The real estate market is rushing at an insane pace. As an entrepreneur of a real estate business, you have only two choices: keep up or give up.
Hands down, the success of your business is very dependent on the internal processes in your team. And here comes another hard choice: whether to build a custom real estate CRM platform or use a commercial one.
Yet, Uptech is here for your help with the dilemma. From our experience building CRM platforms, I will highlight the considerations you need to make when choosing between a custom real estate platform and a ready-to-use one.
So let’s get going!
What is a Custom CRM and Why Do You Need It?
A CRM is a Customer Relationships Management platform that allows real estate agencies to organize the workflows, manage deadlines, organize documentation, manage communications with leads and clients, collect data and store it in one place.
Having a multi-functional CRM is crucial for your real estate business, as it streamlines all the internal and external processes in the company:
- Displaying the progress of leads in a pipeline;
- Replying to the requests;
- Collecting feedback from customers.
According to Capterra 65% of real estate businesses adopt CRM within the first five years of business.
Well, what about the "custom" part in the definition? A custom CRM real estate platform is a platform that is designed specifically for the needs of your business. Custom real estate CRM software development is a digital transformation that can power up your business when there is a real need.
Let's look at 4 cases when you should go for custom real estate CRM software development.
4 Cases When You Should Consider Building Custom Real Estate CRM
Most ready-to-use CRM systems provide diverse setup opportunities for your business. However, sometimes the system needs so many changes that, in total, they can be too expensive or lengthy compared to building a custom CRM platform. For example, to extend the existing system's functionality, you will need a specialist who will adapt the necessary plugins. This situation can turn into a costly paycheck.
So here are 4 cases when you should consider building a custom CRM system instead:
Your Business is Specific
Many existing systems offer all-in-one instruments that suit most real estate business needs. But if the functionality of a ready-to-use tool does not fit the needs of your business – let me say, do not get depressed. It is not about you. It is about this CRM system.
A custom-built CRM real estate system will fill these gaps and automatize your real estate business. For example, you can add the following modules:
- Document management;
- Access roles;
- Contact managements;
- Marketing automation;
- Mobile access;
- Analytics and reporting.
Your Business is NOT Big
We all begin with something, and if your real estate company is not that big yet, you needn’t worry. However, you might consider building a custom CRM real estate platform.
Unfortunately, the ready-to-use solutions are often not flexible enough to adapt to the needs of medium and small businesses. Most often, these are subscription-based SaaS solutions. In the end, you are left paying a good penny for a bunch of tools you do not even use.
You are a fan of integrations
Your business is a whole organism with organs that must work together. You often need to integrate existing solutions to your CRM, like Google tools or accounting applications, project management tools, or mailing.
To make such integrations possible, you sometimes need a developer specialized in integrations, which may become costly for an existing platform. Moreover, not all ready-to-use solutions provide free API integrations.
So it is time to think of building a custom CRM real estate platform.
You need individual analytics
Real estate businesses need CRM platforms for organizing and analyzing all the data. For example, these can be:
- Client analytics, based on the results gathered in the system;
- Pricing analytics of a real estate object based on the factors like location, state, age, etc.
Ready solutions do not always satisfy businesses with generic analytical solutions that provide quite a generic approach. There can be nothing better than analytics deduced for your business data.
Uptech’s Pro Tip 1: When choosing between the ready and custom CRM solutions, compare the cost for long-term usage. Though some existing solutions may seem viable at first, they can prove too expensive in the long-term vision.
Uptech’s Pro Tip 2: If you are afraid that building a custom CRM real estate solution may be too expensive and troublesome, try starting with an MVP version. It will have limited functionality, but it will be tailored to your business needs specifically.
4 Must-Have Features for Custom Real Estate CRM Development
A custom CRM real estate platform will not have “must-have” features. But let’s look at this list of features at the core of your CRM that it would not be able to function without.
Real Estate Dashboard
The dashboard is a necessary feature combining the critical performance indicators for your real estate business managers. With just one look at the dashboard, the user should be able to see:
- Stage of the sales process;
- Reports about the closed deals;
- Marketing leads;
- Calendar of calls and meetings;
Uptech’s Pro Tip: You can manage the roles in your system and define who can have access to specific data in the system.
Analytics’s Board
As already mentioned, analytics are essential to a custom CRM platform. The analytical board in your platform may display:
- Analytics on lead generation;
- Tracking the workflow and KPIs of your employees;
- Month-by-month marketing and sales reports.
Lead Card
Having an individual card for every lead that comes along is very useful. In a lead card, you can gather as much information as possible, like:
- Documentation of the deals;
- All the communication details;
- Personal data of the client.
Third-Party Integrations
Running a real estate company means running a complex business. Various processes are running in real estate, so your custom CRM real estate platform is impossible without third-party integrations. Such integrations may include:
- Email send out services (Mailchimp, Gmail);
- Services for an electronic sign of documents (Docusign);
- Editing tools (Google Docs);
- Chatting tools for instant responses (WhatsUp);
- Calendar integration;
- Flow automation (Monday).
Tech Stack to Build a Custom CRM Platform
Here are what technologies you will need to build a CRM custom platform:
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Cost of Custom Real Estate CRM Development
The cost for building a custom real estate CRM is formed individually in every case. However, here is an approximate cost breakdown for such a platform.
So the final cost of development will be around $17K - $27K.
Conclusion
In some cases, custom CRM real estate development can be a viable solution that will bring many benefits to your business, like flexibility, cost-efficiency, and functionality.
Want to know which feature list of custom CRM software will suit your real estate company? Contact our sales manager, and we will offer a solution tailored to your business needs.