Our feature roadmap is always crammed full of features. In this post we’ll take a step back and look back at some of the larger features you can expect in Property Hive during 2019 and where we’re heading.
Since we started Property Hive over 3 years ago the goal has always been to create a fully-functionality estate agency CRM that didn’t just power websites, but that gave estate agents using WordPress all of the features you’d find in larger software packages such as Jupix, Expert Agent and the like.
We are confident that Property Hive is great at the website side of things now. You just have to take a quick look at our estate agency website showcase to see some of the great sites people have created using it.
Although powering websites will still be our priority, now it’s time to take it to the next level and start to implement some more advanced functionality that will benefit agencies in their day-to-day operations.
Zoopla Real-Time Feed
We have supported the Rightmove real-time feed since the very early days of Property Hive. Zoopla has also had a real-time feed available for some time, however we hadn’t previously looked to support it because it’s a lot more complicated than Rightmove’s, and they still supported the BLM format which worked well.
We recently learnt that Zoopla are stopping support for the BLM format for new agents so our priority over the forthcoming weeks is to support their real-time format. As mentioned, it is more complicated, it does have different requirements, but we know we need to get this in place seeing how many agents wish to feed to them from WordPress.
Document Generation
We recently announced our upcoming document generation add on. For more information on this and for a full list of features you can expect to see read our post here.
Property Performance Reports
Keeping vendors and landlords up-to-date on how their property is performing is important. We’ll be introducing property performance reports that will contain a whole host of information including number of views on the website, how many enquiries have been received, viewings booked and much more. You’ll be able to generate these performance reports and print or email them accordingly.
Appraisals
We’ll be adding the ability to manage appraisals to the core Property Hive plugin. You’ll be able to record the date and time of the appraisal, who will be attending, the status and much more.
If instructed you’ll then be able to convert this appraisal to a standard property and instantly put it onto the market, your website, and property portals.
Chain Management
Using this new add on you’ll be able to record the full offer and chain management of each property, including key dates, solicitors and more.
Full Data Migration
For estate agents already using third party software who wish to move to Property Hive, we’ll be adding the ability to import all of your data, including any contacts, appraisals, viewings, offers, sales, tasks and more.
You’ll be able to do this yourself through a range of step-by-step wizards, however we’ll also be launching a new data migration service where we’ll do any migrations on your behalf providing you can obtain the data required.
Calendar/Diary With Export Functionality
A key feature for any estate agent is some form of diary system. We’ll be adding a calendar within Property Hive where you can see all past and future events, as well as looking at the ability to export these to other popular calendar applications such as Outlook and Google Calendar should you have you’re own preferred calendar system. A lot of this depends on the technology available but we’ll keep you updated on this once we know more.
Regular Email Reports
As the owner or manager of an estate agency you want to know what’s going on within your business. We understand this and will be introducing regular email reports that contain all of the key information you need to know about.
We’ll also be introducing regular negotiator email reports so each user can see what they have coming up that day or week. You’ll be able to choose the contents of these emails, as well as how often they are sent.
Scheduled Contact
A vendor kept in the loop is a happy vendor. That’s why we’ll be introducing scheduled contact whereby you can be automatically notified to speak to a vendor every few days.
SMS Integration
Get straight into the palm (or pocket) of your users with our upcoming SMS integration. We’ll be integrating with third party SMS experts Twilio and will allow a range of SMS notifications to be sent out. This includes new property matches for your applicants, viewing confirmations, reminders, and more.
Zapier Integration
Zapier allows you to take data and events within Property Hive and push them out to a whole range of third party applications. Want to sync your applicants with Mailchimp? Not a problem. Want to automatically maintain a Google Spreadsheet of all your properties? Easy. How about export your data to Salesforce? There are so many possibilities available using Zapier and we can’t wait to start on this to open up your data so you can use it where you like.
Eagle Eye
Top secret. More on this soon but if you’re the owner or manager of an agency, you’re going to love this, we promise!
2019 is going to be big step forward for Property Hive. We hope you’re as excited as we are, and that you’ll join us on this journey. As always, we’ll post as each feature becomes available so watch this space. In the meantime why not check out our feature roadmap so you can keep track of the functionality you’re most excited about:
