iOS, Android and an Admin Panel for Your Real Estate Agency

Nobody can tell whether that apartment came from the owner or from the agency next door, and the same listing sits on three agents' phones at three different prices. A buyer asks “what else have you got?” over WhatsApp while the agent digs through folders. A real estate app pulls the portfolio and every buyer request into a single record.

How many separate apps does this need?

  • 01

    Buyer and Tenant App (iOS + Android)

    Draw an area on the map to search within it, filter by number of rooms, heating type, floor and service charge, save favourites and searches, get notified when a matching listing appears, watch 360-degree tours and request a viewing appointment.

  • 02

    Agent Field App (iOS + Android)

    Open a draft listing at the door, shoot photos on the phone with automatic watermarking and ordering, track when listing agreements expire, get alerts when a listing matches a buyer request, and log call notes and viewing reports.

  • 03

    Agency Admin Panel (Web)

    Shared listing pool and sharing rules, agent commission and payout calculation, feeds to listing portals, duplicate listing detection, a document archive for title deeds and DASK (Turkey's compulsory earthquake insurance) policies, and commission invoice tracking.

What the app includes

  • Portfolio record keyed by parcel and unit number
  • Countdown to the end of the exclusive listing agreement
  • Owner report link: views, saves and viewings so far
  • Off-market listings visible only to selected agents
  • Buyer request card: budget, down payment, mortgage need, move-in date
  • Price history log with a separate instant price-drop alert
  • Post-viewing objection reason: price, floor, heating, layout
  • Photos tagged by room, with a required cover shot
  • Heating type, monthly dues, occupancy permit and mortgage-eligibility fields
  • Co-broke commission split defined between two offices
  • Manager approval before publishing, with a price floor check
  • Building/complex record: shared details updated once for all units

State of the sector

Buyers start their search on the big portals, where the agency's brand disappears beneath the listing headline. As featured-placement and promotion fees climb, the only asset an agency really owns is the portfolio and the buyer requests it has gathered itself. An agency without its own app leaves the client relationship on the portal with every home it sells, then pays the same advertising fee again to reach the next buyer. Agencies with deep local portfolios, meanwhile, can reach buyers through neighbourhood-level alerts and saved searches before they ever visit a portal — and that is where the real competitive pressure comes from.

Metrics that matter here

  • Time to publish a new listing — If the listing is ready the moment details and photos are entered in the field, the property reaches buyers in hours rather than days.
  • Sale/let rate per viewing — When filters and request matching work properly, agents stop taking unsuitable buyers to properties and wasted viewings drop.
  • Interested parties per listing — Once favourites, saved searches and appointment requests land in one record, it becomes clear which listing is getting no interest and is priced too high.
  • Listing agreement renewal rate — Expiry reminders and a listing performance summary sent to the owner keep the property with your agency.

Common mistakes in this sector

  • Building a miniature copy of a portal Imitating a nationwide listing pool makes your own portfolio look sparse and the app feel empty. The right move is to lead with local depth: neighbourhood-level new listing alerts, price change tracking and direct access to an agent.
  • Leaving photography to a later phase In property, the decision is made on the photos; dark, cramped shots make the app itself look cheap. A shooting guide, a mandatory cover photo, a minimum resolution check and automatic watermarking all belong in the first release.
  • Showing the full address openly on the listing A listing that shows the house number sends buyers straight to the owner and the commission evaporates. Location should be shown approximately, with the full address revealed only on the agent's side after the appointment is confirmed.
  • Drowning agents in long forms A listing form with twenty required fields never gets filled in on site; the agent goes back to WhatsApp and the data scatters. It should take three fields to open a draft at the door, with the listing completed back at the office and missing items flagged as warnings before it goes live.

Regulation and compliance

Real estate activity in Turkey falls under the Regulation on Real Estate Trade: the trading licence, the designated responsible agent, the written listing agreement with the owner and the maximum commission rate all have to be reflected in the app's listing and payout flows. Commission collection carries an obligation to issue an e-Fatura/e-Arşiv document (Turkey's mandatory e-invoicing system). ID, title deed and contact details belonging to owners and buyers are personal data under KVKK (Turkey's data protection law, aligned with GDPR); a privacy notice, explicit consent, role-based access, view logging and retention periods must all be defined. Because TAKBİS (Turkey's land registry information system) queries are not directly open to agencies, title deed documents are archived through user upload.

The real challenges in this sector

  • The same apartment appearing as three separate listings

    When one property is given to several agencies, the system shows it as three separate portfolio entries. A deduplication layer builds a signature from the land registry block and parcel numbers, the independent unit number, gross and net square metres, floor and aspect, then proposes merges above a similarity threshold. The manager sees the clash, picks the master record and the others are linked to it; commission splits are calculated from that link.

  • Balancing location privacy against map accuracy

    If the full address shows on the listing, the buyer turns up at the door and the agent is cut out. In the public listing view the location is shown as a point offset within a fixed-radius circle; the real coordinates open in the agent app once the appointment is confirmed. The offset must stay constant per listing, otherwise the pin jumps every time the screen refreshes and users assume the listing is fake.

  • Uploading photos from an empty flat with weak signal

    Agents usually shoot 30-40 photos in an empty apartment where coverage drops. Photos need to be resized on the device at capture time, queued, and uploaded in chunks once a connection returns. The cover photo uploads first so the listing appears as a draft, and the rest completes in the background. The listing must not go live until the upload finishes; a listing with half its photos devalues the whole portfolio.

