Custom Software for Real Estate — Brokerages, Agents & PropTech

Real estate combines three pressures that almost no other category faces at once. The data infrastructure is fragmented in a way no other industry has to deal with. There are 500+ regional Multiple Listing Service organizations across the US, each with their own data license, refresh window, display rules, and consequence for non-compliance. The RESO Data Dictionary and Web API exist to standardize the format, but the legal and operational terms still vary per MLS. Building a product that touches listings requires real care.

The compliance perimeter is broad and changing. RESPA Section 8 prohibits unearned referral fees and shapes the entire affiliated-business landscape. Fair housing law (Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act and HUD's 2023 amendments) constrains digital marketing, lead routing, audience targeting, and any algorithmic matching that touches protected characteristics. State-level brokerage rules vary by jurisdiction. TCPA shapes outbound contact. And the 2024 NAR settlement on buyer-broker compensation has reshaped the buyer-representation workflow in ways that most existing platforms have not fully caught up with.

Third, the sales process is intensely personal. Real estate is sold by people. The agent brand and the brokerage brand both have to come through cleanly in the digital experience, or the lead converts to a stranger instead of an agent. The templates and Zillow-funnel sites fail on this exact axis — they generate volume that converts poorly.

RESPA Section 8. No unearned referral fees. Affiliated business relationships require disclosure. We build referral-tracking with clean separation between agent attribution (RESPA-compliant) and any kickback structure (which we will not build).

Fair housing. Title VIII, HUD's 2023 amendments, and state fair-housing laws apply to advertising, lead routing, audience targeting, and algorithmic matching. We document matching logic, audit inputs, and avoid proxies for protected characteristics in any recommendation surface.

MLS license terms. Every MLS has display rules, refresh windows, attribution requirements, and consequences for violation. We coordinate with the brokerage's MLS administrator on the data license and build the integration to those terms.

2024 NAR settlement. Buyer-broker compensation now requires a written agreement with the buyer prior to showings, and MLS display of buyer-broker compensation has changed. We build the buyer representation agreement workflow into the funnel and capture compensation data cleanly.

TCPA. Prior express written consent for marketing calls and texts, DNC list scrubbing, time-of-day windows, revocation handling, and logged consent state at time of capture. We do not build automated outbound texting without these controls.

State brokerage rules. State real estate commission rules vary widely on advertising, disclosure, supervision of unlicensed assistants, and the use of team names. We build flexible disclosure and supervision capture so the brokerage's compliance officer can tune the surface per state.

GLBA Safeguards Rule. Brokerages collecting financial information during the lead-to-transaction flow are non-bank financial institutions under the 2023 FTC amendments. Our builds align with the rule by default.

Next.js 15 or 16 with React 19 and TypeScript for the web layer — the App Router's mix of server-rendered listing pages, dynamic search, and route-level caching is genuinely excellent for property portals. Postgres on Neon or Supabase as the system of record. Prisma or Drizzle as the ORM. For MLS or IDX integration, RESO Web API where the MLS supports it, with a Trestle, Spark, or BridgeAPI adapter behind a normalized internal schema so swapping MLS targets does not require a rewrite.

DocuSign or Dotloop for the e-signature workflow. Stripe for any payment flow (earnest money deposits via Plaid bank transfer, ACH rent collection for property management). Resend or Postmark for transactional email. Auth via Clerk or Auth0 with MFA on the agent and brokerage admin surfaces. Sentry for error reporting with PII redaction. Logging via Better Stack or Datadog. Hosting on Vercel for the web tier with edge caching on listing-detail pages.

Three patterns recur. First, lead routing gets built without TCPA consent capture. A brokerage launches a beautiful landing page, starts capturing leads, and discovers that the automated SMS responder is firing without documented consent. Class-action plaintiffs find this kind of thing fast. The fix is to capture explicit prior express written consent at intake and store the consent state on the lead record.

Second, MLS integrations get built without checking the license terms. The data is technically accessible via Spark or RESO Web API, but the brokerage's MLS license restricts redistribution or requires attribution that the build did not include. Some MLSes have issued cease-and-desist letters within weeks. Read the data license before writing the integration. Better yet, loop the brokerage's MLS administrator in at the kickoff call.

Third, the 2024 NAR settlement workflow gets bolted on instead of designed in. Buyer representation agreements end up as a paper form sent over email. The brokerage's compliance officer cannot prove a written agreement existed before the showing. Build the buyer-representation flow into the funnel itself — captured at first qualified-buyer interaction, signed before the showing, archived with the transaction.