Do estate agents need their own website? Listings, valuations and viewing requests you own

This is for an independent estate or lettings agent with one to three branches, paying the portals and a web agency, who wants to know what their own website should do and cost. It covers what the portals give you that no website can, what your site owns that no portal will, the rules a listing must meet in 2026, what agents pay for websites, and how a hosted platform runs listings without a basket. Disclosure: we build Orbit Commerce, a hosted platform that can run an agent’s site, so weigh the Orbit sections accordingly. Every figure was checked against its source on 8 November 2026.

Do estate agents need their own website?

Start with what the portals do. Rightmove’s results for the six months to 30 June 2026 report 16,591 agency branches and 8.4 billion minutes spent on its site and app. Over 85% of visits arrived direct or from organic search, and it took a 90% share of time across the main portals in June 2026 on Comscore’s measure (Rightmove plc half-year results, checked 8 November 2026). A buyer who wants a three-bed in your town opens a portal, and no agent’s website should try to compete with that.

Now look at what the portal keeps. It hands you buyer and tenant enquiries and keeps the audience, the search, the alerts and the data on who looked. The lead that pays is the seller or the landlord, and the portals know it: the same results credit Rightmove’s AI-enabled Online Agent Valuation tool with roughly a 50% rise in the valuation leads it passes to agents, and those are leads you pay for.

A valuation request on your own site arrives with you alone and stays in your records. A landlord choosing an agent reads the agent’s landlord page, fee list and reviews, none of which a portal shows. Add the branch team, the Google rating, area guides and the brand itself. One lesson from our round-up of the best UK online shops applies: rented reach can be withdrawn or repriced at any time; the audience on your own address cannot.

Neither portal publishes a price list. Rightmove quotes per branch and package. The only public figure is the average in its own results: agency revenue per advertiser of £1,636 a month in the first half of 2026, up from £1,520 a year earlier, which it defines as monthly revenue from agency advertisers divided by the number of advertisers. It is an average, pulled up by the top packages, and the figure the trade press repeats. Zoopla’s packages page lists Listing, Complete and Instruction and no prices (Zoopla, checked 8 November 2026); The Negotiator reported in July 2026 that each is “tailored to the size and profile of the individual agency” (The Negotiator, 16 July 2026). Get both quotes in writing, per branch, before you set the website budget.

So the answer is yes, but a smaller and cheaper site than most agents are sold: listings with the facts a buyer or tenant wants, a valuation form, a landlord page, branch pages with people and reviews, area guides, and redirects that keep old links working. It does not need to be a portal.

What must a property listing show by law?

These rules bind a listing wherever it appears, on your own site as on a portal.

Material information

National Trading Standards published guidance on the “material information” a listing must carry, in three parts. Part A, published in July 2022, is what every listing needs: the price or rent, the council tax band and, for sales, the tenure. Parts B and C followed on 30 November 2023. Part B covers facts to establish for every property: type and construction, rooms with measurements, how electricity, water, sewerage and heating are supplied, broadband type and speed, mobile signal, and parking. Part C covers facts that apply only where the property is affected: building safety, restrictions, rights and easements, flood risk, coastal erosion, planning permission on or near the property, accessibility and adaptations, and coalfield or mining areas (Letting Agent Today, 30 November 2023). National Trading Standards had already said, in May 2022, that “price on application” in a listing is unlawful (National Trading Standards, checked 8 November 2026).

The unfair commercial practices rules in the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (the DMCC Act) replaced the 2008 regulations on 6 April 2025 (gov.uk, updated 3 December 2025). On 8 May 2025 National Trading Standards withdrew the three-part guidance, saying those regulations “have since been superseded and replaced by the new Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024” (The Negotiator, 9 May 2025; Property Industry Eye, 9 May 2025). The duty did not go anywhere: under the Act, “not telling consumers something they need to know” is a misleading omission.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) can now decide a case itself and fine up to 10% of global turnover or £300,000, whichever is greater (gov.uk, 28 August 2025). Property-specific guidance is still to come: in June 2026 the government announced homebuying sales packs, which is where National Trading Standards’ material information page now points (checked 8 November 2026). Until then, the three parts remain the checklist for your own pages.