  • The flood effect of saved-search alerts

    Push-notifying hundreds of users with a saved “2+1 rental in Kadıköy” search on every new listing gets the app deleted. Matches are batched over short intervals and summarised in a single notification, while strong signals such as a price drop go out separately and immediately. Users choose their own notification frequency, and quiet hours are enforced server-side.

  • Keeping the portfolio at the agency when an agent leaves

    Because agents work from their own phones, the client relationship attaches to the person. Every call log, request and owner contact is written to the agency account; when someone leaves, their access is revoked, listings pass to another agent through a handover flow and the historical notes are preserved. Bulk export sits with the agency manager only — agents cannot download their own list.

Required integrations

  • Listing feeds / XML export to Sahibinden, Hepsiemlak and Emlakjet (Turkish property portals)
  • Maps and address service (satellite view, neighbourhood and street search, draw-to-select area)
  • Appointment reminders over SMS and WhatsApp Business, compliant with KVKK (Turkey's data protection law, aligned with GDPR)
  • e-Fatura/e-Arşiv integration (Turkey's mandatory e-invoicing system) to file commission invoices with GİB (Turkish Revenue Administration)
  • Deposit and prepayment collection plus featured-listing packages via iyzico or PayTR (Turkish payment providers)
  • 360-degree virtual tour and video hosting with an embedded in-app player

Who this page is for

  • Single-office neighbourhood agency with two to four agents

    The priority is not a consumer app but getting the portfolio into one place. Start with the agent field app and the back-office panel; add the buyer app in a second phase once inventory is deep enough.

  • Regional office or small network with several branches

    Cross-branch sharing rules, co-broke splits and duplicate detection belong in scope from day one. Without commission calculation and branch-level permissions in the first release, the data fragments immediately.

  • Newly founded agency, or a developer selling its own project

    With one project or few units, portal feeds matter less. Floor plans, block-and-unit selection, deposit flow and the handover schedule come first; here a buyer app makes sense already in phase one.

A phased plan that splits the budget

  1. 1

    Phase 1 — Agent and back-office core 6-8 hafta

    Delivers the field app for agents plus the back-office panel: portfolio records, photo capture with resilient upload, buyer requests, viewing calendar, listing agreements and document archive. The office runs on this alone, without any consumer app. Internal data has to be clean before anything is published outward.

  2. 2

    Phase 2 — Buyer and tenant app 5-7 hafta

    Adds the iOS and Android consumer app: map search, filters, favourites, saved searches with batched alerts, approximate location display, virtual tours and viewing requests. Because Phase 1 has already filled the portfolio, the app launches with real inventory instead of empty shelves.

  3. 3

    Phase 3 — Portals, commissions and accounting 4-6 hafta

    Turns on portal feeds, duplicate-listing detection, agent commission calculation, co-broke splits, commission invoicing and the link to e-Fatura (Turkey's mandatory e-invoicing system). These rules can only be set up correctly once real listing and sales volume exists.

Typical scope and timeline

Typical scope: buyer app (iOS + Android), agent field app, agency admin panel, map-based search with filters, saved-search alerts, resilient photo upload infrastructure, appointment calendar, listing deduplication, commission and payout calculation, document archive, portal export, e-Fatura connection, UI/UX design, store assets and the release process.

Estimated timeline: 12-18 weeks

Off-the-shelf or custom build?

Topic Off-the-shelf Custom build
Portal feeds and field mapping This is where packaged tools genuinely win: the vendor keeps up with portals' changing field structures, the office does nothing. Custom builds map the fields once; when a portal changes its format, the update falls under your own maintenance scope.
Your own agreement and split rules Packaged tools usually assume one agent, one commission; when the lister and the closer differ, the maths ends up back in a spreadsheet. Co-broke deals, three-way splits, the office share and preserving historical rates are coded to how your office actually works.
Per-agent monthly licence vs one-time build Live on day one and cheap at first; cost scales with headcount and climbs as the team grows or seasonal agents come and go. The build is a heavy upfront investment; afterwards adding agents costs nothing, and recurring spend drops to maintenance, hosting and store fees.
Ownership of portfolio and client data Data sits in the vendor's system; listing fields can usually be exported, but call notes, document archives and photo ordering often do not come along. The database and document store are yours; retention, deletion and access-logging rules follow your own policy under KVKK (Turkey's data protection law).

Sector glossary

Exclusive listing (tek yetki)
The owner assigns the property to a single office under a written agreement. In the app the expiry date, renewal reminder and the performance summary sent to the owner all hang off this agreement.
Parcel and unit number (ada-parsel, bağımsız bölüm)
The official land-registry location and the unit's identity within the building. Used as the immutable key of a portfolio record so the same flat is not entered twice by different agents.
Viewing run (gezdirme)
The field trip where an agent takes a buyer through one or several properties. Viewings per closed deal are the office's most expensive time item; objection reasons are logged at this step.
Listing boosts and showcase slots (doping, vitrin)
Paid promotion packages on listing portals. Unless spend per listing and the requests it produced are tracked in your own app, the budget is spread blind.
Co-broke deal (ortak satış)
A deal closed jointly when one office holds the listing and another brings the buyer. Writing the split into the system beforehand ends the post-sale commission argument.

Frequently asked questions

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