Self-Hosting for Real Estate Agencies

Real estate agencies pay listing platform fees, CRM subscription fees, and commission splits to the platforms that connect them with buyers. A self-hosted stack gives the agency control over its listings, its client relationships, and its data. Listings are on your website, leads go to your CRM, and your data feeds your decisions.

The Stack

• CRM and property management: EspoCRM customised with property-specific fields: property type, location, price, status, and listing date. Link properties to owners, buyers, and agents. Track the full lifecycle from listing to sale.
• Property listings website: WordPress with a real estate theme and custom property post types. Every property in your CRM appears on your website with photos, details, and an inquiry form. No listing platform fees. No commission to a third party for leads from your own website.
• Client portal: Nextcloud shared folders per client. Buyers upload documents (IC copies, bank statements, loan pre-approvals) to a secure folder only they and their agent can access. Sellers provide property documents. The agency manages everything in one place.
• Email and communication: Docker Mailserver for agency email. Listmonk for email marketing: new listing alerts, market updates, and client newsletters.
• Document management: Paperless-ngx for digitising and organising sale and purchase agreements, tenancy agreements, valuation reports, and consent forms. Every document is searchable by property address, client name, or document type.
• Task and pipeline management: Taiga or Leantime for tracking the sales pipeline: properties viewed, offers made, offers accepted, documentation submitted, and completion scheduled. Every agent knows the status of every deal.

CRM That Knows Your Market

EspoCRM custom fields capture everything about a property: type (landed, apartment, commercial), tenure (freehold, leasehold), built-up area, land area, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, asking price, and listing date. Custom filters let agents query the CRM the way they think about properties: show me all apartments under 300,000 dollars in this district that have been listed for more than 60 days.

The CRM tracks every interaction: viewings scheduled, offers received, negotiations, and outcomes. When a buyer calls six months after an inquiry, the agent pulls up their record and sees every property they viewed, every offer they made, and every conversation they had. The agent is informed before they pick up the phone.

Your Own Listing Platform

A WordPress site with a real estate theme puts your listings directly on the internet with search engine optimisation built in. When someone searches three-bedroom apartment Brunei on Google, your listing page can appear in the results. They inquire through a form on your site, which creates a lead in EspoCRM automatically. The agency never pays a listing platform for this lead. The agency's website, the agency's SEO, the agency's lead.

This does not replace listing platforms entirely. Major platforms have traffic that an individual agency website does not. But it captures the long tail of search traffic and converts it into leads without commission. Over time, as the website builds authority, the proportion of direct leads grows.

Automated Client Communication

n8n connects EspoCRM to Listmonk. When a new property matching a buyer's criteria is listed, Listmonk sends them an alert automatically. When a property's price drops, interested buyers are notified. When a deal closes, the client receives a post-sale follow-up sequence: congratulations, here is what happens next with the legal process, here are recommended service providers for renovation or moving, and please refer us to friends.

These are not mass emails. They are triggered by CRM events and personalised to the recipient. They make the agency feel attentive without requiring manual follow-up for every event.

VPS1 builds complete real estate agency stacks. CRM, listings website, client portal, and automated communication. Your data, your leads, your business.