Redress, client money and fees

Membership of an approved redress scheme, The Property Ombudsman or the Property Redress Scheme, is compulsory for residential estate agency work across the UK and, since 1 October 2014, for letting agents and property managers in England (gov.uk, updated 2 August 2018). Letting agents in England who hold client money have had to belong to a client money protection scheme since 1 April 2019 and display the certificate in the office and on the website (gov.uk statutory guidance, 9 May 2019). Every letting agent in England must also publish a fee list, with both scheme names, at the branch, on their own website and on any third-party site used to advertise property to let, or link to it from there (National Trading Standards estate and letting agency team, checked 8 November 2026). The penalties are in the table.

Lettings adverts under the Renters’ Rights Act

The Act’s main tenancy changes took effect on 1 May 2026 (gov.uk), and two of its rules land on the advert. A written advert for a rental, online included, must state one specific rent (“A price range is not allowed”), and you may not invite or accept offers above it (gov.uk, rental bidding). And nothing in the advert or the process may make a tenant less likely to rent because they have children or receive benefits, a rule that expressly covers letting agents (gov.uk, rental discrimination).

None of this is legal advice; the schemes, Propertymark or your local Trading Standards team will answer a specific question.

How much does an estate agent website cost in 2026?

There are three routes, each priced in a different way, and every figure below is the vendor’s own. An agency build: PropertyStream says “Our websites range from £1,600 to £30,000”, paid in stages or by monthly subscription, and its page gives no figure for hosting and support (PropertyStream, 2 July 2026). A niche builder on a monthly fee: Spectre Websites, launched in September 2025, has no set-up fee and “a monthly hosting fee starting at £159 per month”, with listings fed from the Street CRM (Spectre, 23 September 2025).

Estate Apps, a second niche builder, charges £99, £129 or £159 a month excluding VAT, including hosting, SSL and one to three hours of changes a month (Estate Apps, checked 8 November 2026). The niche builders include a feed from your CRM. A hosted platform: Orbit’s Solo plan is £25 a month, or £19 a month billed yearly, excluding VAT, plus a theme, free or premium (a premium theme is a one-off charge priced in the theme store), and add-ons priced on their own pages (Orbit pricing). You enter the listings on the New Product screen or import them from a spreadsheet.

Against a portal bill of about £1,600 a month per branch, the website is the cheap part of the budget.

How does a listing work on Orbit?

Orbit was built to sell products, so here is exactly how an agent’s site runs on it.

1. Each home is a product. The price field holds the asking price or the monthly rent, the SKU field holds your reference, and the listing template built in the page builder is laid out for a home rather than a basket.
2. The facts are custom fields shown as a specification table. Bedrooms, floor area, tenure, council tax band, EPC rating, heating, broadband and parking are custom fields on the product, with validation, shown as a table on the page and included on every plan (custom fields guide).
3. Photos and the floor plan are the gallery. A product takes up to 2,000 files with images up to 20MB, so the exterior, the interiors and the floor plan all go in as images.
4. Collections, tags and search do the filtering. Collections for sale and to let, for each area and bedroom count; tags for garden, parking or chain free; search across all of it. A collection can fill itself from a rule, so a “Harrogate, three bedrooms” page keeps itself current.
5. An enquiry form replaces the buy button. A contact form sits beside the reference with the subject pre-filled, and “Request a viewing” and “Book a valuation” lead to it. A free visit or valuation comes in as an enquiry through the form on the page; a chargeable EPC or inventory report is a bookable service with a time slot, paid at checkout.
6. Listings are typed in or imported. New listings go in on the New Product screen or from a CSV or Excel file through the column mapper, a price-change sheet keyed on the reference updates existing ones, and a listing can be scheduled to go live.

The portal keeps its own copy of each listing. A map block shows the branch or the area, so a private address stays private until the viewing. A buyer comes back to the collection page for the area and bedroom count they want, which keeps itself current. A viewing or valuation comes in as an enquiry you confirm by email. Your site sits beside the portals and owns the enquiry.

