Real Estate Website Developer

# DC Commercial — Website Rebuild Brief ## Overview DC Commercial is a commercial real estate agency in Toowoomba, QLD (sales, leasing, property management), covering listings across the wider Darling Downs region — including Toowoomba, Warwick, Dalby, Millmerran, Miles and Pittsworth. Our current website (dccommercial.com.au) is outdated and hard to navigate. We want a modern, fast, filterable property-listings website. **A working front-end prototype is attached (`dc-commercial-portal.html`) — open it in any browser.** It shows the exact look, layout, and functionality we want. Please treat it as the design and functional spec. **The final site must run the same way, and match the search/browse experience of realcommercial.com.au and commercialrealestate.com.au** — photo carousels on listing cards, a working filterable search, and map-based search — not a simpler or scaled-back version of it. It currently uses sample placeholder listings and a lightweight demo storage layer — the real build needs proper backend infrastructure (see "Data & backend" below). ## Brand - Colours: black (#1E1E1E), green (#35B728), white — no gold, no other accent colours - Fonts: Archivo Expanded (headings), Inter (body text), IBM Plex Mono (prices, stats, data) - Tone: clean, modern, professional — not flashy ## Core pages / features (all shown in the prototype) 1. **Homepage** — hero section with a live interactive map in the background, keyword search bar 2. **Listings grid** — filterable by: listing status (sale/lease), property type, price range, size range (sqm); sortable by price/size/newest 3. **Map view** — toggle between grid and an interactive map showing every filtered listing as a pin; clicking a pin opens that listing 4. **Listing detail page** — photo gallery/carousel at the top (multiple photos, thumbnail strip, next/prev arrows — like realcommercial.com.au), full property info (price, size, zoning, year built), features list, location map, enquiry form 5. **Enquiry form** — captures name, email, phone, message per listing 6. **Agency dashboard** — internal-only view showing web views and enquiry counts per listing, with the ability to open the full enquiry details for each — **must be behind a proper staff login**, not public like the prototype ## Data & backend requirements - We use **Reapit** (formerly Agentbox) as our CRM. Please quote: - **Option A:** listings are entered/managed manually in whatever CMS you build - **Option B:** listings sync automatically from Reapit via their API (or via Reapit's own website product, AgentPoint, which is built for exactly this) — we'd prefer this if it's not a large extra cost, since it avoids double data entry - Every enquiry form submission must be: - Stored in a real, private database (not just emailed, and not public/shared storage like the prototype demo) - Emailed to our office in real time - Searchable/exportable later (e.g., CSV export, or ideally pushed into Reapit as a lead) - We want to own the database, code, domain and hosting outright — no "leasing" a site we lose access to if we stop paying a monthly fee ## Spam protection (important) Our current site gets a lot of unwanted sales-pitch submissions through the enquiry form. The new form must include: - A honeypot field or equivalent invisible bot-trap - reCAPTCHA v3 (invisible) or hCaptcha - Server-side validation on all fields (not just JavaScript/client-side) - Basic rate-limiting per IP address - Ideally, a way to auto-flag submissions containing common spam-pitch keywords (e.g. "SEO", "marketing services", "backlinks", "web design") so we can bulk-ignore them — please suggest your best approach here, since some of this is genuine human spam, not bots, and no captcha will stop that ## Content & AI/Search Visibility (important) We want DC Commercial to become the go-to cited source when people search or ask ChatGPT/Google about commercial property in Toowoomba — not just a listings site. This has two requirements: **Content (we will provide/approve the copy, but the site must support it):** - Suburb/precinct guide pages (Toowoomba City, Torrington, Glenvale, Kearneys Spring, Harristown, Warwick, Dalby, Millmerran, Miles, Pittsworth, etc.) - An FAQ page answering real buyer/tenant questions (e.g. "what does outgoings mean," "how much does it cost to lease a warehouse in Toowoomba") - A commercial property glossary - A Toowoomba economic overview page (airport, bypass, hospital, university, etc.) - A market update page we can refresh regularly **Technical (this is on you to build correctly):** - All page content must be present in the actual server-rendered HTML — not injected only by client-side JavaScript after load, since some AI crawlers don't fully execute JS - Schema.org structured data: LocalBusiness / RealEstateAgent markup site-wide, FAQPage markup on the FAQ page, Article markup on guide/market-update pages - `robots.txt` must explicitly allow AI crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended, PerplexityBot) — do not use a template that blocks them by default - Clean, human-readable URLs per suburb/topic, plus an XML sitemap - Fast page load — this affects both crawling and normal SEO **Getting actually noticed (this is the part that's easy to skip):** - Submit the sitemap to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools at launch, and actively request indexing rather than waiting for crawlers to find