Brand new to Realty site development - quick question

[Swc]

Hi there, while I'm brand new to Realty related site development, I've been a developer for years now. That said, I feel like a fish out of water now...

A friend of mine who knows nothing about web development (including something as simple as an < a > tag) has been working for Metro Brokers here in Atlanta for a year or so. He's very interested in getting his own site up to start generating traffic, leads, etc. I've agreed to help him out since I have plenty of web space and bandwidth available.

Before I get to my questions, understand that the reason I'm asking here as opposed to a site like RealEstateWebmasters.com is because I'm looking for the easiest solution possible, which is what WPRealty appears to be.

So, questions...

First and foremost, since he works for Metro Brokers, are there restrictions he should know about when running his own site? Are realtors for large companies required to stick with the company's internal pages?

Second, if using WPRealty, does that tie into local MLS listings using his realtor info? I'm sorry if that question sounds very vague, like I said I'm new to Realty related development. About the most I've been able to find out so far is that MLS listings are incredibly protected, and there's no real API or anything for them...

I hope you don't mind the "noob" questions... thanks for reading!

-Sean

[Jared]

Sean, depending on the board, some do not allow anyone but brokers to have actual MLS feed data in their site. If that MLS does provide IDX or RETS feeds to agents then WPRealty can be used to display the listings with in the Realtor/Agent blog.

I think that most if not all companies out there that have forums are going to pretty much remove your question because proprietary solution providers are seriously threatened by WordPress. Why?

The reason why most are threatened is as follows; If you give me 10 clients, each of which has a different solution (REW AA AI etc and so on) and just one with an active WordPress blog in the mix, I would pretty much bet anything that the WordPress Real Estate site would likely out rank the other 9 pretty easily.

We knew that WordPress Real Estate sites is what agents and brokers wanted and as such is one of the main reasons for building this plugin.

With your situation, we can turn your friends MLS feed into a WordPress powered agent site at 1/3 the cost of the average competitor solution.

The other service providers charge at or about $2,500 on average. Our solution starts at $600 - $700 for up to 5 property classes.

You gain in several ways by selecting this plugin. Not only do you get many extensions and professional support by people who do nothing more than build real estate sites with WordPress but; When version 3.0 is released not only will it be 100% open source and GNU / GPL but it will have all the features we are cloning from the commercial enterprises included right into the application.

We are spending a great deal of time and money to make our 3.0 version as affordable, non proprietary, and feature rich as any commercial turn key solution is.

Please, before you get locked into a contract with any proprietary solution, stay in control by using WordPress. For the most part, your client / friend, should not be locked into any special rules with the brokerage. However, anything is possible as we have encountered strange things with some real estate franchises.
Jared

[propertysale]

Yeah, I agree with you red.