working on the installation manual.
Cheers
K~
http://www.netrift.com
Potential issues
The problem I see with that is people expect to search all listings, not just yours. This may not be like this everywhere but in my area it is. This would not have any residential use because most houses are in the MLS which can be searched on most realtor's static sites via several options offered by the local board. There is a free option which is the best way to go and offers searching in multiple languages. If you want a raw data feed it's about $1,000 and you get a feed from FexMLS with data only. If you could work that into drupal so listings updated daily that would be the way to go. You could have a frontpage that changed every 15 minutes, talk about SEO.
I think this type of module you describe would work for commercial real estate. Most commercial real estate is not listed on MLS and companies promote their own listing. But why does it need to be that complicated? I was thinking of setting something up with a book and entering in listings that way. The biggest thing there is figuring out how to handle the images.
Suggestions
I tried the demo site and found it very usable. As it happens I am currently working on a similar site and I welcome very much your module. I made a somewhat similar functionality using CCK and Views.
Some suggestions for improvement:
- The "Building Type" would be nice if it were to include vacant lots - This could be accomplished even by renaming it to "Real Estate" and added a type of "Vacant Lot" - or even by writing a special version of rListing for land real estate types
- User Profiles: Realtors should have a user profile, that will display their area (much like the Country/State), a small profile and a telephone number they can be reached. This is for giving incentives to realtors to enlist on the site. (This could be set-up even using the Profile module in core)
- Case specific searches: search blocks only for renting a house or buying a vacant lot (if the module is configurable enough (ie Views-like selection of Listing Type (One of..., All o,f etc)), this could be done by the user as well)
And some questions:
- Other countries, besides US, do not have MLS and LID - is the module configurable so as to allow what search fields are used/displayed?
- The same (for other countries) applies to all text fields: Are these (eg Buliding type, Bedrooms, Property features etc) fixed (in the module) or configurable (eg as taxonomy vocabularies and terms)? If they are configurable, it would be very easy for anyone to configure the module for its own terms, in its own language.
All in all, I would say a very good job and a module that was lacking from Drupal. Congratulations!
Contributions
The useability is not the concern for this module. My concern is that individuals can already search anything in the MLS by reaching in a grab bag and picking pretty much any Realtor's website. I can see how this type of site would be helpful in non mls communities which are usually just rural areas. Or extend on that idea and use the module as a cost effective MLS in small communities. Actually as I type this a local rural area that recently dropped their MLS just came to mind. In the small community the cost of the system didn't make sense because there's about 4 or 5 real estate companies and they can just as easily email updated listing sheets to each other. This type of site would make a great option for them and if you could offer a free option to them and supplement it with ads that could be a win win hmmm......
Thanks for all the input
Thanks for all the input guys.
In reply to StevenK, the building type can be modify/add/remove from form the admin section which is not access to testers ... yet.
In reply to Scott- This module was never meant to replace MLS listings. Nor was I planning to use the module myself. To use rListing as n MLS site would require further development and an inject of funding.
I was in the market to buy a place of my own and started looking at the personal website of many agents. I must say ... I found the majority of the sites I came across very difficult to navigate and unsure if the site was ever updated … and so on. I understand realtors are extremely busy and I understand building a professional website requires a lot of time, putting the two together will resulting in something I wish not to describe.
This is why I took on the rListing project. It’s meant to be a fast plug-in to get a basic listing site up and running. I don’t’ expect the module to cater to all areas just so long as it covers the basic and is easily customizable (which is why I chose Drupal).
The idea is for agents or agencies to get a listing site up and running in a short time and then hire someone to build a module to hook into their local MLS listing. Trying to build all in-one MLS importer would be suicide on my part. But once the agent gets the rListing module up and running it’s just a matter of hiring a Drupal developer like myself to build a MLS importer.
One must remember, each MLS feed is different and for most of the time will require a personalize importer for it. And in most cases, tapping into a feed will require a fee which I’m not willing to pay for.
http://www.netrift.com
I get it
I see, so this module is an input module and you could potentially combine it with an MLS feed module to take the raw data and input it into your module. That makes perfect sense to me.
www.realtor.org/mempolweb.nsf/pages/ILDPolicy
Thought that may come in handy. I have also sent an email to my local board tech guy asking about the type of feeds I have available. Last time I looked it cost almost $2,000 to "set up" the feed of raw data in a proprietary code. Then you have to pay someone an arm and a leg to work the code into your website. We used to have the option to dl the MLS db onto our computers so we could access it on the go. No one used this though so they may have canceled it. If it is available then I'm thinking that db could be somehow ported into drupal maybe???
now ya got it :) For most
now ya got it :)
For most cases, it doesn't make sense for an agent to pay for a live feed to their site when they can just provide a link to the MLS directory. If downloading is free and that's the approach you want to take then you can easily find someone to create a module to import the data into the correct tables.
http://www.netrift.com
NAR convention
I just returned from the National Association of Realtors convention in Las Vegas. There were a million different website options but not one that could potentially as easy to use as this module with Drupal. If you can work the kinks out and create a few different templates and offer different levels of customization I think a drupal site with this module would be very marketable at next years convention. There were not any sites that looked good and dynamic or that could easily allow non computer savvy people to maintain SEO. The ability to churn the front page with listings and articles is something no one is focusing on. They are mostly static sites using ap placement hugging the left of the screen (like 95% of the real estate sites in existence).
Drupal would be great for brokers to showcase their firms listings and the broker could give each agent a blog and then decide which blog is the best to put on the front page or however else they wanted to do it. I could sell this to Realtors no problem because no one is telling Realtor's about SEO. The main reason is because most Realtors don't know what SEO is or that they need to do it. All they care about is there is a site with their name all over it and their listings. I explained SEO to a couple of agents and they immediately asked for consulting work to just give them ideas on how to optimize their site with what they currently are using.
+1 Subscribed
+1 like the demo site - BTW: nice feedback Scott
Download?
Hi Kenuck
Demo looks great, very promising indeed. Can we download this module to test/use it on our own installations? I'm looking for this functionality and if this will work how I need then I'd be glad to help with testing, developing etc.
Thanks
Download from here.
Hi,
I've just posted the first beta download at: http://www.netriftsolutions.com/?q=node/11
It's still requires a lot of work but alot of people have been asking for it so there it is.
Let me know if you run into any problems.
cheers
ken
http://www.netrift.com
rListing and IDX
Has anyone worked an IDX feed into rListing? I've used a dirty hack to get a batch of existing listings into my rListing install, but it's not going to work for recurring, automated updates from an IDX feed. I think that using the node_import module would be a major step in the right direction (full writeup here) but I'm interested in what other people have done.