Real Estate - Property Website - Using PHP - Any Suggestions?

Question

Hello,

I had an enquiry from a potential customer who would like to build a Real Estate website. He was looking to provide access to Agencies who can list their properties and add images and details to it.

I know that Joomla with Mosets Hot Property can handle this well. I do not want the complex CMS behind a property management website. I know, I can easily write a simple PHP site with about 10 tables in Mysql. I was hoping to find if any Open Source alternatives exist.

I am also looking into Kohana, to write a full property management system.

Any thoughts and advice would be helpful.

Answer 1

Technical answer: I don't know a specific existing alternative. Could you wrap Joomla/HotProperty in your own PHP UI that would simplify things - maybe by setting lots of default values hidden behind the scenes on the various CMS forms?

This is not really a detailed solution but a suggestion: Build the simple CMS that is very specific to Real Estate - then resell it. You may have to give this inital client a small cut of all future sales since they are subsidizing initial development, but if there's demand for a product like this it might be worth a thought - after all: it can't hurt to think about it! ;)

Answer 2

Have you checked out Property Max Pro? They have a free version you might be able to mess around with and build on to.

Answer 3

Not that i know of. Besides you might end up spending more time learning another person's system than developing your own, for which you could use rapid development frameworks such as cakephp, codeigniter and the likes.

if you really want an existing cms, look here.

Answer 4

Hot Property stinks. It's never updated - the community does most of the features adds which end up costing a lot of money to get the functionality you need.

I'd go with EZ Realty or iProperty to use with Joomla. Both are very good extensions.

Answer 5

Have u check out http://www.realestatescript.eu/ ?