Investment in the real estate industry is booming with exponential growth. Real estate investors are becoming more open to app-based businesses. Even individual startups also are exploring various business ideas & opportunities into real estate agents.

Among all these, apps like Zillow and Trulia have become a ubiquitous solution for every need for real estate buyers and sellers. These popular apps have not only touched buying and selling domain of the real estate industry but they have also penetrated in providing holistic services to real estate agents and lenders as well.  

Do you ever wonder what made Zillow and Trulia the world’s most appreciated and used real estate mobile apps? Don’t worry, in this article, we will going to discuss these apps’ USPs and how to make such kinds of apps.  

Without wasting our valuable time, let’s get started and know about making apps like Zillow. 

A little history of Zillow 

“The Zillow Group”, the name we know today was just a spark of an idea in the mind of their founders. They were actively looking for a house for their family back in 2005. And none of them could find any relevant information on the internet.  

They thought it’s 2005 and there was not a single online source that could provide them a list to buy their home. And that’s how the idea got hit into their forehead. They thought why not build a marketplace where everyone could buy, rent, and find agents and lenders. This is how the founders had laid the foundation of the company. 

Feeling motivated?

Ler’s cut to the chase and know which features made Zillow an outstanding real estate mobile application on the web today!

USPs: The features of the app

Every apps in the market today one way or another way have found out customers’ pain points. And by that, they have tried to present the best possible features that could solve their daily problems. Zillow had done that by including the following features and functionality.

Profile Listing

Integration of all the latest and existing home listing would be considered your half work done. In fact, this is the most used mobile app feature users utilize to purchase a home or rent them. You will have to search for a database for covering each and every property that is going to be sold, rented, and foreclosed. You will have to build a complete listing profile with photos, prices, descriptions, etc. Also, you must include saving options, in case if users want to save that property, broker profile or lender’s profile for future reference.

Integrating Filters

Users would love your app if it provides efficient search results for their needs. And for that, you would need proper filters that could not only show the property in the city but also area, price, space, type and more. It would be impractical if your search result provides all the property of the city in which users have to scroll through three or four pages for finding the perfect property. Filters would save your users’ precious time.

Map Integration

The map is an imperative element of any real estate listing app. You should gather the correct data and integrate geographical maps so that your users could conveniently find the home in his preferred area. Additionally, you could also include various nearby locations that attract your user to find a home around those areas. You should render information like a nearby gym, schools, church, and whatnot.

Registarion

It is a cornerstone of your app. You should provide users with a seamless registration process. With onboarding video. Make sure this video should be brief but cover all the aspects of your mobile app. So users could grasp how the application works and what is here for them.

It is vital to understand which user information you want to ask while a user is signing up. Phone number, email id, birth date, or others? There is another way in which users would be asked to continue through Facebook, Instagram or Twitter credentials so that users don’t have to fill all the information to get started.

Push Notification

You would want your users to spend time on your mobile app or website so that your app gets maximum traction. Maximum traction results in new visitors to your site or app.

You could do in a very strategic way by including push notification in your app. You should make an app that notifies users when; any changes in price happen in their interested property, a new property gets add in the listings, the new profile gets added and more, to ensure that they spend more time on your app. You should also ask permission for the kind of notifications they would like to be alerted on! It will stop your app to send unnecessary notifications to its loyal users.

Security

As far as security is concerned, most apps in the world keep it in the mind before anything else. Your app should also prevent leakage of important user data. The safety of your users’ data should be your prime concern because in any unlikely case where users data has been stolen, you and user both would have to bear the bad repercussions of that. Even top silicon valley companies got attacked by hackers because of not taking precautions.

Let’s discuss one of the frequently asked questions about app development. How much it will cost to make a real estate app like Zillow.

What will be the cost of developing apps like Zillow?

The cost of developing a Zillow like app depends on myriads of factors. Some of them are; The location where you want your app to be developed, features you want to integrate, going with freelancers or you want to outsource, design complexity, the platform you choose(Android iOS, or Both), etc.

If you want to build Zillow like app in iOS or Android app separately, it may cost you around $23k. However, if you are going for both, it may double your cost. There is an affordable way to create a real estate app like Zillow and that is Hybrid app development. You won’t have to build an app for both platforms separately. You can have benefits of both android and ios users if you make your app in any hybrid platform.

I personally suggest you go for Flutter (Google’s platform) or React native (Facebook’s platform) if you decide to go with hybrid app development. You will have your app ready in around $14k.

Now, since this blog is all bout how to build an app like Zillow. But you must consider providing the website as well. And that will add extra bucks to the final cost.

So website like Zillow.com, may cost you somewhere between $8,000 to $25,000. In this case, powerful frameworks laravel, CodeIgniter will be needed.

Winding Up:

Investors are understanding the power of digitization. Real estate being the most profitable niche, they know the potential of having a unique online platform and real estate app development. Apps like Zillow used to be just an idea. Nevertheless, the platform became an overnight success.

Why don’t you start your own app like Zillow? Do your city has such kind of app? Share your review of this article.