Garbology

The WooThemes ‘Estate’ theme just lets you create listings on your website, which is fine if that is all you want to do.

Most agents I have worked with definitely want to showcase their own listings, but they also want to list all properties in their MLS that they have any interest in selling. Access to the data service that MLS’s provide is not free, and not consistent between MLS’s. Often the MLS charges a monthly fee, for example $50. If this plugin provides access to that data and allows you to present it in a standardized way, it is worth $45 a month or even that plus some small fee to the MLS. Most likely if they get enough users, they will be able to negotiate away the MLS fees, so you will end up paying only the plugin’s monthly service fee.

Using this plugin, agents do not have to enter their own properties if they sign up for MLS service, but they can still easily highlight them. There are lots of other great features this plugin provides and, coupled with one of their themes, you can get a pretty nice site up and running without any coding.

The plugin’s maker also seems committed to continually improving their products so I recommend contacting them if you have issues.

Don’t want to hijack this post, but this may be related to a problem I just found.

I just installed the plugin and changed the default set up as follows:

1) Added a sub page called ‘Events’ (with the text ‘CONTENTS’) under the page called ‘Events’ created by this plugin.

2) Made the newly created page the Events page using the Events->Settings->Pages tab.

When I click on my newly created ‘Events’ page link in the sub menu under ‘Events’ on the front of the site I get a page not found error. I notice that in your site you have also made a sub page for Events and so I am wondering if this is related.