How much does a real estate website cost?

You can get a website for free from your brokerage, or maybe even from a friend who calls himself a web designer. On the other hand, you can get a website for tens of thousands of dollars.

But how much does a good real estate website cost? And how much should it cost?

There's no right answer to that question, just opinions. Before I give you mine, here are a few considerations that will affect what you'll spend on a website.

Your goals. If all you want is an online business card that proves you're a real estate agent, that free brokerage site is probably just fine. But if you want a full-featured website with all the tools needed to help you do real lead generation -- blogging, IDX, lead magnets, etc., all the stuff I teach in the course -- free won't cut it. I don't think cheap will cut it, either. There's a middle ground where you have a basic website with IDX and hope people find/use it, but "set it and forget it" almost never works in marketing.

Geography. I have to believe that a great web design person/company in San Francisco or Miami is gonna be more expensive than a counterpart in, say, Des Moines, Iowa. I remember ~20 years ago when I was still building websites locally, our rates were well below what competitors in Seattle could charge.

The vendor's business model. Most web designers and web design companies will give you a quote and charge a one-time fee that you pay when you hire them. And then you don't pay again unless you need something changed or updated in the future. Most real estate-specific website platforms will charge a smaller setup fee upfront, but then also have a monthly fee that you pay as long as you're on their platform. Some individual designers might also have a business model like this, but it's pretty rare in my experience.

The designer's preferred tool(s). If you go the web designer/company route, are they coding your website from scratch? Are they using an existing Squarespace/Wix theme with a few modifications? Are they building on WordPress? Each of those involves a different time commitment, so you'll pay accordingly.

With all that in mind, the cost of your website can vary quite a bit.

So what should it cost? Well, as you know, I'm a big believer in having a powerful and effective website that's one of your primary lead-gen sources.

If you're my client and you come to me to talk about doing a new website, I'd tell you to plan on spending at least $2500 to $5000 for a custom website. And I'd say that somewhere between $5K-$10K is probably more likely if you want a great, beautiful, fast, functional, custom website that has all the tools you need for generating and converting leads.

I see some web design folks advertising that they'll build you a website for $500 and I just don't think you're gonna get much value from that. Sorry. To me, those are like the places in Vegas offering steak dinners for $3.99. No thanks.

Final thing: Your website should not cost more than you can afford. I gave you a baseline number for what I think an effective website should cost, but if you don't have that kind of money, ignore me. Do your best with what your budget will allow. You can always get your site online now and invest more money in it later when your budget allows.