Most estate agency websites are built as if they were property portals, with a search box on the homepage and listings as the main event. But buyers and tenants mostly search on the big portals. The people who matter most on your own site are vendors and landlords deciding who to instruct. The estate agent website requirements that follow from that are different from what most agencies build, and there are legal requirements too, especially for lettings.
This guide covers the pages and features that win instructions, the disclosure rules for sales and lettings in England, and what a site costs. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have some different rules, so check the position for your nation.
Build the site around the valuation
A valuation request is the only action on an agency website that leads directly to fee income. Yet on many sites it is a small link in the header. Make it the main call to action on every page: a clear button, a short form (address, what they are thinking of doing, when), and an instant online estimate if you want one, framed honestly as a starting point rather than a promise.
Everything else on the site should support the valuation decision. Your listings show the quality of your photography, floorplans and descriptions. Your sold and let evidence shows results. Your local guides show you know the market. Your fee page shows you are open about cost.
Pages an estate agent website needs
| Page | What it must do |
|---|---|
| Home | Valuation button, the areas you cover, recent sales, and a line on what makes you different. |
| Book a valuation | A short form and, if offered, an instant estimate clearly labelled as indicative. |
| Selling | How you market a property: photography, floorplans, portals, viewings, progression. Your fees. |
| Letting and management | Service levels and landlord fees, including VAT, for let-only, rent collection and full management. |
| Properties | Listings with full material information, good photos, floorplans and enquiry buttons. |
| Area guides | One per town or neighbourhood you cover: prices, schools, transport, what it is like to live there. |
| About and team | Named staff with photos and roles, redress and client money protection membership. |
Letting agents: what the law requires on your website
In England, the Consumer Rights Act 2015 requires letting agents to publish a full list of their fees to landlords and tenants on their website, including VAT, with enough description for people to understand what each fee covers. The same law requires agents to say on their website which redress scheme they belong to, and whether they are a member of a client money protection scheme. Since 2019, letting agents who handle client money in England must belong to a government-approved client money protection scheme and display their certificate.
The Tenant Fees Act 2019 banned most fees to tenants in England, so the tenant fee list is now short: things like holding deposits, tenancy deposits capped by law, and certain default fees. Wales has similar rules under its own legislation. Get your fee list checked, because councils can fine agents who do not publish fees correctly.
Estate agents dealing with sales must belong to an approved redress scheme, such as The Property Ombudsman or the Property Redress Scheme, and should say so. Estate and letting agents are also supervised by HMRC for anti-money-laundering purposes.
Material information in listings
Consumer protection law requires agents to give buyers and tenants the information they need to make an informed decision, and not to leave out anything that would change it. National Trading Standards’ Estate and Letting Agency Team has published guidance on what counts as material information, which the property portals have built into their listing fields.
In practice, every listing should include the price or rent, council tax band or rate, tenure (and for leasehold, the remaining lease length, ground rent and service charge), and then information about the property’s physical characteristics, utilities, parking, broadband and mobile coverage, and known risks such as flooding or restrictions, where relevant. Put this in the listing text on your own site as well as the portals. Check the latest NTSELAT guidance for the full list.
Listings as a portfolio
A vendor looking at your website is really asking: what would my house look like if you sold it? Your current listings are the answer. Dark phone photos, crooked floorplans and descriptions that begin “Viewing is highly recommended” tell them you will not work hard for their sale.
Invest in professional photography, measured floorplans and descriptions that tell the story of each home. Keep sold properties visible, with “sold” status, as evidence of results. Link to your portal listings but make sure your own site loads the images quickly on a phone.
Area guides and local search
Vendors start researching months before they instruct an agent, and many of them search for things like “house prices in Topsham” or “best areas to live in Exeter”. A genuinely useful guide to each area you cover, written from your own knowledge, attracts those searches and positions you as the local expert. Include typical prices by property type, schools, commute times, amenities and what is changing locally. Update the figures regularly.
Mistakes estate agency websites make
- A portal-style search as the homepage, with the valuation button hidden.
- Letting fees missing, incomplete or shown without VAT.
- No mention of redress or client money protection membership.
- Listings missing tenure, council tax or lease information.
- Poor photography that puts off the vendors you want to impress.
- Area pages that are generic paragraphs copied between towns.
What an estate agent website costs
The biggest variables for an agency website are the property feed from your CRM, the number of branches and area guides, any instant valuation tool, and lettings features such as landlord and tenant portals. Photography of your own listings is a separate cost but one of the most visible to vendors.
Property-sector website providers often sell templated sites linked to your CRM for a setup fee plus a monthly charge, sometimes in the range of £50 to £300 a month. Custom agency builds with property feeds and valuation tools commonly cost £5,000 to £20,000. The CRM or property software that feeds the listings usually has its own subscription.
We design estate and letting agency websites from scratch, built around valuations, with your listings pulled from your property software, fee and compliance pages written for you, and an area guide for every town you cover. A single-office agency fits Own It at £1,795 plus £49/month for up to 25 pages. Agencies with several branches or CRM integrations would look at Pro at £6,950 plus £299/month. Nerdsharks builds for independent agents and multi-branch groups alike.