Where Orbit fits

Every plan runs an agent’s site; plans differ by staff logins and storage, and the Enterprise extras are for trade and warehouse shops. Solo is £25 a month (£19 a month billed yearly) with one staff account and 100GB of storage; Team is £85 a month (£64 a month billed yearly) with ten accounts for a branch team. Both have the 14-day free trial with no card and hosting on AWS in London with an SSL certificate on your own domain. The theme store lists free and premium themes by industry; pick one for a services business and change its colours, fonts and logo in the dashboard.

Valuation requests. A valuation page wants more than a message box: postcode area, bedrooms, selling or letting, timescale. Form Builder, an add-on from the plugin store with a free plan and paid plans, builds that form by drag and drop, emails you each submission, can auto-reply to the seller, and sits on any page through the page builder’s Form element.

Reviews and chat. The Google Reviews element, a paid add-on, puts your Google rating on any page as a badge or a carousel of up to five reviews, refreshed nightly, with nothing to authorise. The Live Chat add-on puts a chat button on every page and an inbox in your dashboard, and you set its opening hours; outside them it takes the question, opens a ticket and emails you a link, so the tenant asking at 9pm gets an answer in the morning.

Content, redirects and sign-in. The built-in blog is on every plan with no post limit and can run as several blogs (Area guides, Landlords, Market updates), with tags, a Blog Listing block for the home page and a search title and description on every post. The redirect manager takes a CSV or Excel file of old and new paths and adds a redirect on its own whenever you rename a page or post later; our guide to changing platform without losing your rankings covers how to draw up that list. Every dashboard account adds two-factor sign-in within 14 days, with a passkey or an authenticator app (security), and hosting, patching and certificates are Orbit’s job, not a developer’s monthly ticket (our note on the PHP2Shell flaws says why that matters).

Read next: Rightmove and Zoopla against your own site, a holiday cottage website that takes direct enquiries and putting a used car forecourt online.

Questions people ask about estate agent websites

Do estate agents need their own website if they are on Rightmove?

Yes, for the leads a portal does not give you. Rightmove sends buyer and tenant enquiries on your listings and keeps the audience and the data. Valuation requests, landlord enquiries, your reviews, your area guides and your brand live on your own site, which is where sellers and landlords check you out before they call.

How much does an estate agent website cost in the UK?

These are the vendors’ own figures, checked 8 November 2026. PropertyStream’s agency-built sites range from £1,600 to £30,000. Spectre Websites starts at £159 a month with no set-up fee. Estate Apps charges £99 to £159 a month excluding VAT. Orbit’s Solo plan is £25 a month, or £19 a month billed yearly, with a free or premium theme. The niche builders include a feed from your CRM; on Orbit you type listings in or import them from a spreadsheet, and the portal keeps its own copy.

What information must a property listing include by law?

Enough that nobody is misled by what is left out: at least the price or rent, the council tax band and the tenure. Add property type and construction, rooms, utilities, broadband, mobile signal and parking, and any building safety, rights, restrictions, flood, planning, access or mining issues that affect the home. National Trading Standards withdrew its Parts A, B and C guidance in May 2025, after the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 replaced the old regulations, but the duty not to omit material information stays and the Competition and Markets Authority can fine a breach directly.

How do my listings get onto an Orbit site?

Typed in or imported. Listings are entered on the New Product screen or imported from a CSV or Excel file through the column mapper, a price-change sheet keyed on your reference updates the ones you already have, and a listing can be scheduled to go live. The portal keeps its own copy, so your site sits beside it and owns the enquiry.

Can buyers or tenants book a viewing online?

They request one. A viewing or a valuation is free, and Orbit’s bookable services are paid in full at checkout, so “Request a viewing” and “Book a valuation” lead to an enquiry form that emails you, and you confirm the time. Something you genuinely charge for, such as an EPC or an inventory report, can be a paid service with a time slot.

If you want to see it with your own stock, the 14-day free trial, no card required, is long enough to enter ten listings, build the valuation page and send yourself an enquiry before the next portal invoice lands.