How Much Does the Real Estate App Development Cost Like the Zillow App?

Today's customers demand full transparency in the property purchase process. Hence, real estate agents need technology to streamline business management processes.

That's where apps like Zillow gain a cutting edge. Right from data management and processing to transaction management, the real estate apps deal with everything about the real estate business management process.

So, if this made you want to develop a real estate app, your first question must be about the real estate app development cost.

Well, do not worry! With this blog we will let you know all that you would want to know about the cost of development, factors that affect the said cost, ideal features of real estate apps and much more.

So, keep reading the blog!

An Overview of the Real Estate Industry

You have to understand the industry and the customers before you start calculating the real estate app development cost. The real estate industry is experiencing phenomenal growth, and the customers are changing and will change.

Apart from the availability of assets, it is the increasing interest of the customers in leasing and buying that has fueled its growth.

🔘Your customers have a lot of disposable income. Besides, the interest rates on loans have decreased significantly. This has led to an increase in investment in real estate assets.

🔘The latest report shows that the real estate industry is one of the largest industries, with more than $379.7 trillion in global assets. The assets are expected to grow at 7.27% CAGR.

🔘More millennials and GenZer would be renting rather than buying houses since it suits them financially. Plan your applications according to the requirements of those target groups.

🔘For most firms interested in scaling in real estate, mobile applications come as a golden opportunity for the extension of convenience. It appeals to customers through convenient access to the business enterprise. The more appealing features added will attract many more customers into the business leading to increased sales.

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Why Should You Consider Real Estate App Development?

The consumer of today seeks full transparency during the process of buying a house. So, real estate specialists are looking out for technology in order to aid them in efficiently managing their businesses. And real estate apps like Zillow come to help in that cause.

Right from data management to processing, it also covers handling and managing every aspect of running a real estate business.

Zillow is the largest property app in the United States. In 2024, there will be 233 million monthly unique users on the platform. iProperty Management reports that 58.46% of visits to the site are via mobile devices.

The above statistics demonstrate that Real Estate apps can be extremely popular if it becomes easy to find, buy, rent, or sell houses and provide an easy-to-use experience.

iProperty Management recently reported that in 2024, the app’s revenue amounts to $2.31 billion and is set to reach $2.79 billion during 2026.

Here are some more reasons that you might consider developing your own real estate app:

🔘Improve User Experience: A well-built real estate application improves user experience by providing fun navigation and crisp visuals with interactive property. Thus, the ease of viewing different properties is seen in the apps by using the latest UI design principles. 

🔘Expand User Base: An application sends alerts and notifications to create awareness of the property. It enables users to get information on newly listed properties, changes in prices, and other updates. This will attract more and more customers, which will help in expanding the customer base.

🔘Better Customer Relationship Management: An offline real estate business requires recruiting brokers in various cities to help their customers and establish relationships with them. Having an app on a mobile device, customers can connect 24/7 with the owner of the real estate business. CRM software for small businesses can improve growth.

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Key Features of A Real Estate App Like Zillow

After knowing the requirements of developing a real estate application, let's find out the basic features that should be part of it to allow the users to rent, buy, and sell realty. The basic features are as follows:

1. User Login & Sign Up

To make it easy to find, you can allow customers to create their accounts by logging in through their social media accounts. Allow multiple login mechanisms to make it easy to navigate.

2. Search & Filters

Allow users to filter residences based on various filters like price, location, and room number. It also enables them with the facility to filter available rentals in various ways, including target keywords, property types, pet policy, and more.

3. Property Details

Give detailed information about the properties that may include description, video, photo, price, landmarks, nearby areas, and more.

When you provide detailed information about the properties, it will make your application helpful for consumers.

You can research a bit and know how much real estate apps charge for listing a house to give a low-cost option for real estate agents or house owners to list a house.

4. Photos & Street View

Facilitate including a photo feature and street view to enable users to see accurate presentations of all properties. Having immersive 360-degree virtual tours and videos might be an advantage.