it on their own - Set up/claim our Google Business Profile and keep it consistent with the site (name, address, phone — matching exactly) — this is a major trust signal for both Google and AI answer engines - List DC Commercial in relevant local/industry directories (chamber of commerce, real estate industry directories, Toowoomba business directories) — being linked to and mentioned elsewhere is a big factor in whether AI systems treat a site as an authoritative source - Please note in your proposal that this takes weeks to months to show results, not instantly at launch — set our expectations accordingly ## Analytics & Bot/Crawler Visibility (important) On top of the per-listing views/enquiries dashboard already specified above, the site needs standard traffic and crawler analytics: - **Google Analytics 4** installed site-wide for visitor traffic and behaviour - **Google Search Console** set up and verified, with our sitemap submitted, so we can see indexing status, crawl errors, and what search queries we're appearing for - **Visibility into AI crawler activity** (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, CCBot, Google-Extended, etc.) — e.g. via server/access log monitoring or a bot-analytics tool — so we can confirm these are actually visiting and indexing our content, not just technically "allowed" in robots.txt - Please tell us which of these you'll set up and hand over admin access for (not just leave connected to your own account) ## Security & Ownership Protection (important) We've had spam problems on our current site and want the new build hardened against both spam and being compromised or held hostage. Please confirm you will: - Set up the domain, hosting account, and any admin logins under **our** ownership (our email addresses, our billing) — not the developer's personal account. We will grant you collaborator/admin access to build and maintain it, not the reverse - Force HTTPS/SSL site-wide - Put the Agency Insights dashboard and any CMS/admin area behind a proper login with two-factor authentication, on a non-guessable URL (not just "hidden" like the prototype) - Set up automatic, regular backups of the database and site files, stored somewhere we control - Keep any CMS/plugins/frameworks used on a supported, patched version, and tell us who is responsible for applying security updates after handover - Use strong, unique credentials for hosting, domain registrar, and CMS logins — no shared or reused passwords - Apply basic rate-limiting/firewall protection against brute-force login attempts, in addition to the enquiry-form spam protections listed above ## Image Quality & Handling (important — non-negotiable) Photos on our current site look noticeably worse than the same listings look on realcommercial.com.au/Domain — this is almost always an image-pipeline problem, not different source photos. **Listing photos on the new site must look at least as sharp and clear as they do on realcommercial.com.au and commercialrealestate.com.au — this is a required outcome, not a nice-to-have.** Please ensure: - We will supply original high-resolution photos per listing; the site must not further compress or downscale them more than necessary - Serve properly sized, responsive images (different file sizes for mobile vs desktop — srcset or equivalent), not one oversized file scaled down by the browser - Use modern image formats (WebP/AVIF with fallback) for a good balance of sharpness and load speed - No double-compression — if photos already come optimized from the photographer, don't re-compress them harder - Gallery/carousel images should open at full quality on click/expand, not just show the same low-res thumbnail enlarged - Please confirm in your proposal how you'll test/verify photo sharpness before calling this done ## Hosting & handover - Our domain (dccommercial.com.au) is currently registered through Melbourne IT/Netregistry, with nameservers pointing to Netregistry — this does not need to move, but you'll need to confirm whether current hosting can support the backend/database this build needs, or whether we should host elsewhere and simply repoint DNS - We want full ownership of the code, domain, hosting account and database outright — no "leasing" a site we lose access to if we stop paying a monthly fee, and no hosting/domain account left in the developer's name after handover - Please specify what hosting platform you'd use, the ongoing cost, and confirm the handover process for transferring account ownership to us at project completion - Quote an optional ongoing maintenance/support retainer separately from the build cost ## Budget guidance We understand a custom build of this kind typically runs $10,000–$30,000 AUD with an Australian agency, but we're open to competitive quotes from experienced offshore developers, particularly anyone with real estate / property-listings site experience. ## What to include in your proposal - Relevant past work — ideally real estate, property listings, or directory/marketplace-style sites - Whether you can integrate with the Reapit API directly, or whether you'd recommend we get a separate quote from AgentPoint (Reapit's own website product) instead - Your specific approach to spam prevention (see above) - Fixed price or hourly rate, and an estimated timeline - Ongoing hosting/maintenance cost, separate from the build ## Attachments - `dc-commercial-portal.html` — working prototype (open in a browser)