El Coco Spend on pictures and on a page that shows them fast on a phone. For an agent that means one strong page per property. For a hotel or rental it means a Book button that keeps the 15% a travel site would take. Skip the custom search portal unless you carry a lot of listings.
What these sites have in common
Real estate, hotels and vacation rentals sell the same way. People look at pictures on a phone, and then they decide whether to call or book. In the National Association of Realtors' 2025 buyer data, 51% of buyers found the home they bought online.
So the pictures are the product, and pictures are heavy. A slow page costs you the buyer before the first photo appears. Desktop speed scores flatter almost every site. The phone is where the buyer is, and it is where a heavy gallery hurts most.
Two things slow property pages more than anything else. Large hero images that were never sized for a phone are one. The other is anything the page loads from another company's server. A property search feed and a booking widget load the same way. Either may be worth the wait, but you should know you are paying it. Ask your designer to show you the mobile score with everything loaded.
For agents: one page per property
The standard agent site follows the big portals, with a search bar, filters and a feed of every home for sale in the area. That feed comes from an IDX provider, usually as a paid plugin or embed loaded from the provider's servers. It earns its place if you carry a lot of listings or your buyers expect to search on your site.
With a handful of listings at a time, the money does more in one strong page per property. Give it drone footage, a walk through video, good stills and a map of the area. A page like that can be shared and found in search. A row in a feed looks like every other agent's row, and it shows the same homes they show.
So where does a new agent site start: pages about specific homes and specific places, which can earn clicks while the broad terms take their time. Climbing past that is ongoing search work, and our local SEO cost guide prices it out.
The footage, and who can use it
For an owner, footage already shot is a bargaining point. Picture a $1,000 media package with drone, video and stills. An owner who walks into a listing talk with that footage can ask the agent to knock 0.5% off the commission. On a $400,000 sale, half a percent is $2,000. If the agent agrees, the saving is twice what the package cost. For an agent, the same footage means a listing page that is ready on day one.
The aerials do a job a ground camera cannot. They show where the property is and what is around it. A buyer in Toronto cannot drive past on a Sunday, so the footage has to answer the questions a drive would. How far is the beach? How far is town? How long to the airport? We build on screen markers into our footage that show the distance to those points, right over the shot. Ask for the same from whoever you hire.
Ask for stills too, and at least one that shows the entire property in one frame. Clients love that shot. It answers the size of the lot, where the house sits on it and what the neighbors look like, before the buyer reads a word.
Before you pay for a shoot, get the license terms in writing. They decide if you can reuse the footage on your own site, on social and at the next sale. Ask these:
- Who keeps the master files?
- Does the owner's license expire, and does it pass to the buyer at closing?
- Does an agent's right to use it end with the listing agreement?
- If the home sells again, can the footage be licensed again at a lower rate than a reshoot?
- Do you get a branded cut and an unbranded one?
Our own terms answer each of these. The studio keeps the masters. The owner gets a personal license that never expires but does not pass to the buyer. An agent's release ends with the listing agreement. A later resale can relicense the footage at a reduced rate unless the property has changed, which costs less than a new shoot. Whoever you hire, those are the gaps to close. Our drone post covers what the aerials add to a listing page.
For hotels and rentals: win the second booking
A hotel or rental site has one real measure. It is the number of stays booked with no travel site in the middle. Booking.com takes 10% to 25% commission, about 15% on average. Airbnb's host only fee is 15.5% for most hosts. On its split fee, most hosts pay 3% and the guest pays a service fee on top. On a $200 night at 15%, every direct booking keeps $30 with you.
That does not mean leaving Airbnb or Booking.com. For an owner with one or two units, those platforms are where new guests find you. Your own site is for the second booking, from repeat guests and the friends they send. Put the address in your welcome book and your checkout message, so the guest who loved the stay knows where to book the next one.
The booking engine itself usually comes from your property management system or channel manager. The site's job is to put it one tap away, with dates and a Book button at the top of every page. Ask your designer whether the widget loads on your page or sends guests to another site, and test the page on a phone with it loaded. It is one more thing coming from someone else's server, so it adds to the wait.
Then the pictures do the selling, on the site and on social. Ask for one shoot cut several ways. On our own shoots around Playa Hermosa and Playas del Coco are done in one day of filming. The footage then gets cut into Shorts, Reels and stills. The same footage can fill the hero video on your site and the posts that send guests to it, so you pay for the shoot once.
What to pay for and what to skip
Put the money here first:
- Photos and video shot at the property, sized for phones
- Fonts and images served from your own host
- One clear action per page, whether that is call, message or book
- A sitemap and Google Search Console from the first day
- A contact form that goes straight to the person who answers it
And skip these until you have a reason:
- A custom property search when you have a few listings
- Sliders and music that plays on its own
- Tracking scripts that force a cookie banner on every visitor
- A chat widget nobody watches
Most of the skip list adds outside scripts or extra weight, and a buyer on a phone in a rental car feels it. If you are still comparing studios, our guide to choosing a website design company has eight questions to bring to the first call. If you want the shoot turned into posts as well, our real estate video and social guide covers the video side.
Questions
Do I need IDX or an MLS feed on my real estate website?
Only if you carry a lot of listings or your buyers expect to search on your site. A feed shows the same homes every other agent shows, and it adds a monthly fee and an outside script. With a few listings at a time, one strong page per property does more.
Who owns the property video after the home sells?
Whatever the contract says, so read it before the shoot. Ask who keeps the masters, whether your license passes to the buyer, and whether an agent's use ends with the listing.
Do I need my own website if I list on Airbnb?
Yes, if you want repeat guests to book without the platform fee. Keep Airbnb for new guests.
How much does a real estate website cost?
Template platforms start around $25 a month. A custom site falls in the general small business range: $500 to $5,000 with a freelancer, $3,000 to $20,000 at a small agency. An IDX feed adds a monthly fee on top. Photos and video are a separate line, and on a property site they do most of the selling.
How fast does a real estate website need to load?
Fast enough that the first photo shows before a buyer gives up. Run Google's free Lighthouse audit on the mobile setting, and also open the site on your own phone over mobile data.
You are busy selling homes or looking after guests. The site, the footage, the booking page and the search setup all happen behind the scenes. Pulling them together so the most people see the property is the job to hand off.