5. Database

The quality of data that is stored in the real estate app determines its success and popularity. To make users interested in your app, you must store a large quantity of data, choosing from a list of databases.

You cannot be successful in making a real estate app without involving local real estate dealers and specialists to offer comprehensive data.

6. Maps Integration

Let the user see how to get to each property to make it easy for them to reach there. Enhance this feature by making a smart map function that would help the users know where they are and what other options are nearby.

7. Visit Scheduling

The inclusion of a visit and scheduling feature helps buyers to schedule an appointment with agents and see the property. This feature allows them to easily keep track of the open house and property buyer/seller meetings.

8. Push Notifications

This feature has immense marketing potential. They should be used properly to provide enormous benefits such as new information, messages, and price changes about the properties.

9. Integration With Real Estate CRM

CRM allows businesses to follow their leads and sales. In return, real-time analytics allow them access to their sales leads. Businesses get the chance to reach their target customers through specific promotions and news.

Follow these 7 steps for a successful CRM implementation for business growth.

10. Virtual Home Tour

This has become an absolute must in apps dealing with real estate. They are enabled to make use of virtual reality and augmented reality while seeing the house before it's purchased.

11. Favorites

Allow users to list their favourite properties in a specified area and save that listing for later viewing. This feature makes it easy for customers to select desired properties only.

In addition to all these features, you can include some advanced features in your application so that your application stands ahead.

It's quite important to study a real estate app development guide, like ours, to have an idea of the features and applications.

In the meantime, you can choose to charge for advanced features by offering some advance fee. The advanced features could be available only for users paying for a subscription to your application.

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How to Make Money From Your Real Estate App Development?

Businesses can make money through their real estate apps by leveraging multiple monetization models, like, subscription, freemium, commission, and more.

Let’s get to know about these models in more detail so you can adopt one or more monetization models depending on your business requirements.

1. Subscription Model

In this real estate app monetization strategy, you charge recurring fees from users. The app can be downloaded for free.

However, the premium fee will be charged based on the exclusive features. Such as direct messages to agents will be allowed, users will receive notifications of the latest listings on this app or a user can be allowed to use ad-free search.

Here is an image depicting the benefits of subscription model:

You can provide multiple subscription plans to the users either on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis. Through this, the app owner would be able to earn a recurring amount of revenue.

2. Premium Listing

Using this app monetization model, property owners or real estate agents pay an additional amount for displaying featured listings on the home page of an app.

This feature is helpful to agents who need to sell the property quickly and have maximum exposure to the property. Thus, more exposure brings more buyers, and more sales bring increased revenue for the business.

This has allowed the homeowner to display all of these feature listings until access is gained in paid plans.

3. Advertising Model

Advertisement model Monetize a real estate application by selling advert spaces online from the real estate broker, property owners, landowners, agents, or investors with click or impression revenues.

Application proprietors would then generate some large revenues based on engagements or interactions, which will be clicks or impressions by users on advertisements.

4. Commission-based Model

You can earn money from your real estate mobile app through commission-based. You can sell the rental/property upon receiving the entire commission from the owner.

Therefore, it generates enormous revenue for the application owners, as with every successful sale of a property, they gain a particular commission at the end of the sale.

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Steps to Develop a Real Estate Application

Once you are sure about the basics of a real estate app, here's the step-by-step guide we have compiled for you on creating a real estate app:

1. Determine Your Business Objectives

At this step, you need to decide what type of real estate app you want to build, identify your project goals, and who is your target audience.

Ask yourself whether you want to build an app for real estate companies, a property management app, or a house-hunting app.

If you decide on the app, you will draft a checklist of features you want to include. That way, the goal of the app is clear from the very beginning.

2. Market Research

The next step is to research the market for your mobile app idea. Here, you would do a competitor analysis, find their USP, and find out what things they lack in their application.

Try using your competitor app and see what features you like the most, how is the UI/UX design of that app, and what makes you tick online such as enticing offers or support you get.

