Real estate · Portals
Enter a listing once, keep it current everywhere
sahibinden, hepsiemlak, emlakjet, your own website… Updating the same flat in five places costs time and leads to the most common complaint of all: a home that is sold but still listed on a portal.
For most estate agencies, portals are an essential shop window. The trouble is not the portals themselves but that each one means separate data entry, separate updates and a separate list of enquiries. As the portfolio grows, that fragmentation becomes the office’s most expensive workload.
This article looks at what goes wrong when you manage listings across several portals, how a “single source” approach fixes it, and what to settle before you connect a portal.
The problemThe hidden cost of managing one listing in many places
Once you are on more than two portals, small slips start to pile up:
Sold, but still listed
The sale closes in one place, but the listing stays up on the other portals for days. Callers ring for nothing and the agency looks unreliable.
Different price, different details
A price cut is made on one portal and forgotten on another. The same flat appears at two prices.
Scattered enquiries
Phone, form and WhatsApp enquiries stay on each portal’s own screen; nobody can tell who has been called back.
The buyer belongs to the portal
Visitors see your listing next to your competitors’, and the enquiry stays in the portal’s records.
A single source: the listing lives in one place and goes everywhere from there
The fix is to keep the listing’s master record in one place: your own panel. Photos, price, features and status are updated there, and your website and the portals read that record from there. A change is made once.
Most portals accept an XML feed for this: you give them an address and they read it at intervals. Some want listings pushed to an API instead. Which is possible depends on the integration the portal offers you.
record: one master
version of each listing
sold listings
left in the feed
official location records
(province · district · neighbourhood)
6 things a good portal connection should do
“We have portal integration” says little on its own. Ask these before you decide:
Sold listings should drop out by themselves
When a listing is marked sold or inactive it should leave the feed. A sold home left on a portal is the complaint estate agencies hear most.
Your edits in the panel should not be overwritten
If you corrected a listing imported from a portal, the next import should not write over your correction; at most, price and status should be updated.
The same listing should never open twice
Matching should use the portal’s listing number, not the title. A listing whose title changes should not turn into a duplicate.
Unchanged listings should not be re-sent
Re-sending the whole portfolio every night strains the portal and hides the listings that really changed.
Locations and features should map correctly
The portal’s “KADIKÖY” should land on Kadıköy in your system, and the portal’s feature names on your features. Anything unmatched should be shown to you.
Errors should be visible
If a listing did not reach a portal, the reason should be written in a log; a listing that silently disappears is the worst case.
Before you connect a portal
Settle these points before switching on a connection to a portal:
- Does the portal read an XML feed, or does it want listings pushed through an API?
- You have the portal’s feed documentation (field names, required fields).
- Your property types and features are mapped to the portal’s equivalents.
- You have tested that sold and expired listings drop out of the feed.
- Form, phone and WhatsApp enquiries from your website land in one list.
- You hold publishing rights for any listing you import from another page.
How this works in OpenHouse
In OpenHouse a listing is a single record in the same panel as your own website. There are two generic ways to connect a portal: an XML feed for the portal to read (field names are set in the panel; sold and inactive listings drop out of it) and pushing listings to the portal’s API over REST. You can also pull listings from a portal’s feed; the import does not overwrite your panel edits, leaves unchanged listings alone and never opens the same listing twice.
For listings you want to bring in one by one there is Listing Import: paste the address of a sahibinden, hepsiemlak, emlakjet or remax listing page and its fields, location, features and photos fill a draft listing. It is intended only for listings you have the right to publish; complying with each portal’s terms of use is the agency’s responsibility.
Form, phone and WhatsApp enquiries from your website land in one list, and buyer requests are matched against your portfolio automatically. On the demo site you can see how the listing list and a listing page look to visitors.
Manage your portfolio from one panel
Listings, projects, agents, enquiries and portal connections in one place, plus your own SEO-friendly real estate website. Let us show you with your own portfolio.
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