How to build a Zillow/PropertyGuru clone for less than $10K

Sean Stewart
The MomoCentral Times
5 min readAug 14, 2017

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Note: This is definitely only one small piece of the larger puzzle of building a business like Zillow/PropertyGuru. Purpose of this article is to share knowledge with non-techies on a budget there are shortcuts to getting a Minimum Viable Product to launch quickly and test the market.

Yes, a marketplace website like Zillow/PropertyGuru does not need to cost more than 10K to build.
Yes, with the accounts, the admin panel and more importantly, with the payments gateway.

You have a startup idea — you want to build a marketplace for real estate agents and home buyers, so that they can connect and look for what they want on my real estate portal.

You can easily do that for any kind of website without any coding language or even design skills. I’m writing this guide for a fictitious real estate startup.

1. Select a theme — don’t do it from scratch

You might be very tempted to start designing the website. The themes on the market usually provide all the features that you would need

List of features you want

  • Account creation — agents can list and manage their properties, while buyers can browse and purchase properties
  • Google map — visitors can see where’s the apartment on the map
  • Payment gateway — for the real estate agents to make payment

Yes, all of the above features are already built into the theme which you can buy for $89 only! (No, I’m not paid to say this)

Edit the theme how you want it

The best part of buying the theme is that you get unlimited license on the theme. This means you get to do whatever you want with the theme, and still get to make money off the website without paying any more dollars.

You will only do this step after installing this theme with a content management system (CMS).

2. Domain registration + Wordpress Installation

Let’s start with the domain name, I want to call the real estate portal — momoestate.com

You can check if that domain name is still available on GoDaddy or NameCheap, simply make a purchase to own that domain name.

Yay, the domain is available!

Great, with your theme and domain name, you will need a server host next. I’d recommend BlueHost or SiteGround because it’s just so easy and simple to host Wordpress with them. Alternatively, you can discuss the possible host options with a developer here.

Why do you want to use Wordpress.org to host your website

Wordpress powers 28% of the Internet.

Wordpress is like the Microsoft Word for managing websites. You can edit the copy easily, change the images, switch the images out and do whatever changes you want easily on the website.

Do not confuse Wordpress.com and Wordpress.org

Yes, there’s a difference. Wordpress.com is the blog with limited feature set. Wordpress.org is a powerful content management system that can be used to create amazing things like e-commerce websites, AirBNB clones, corporate websites on your own domain etc”

3. Styling your website and adding new content

After the installation, this is where the real fun begins.

You would definitely love to change the company logo, the navigation bar at the top, and pretty much everything else to make it your own style.

Also, this theme has the payment gateway feature, so you just have to select the payment method, and insert the correct credentials.

You can change almost anything inside Wordpress, it’s as easy as maintaining a blog, or using Microsoft Word.

Editing your web page is just like using Microsoft Word

Yes, no extra code is needed to add another post or change the copy of your webpage. It’s that easy! This editor allows you to preview what you’ve written on the webpage, so you don’t have to worry about making a mistake.

And the post will appear on your website!

Some themes have more functions on the left pane than the others. On the website itself, I can already start adding new properties.

Adding new properties to Momoestate
Successfully added a new property to the website!

If I have any real estate agents, or properties that I know are on sale, I would put them up onto the website, so the website doesn’t look so empty when a person visits the website.

4. Launch your website!

And you are finally done! Just hit ‘publish’, and start showing off your website to your friends and families!

How much customisation can you do?

Literally anything under the sun 😎

This is because when you buy the theme, you get full ownership of the source code. This enables a developer to hide sections you don’t want, add new sections to the website, add new forms for your visitors to fill up, etc.

Actually, you don’t have to do this all by yourself

I know you might have 10,000 other things to worry about other than to build a website all by yourself. You can speak to some of the experts at MomoCentral — which has more than 450 developers and designers you can talk to.

Located all around the world, these talented folks have built a wide range of websites and apps for more than 1,000 clients — e-commerce website, marketplace website, mobile apps or even programming a drone.

All you need, is an idea of what you want to achieve. We can help you with the rest. Chat with us now!

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a tech blogger — when I’m not at growthhackers or inbound.org, I enjoy surfing and hiking