Find out what are the shortcomings in their app, work on those things, and make your app stand out.

You can talk to local landlords or agents and know what features or functionalities they expect or what challenges they are facing.

3. Decide the Technology Stack

The third step to designing a real estate mobile application is choosing a suitable tech stack.

You will hire dedicated developers with experience in real estate and ask them to design the front-end and back-end architecture for the mobile app.

The tech stack is used for the programming language for app development, web server, integrated development environment (IDE), backend server integration, UI development, testing and debugging, etc.

4. Design the UI/UX

Now, the UI/UX designers decide the look and feel of your app. As an app development company, we think of how users will interact with the app and think of scenarios of how users navigate through the app.

A good UI/UX design is very important for a mobile app since it will give a positive impression, communicate your brand vision, and bring in more revenue to your business.

5. Develop the Application

The backend developers will now write the code for the app and ensure cooperation with the real estate mobile app development company.

Start with MVP before you launch the final version of your app to gather feedback from users. Your focus should be adding basic but essential features you can't avoid adding.

Once you know what users think about the app, fine-tune the app and launch the final app.

6. Test

Once the app is fully developed and available on the App Store or Google Play Store, the next step is to conduct app testing.

Testing of the app is super important to ensure that the app remains up-to-date and works flawlessly. Developers often choose between the unit testing vs integration testing methods for this step.

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What is the Real Estate App Development Cost?

The app developers will now write the code for the app and ensure cooperation with the real estate mobile app development company.

Start with MVP before you launch the final version of your app to gather feedback from users. Your focus should be adding basic but essential features you can't avoid adding.

Once you know what users think about the app, fine-tune the app and launch the final app.

The most critical factor is the complexity of the app. A simple app with basic features will cost less than an advanced one because a simple app includes only normal features that are necessary.

However, that is just an estimate of the cost. You have to speak to an experienced real estate app development company to know the real development cost.

Refer to the table explaining the app making charges below:

Factors Affecting the Real Estate App Development Cost

In this section, we will delve deep into the factors that influence the cost. Such insight will make you understand the impact they pose on the development process and its cost. Now, let's start understanding the factors in detail.

1. Platform

The choice of platform, Android, iOS, or cross-platform, significantly affects the cost of real estate mobile app development.

Developing apps natively for Android or iOS app development proves to be quite expensive and will not help the business reach a wide number of users.

That's when businesses opt for cross-platform app development, which saves some amount of money and allows businesses to reach both platforms.

Every platform has its specific standards and development environment that necessitates time and resources.

With the use of top cross-platform app development frameworks, this approach increases the user base of the application while saving money and time for businesses.

2. Design

The design and user interface (UI) play a crucial role in user engagement and retention.

You should pick a custom-designed UI tailored for the app based on the particular needs and branding of the application. This will be costlier but give more value to the user experience.

You must engage a professional UI/UX design agency for an intuitive and beautiful interface. The more complex, the costlier it would be.

This is a customized and interactive design, which takes time and expertise and leads to increasing the development cost.

3. Features And Functionalities

Features and functionalities are the prime cost-influencing factors when it comes to the real estate app development cost.

Adding mere basic features such as property listings, search filters, and contact forms will not make the cost rise that much.

The cost will be affected when using AI in real estate. Adding features like AI-based recommendations, virtual tours, or real-time chat adds more money and time.

When adding location-based services, push notifications and user analytics may add to the complexity and, thus, to the cost.

Do not add additional features lightly since this will also add to the total real estate app development cost.

You need to adopt a set of basic features to manage costs while providing a robust and engaging user experience.

4. Third-Party Integration

Third-party service integration enhances the real estate app functionality but increases app development costs.

The must-haves include mapping services, payment gateway integration, CRM systems, and social media platforms. All these require customized API development, which leads to an increase in complexity and cost.

5. Quality Assurance And Testing

Testing and quality assurance are the two vital phases of the real estate application development process. It ensures the app is free from bugs, user-friendly, and seamless.

It checks the functionality, usability, and performance of the application. The business can create an MVP, and they can find the best ways to test the MVP for launching the app.

Many features require much time to test the application. However, it cannot be neglected because quality assurance and testing save future maintenance costs and deliver a good user experience.

These things are essential to drive business growth after releasing the app.

6. Location of the Developers/ Development Company

Here is an in-depth peek into the detailed cost breakup for the real estate application development, region-wise:

7. Maintenance and Updates

The mobile app maintenance cost can be a constant expense for a while after you have launched the application. Regular updates and other maintenance factors are necessary to keep the app running efficiently.

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What Does Arramton Infotech Suggest to Optimize Real Estate App Development Cost?

The more your app is loaded with complexities and features, the more is going to be the custom app development price.

But what if you save on these expenditures without compromising on the quality?

We have already identified some aspects that can really help reduce the budget for app development.

1. Have a Practical Scope

Ensure you are realistic about the features and functionality you wish to add. Keep the app scope simple and practical so that it fits your budget. This way, you can reduce the development complexities and rates.

2. Select the Right Partner

Your development partner is essential in bringing down the costs. Select one who has appropriate experience and knowledge. This will ensure that they can meet all your app needs.

They will also have the infrastructure to go ahead with the app development process, thereby decreasing these costs.

3. MVP Development

It is always better to develop an MVP (minimum viable product) before getting into the actual application development. It is helpful in validation, feature assessment, and getting user feedback.

This way, you can cut down on the costs of upfront app development.

4. Agile Development Methodology

Apply agile principles to get maximum flexibility and adaptability throughout the development process. Agile will help improve the product while ensuring effective resource allocation.

5. Outsource App Development

This would reduce the development cost drastically. You can ensure faster development with quality solutions using this approach. It will also give you a chance to focus on core jobs. Make sure to choose a partner who is reasonable and reputed.

6. Use Cost-Effective Frameworks and Tools

Select the iOS or Android app development frameworks and tools that reduce the time required for app development related to real estate and minimize the need for writing code from scratch.

It ensures reducing the development time and, hence, cuts 25-40% of the cost.

7. Prioritize Necessary Features And Functionalities

Focus on the core features that are very important for the app's functionality. Adding too many features is costly and takes a lot of time. It can help reduce development costs by focusing on important things.

Conclusion

The real estate application requires proper planning, careful budgeting, and defined milestones to attain app success. Several factors, such as app type, complexity, and platform selection, can impact your real estate app development cost.

These factors can help make informed decisions regarding the priorities and work scope.

You must also consider the hidden expenses, such as maintenance, marketing, and compliances, which can help you plan the budget for long-term success.

Whether you want a property listing app or a virtual tour solution, you must optimize for efficiency and scalability.

But by working together with experienced developers, you should be able to adopt cost savings strategies like developing an MVP—to streamline further.

Additionally, connect with us at Arramton Infotech to get iOS or Android app development services to get your own real estate app running.

We are skilled in developing feature-rich, scalable apps, so don’t hesitate and contact us soon!

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. What is the Real Estate App Development Cost?

Ans: The cost of building a real estate app is $30,000 to $250,000+. However, the cost may vary depending on several factors such as platform, design, app complexity, third-party integration, and development team.

Q. How to Develop a Real Estate Mobile App?

Ans: You can create a real estate app by following some steps such as research & planning, prototype & designing, development & deployment, and maintenance & updates. This process helps you develop a successful real estate mobile app.

Q. How Long Does it Take to Develop a Real Estate App?

Ans: The development time for an actual real estate app is between 3 to 6 months. However, the time could be more according to the application's complexity. The simple app will take months, while an advanced real estate app will take a year.

Q. How to reduce the real estate app development cost for your idea?

Ans: You could reduce the cost of app development by defining the project scope, selecting the right development team, and prioritizing your features.