Proof
- Since 2015
- shipping production real estate and PropTech software
- RaftLabs delivery record
- 4.9/5
- average client rating across delivered projects
- Clutch, verified reviews
- Fixed price
- scope and cost agreed in writing before any development starts
- Every RaftLabs engagement
Generic software treats a property sale or let like any other deal. It doesn't know that an offer has conditions, that a chain status affects every transaction in it, or that a lease renewal has a statutory notice period your system needs to track.
Custom real estate software is built around your specific transaction flow: the stages, the compliance requirements, the portals your clients use, and the operational workflows your team actually runs. Not a general business tool configured to approximate real estate.
According to Deloitte's 2024 Commercial Real Estate Outlook, 61% of commercial real estate firms still rely on legacy core technology infrastructure. For agencies and property managers, that dependency shows up as manual re-keying between systems, missed compliance deadlines, and inbound call volume that a purpose-built platform would have eliminated.
For AI specifically (automated valuations, lead scoring, document extraction from leases and contracts), see our AI for real estate service. For automating the routine operational workflows (lead routing, listing syndication, rent reminders, maintenance scheduling), see real estate automation. This page covers the broader platform build.
Capabilities
What we build
01Property management platforms
End-to-end property management covering the full tenancy lifecycle: application and referencing, tenancy agreement generation, deposit registration, rent collection, automated arrears escalation, maintenance intake and contractor assignment, and compliance certificate scheduling. Tenant portal included so routine queries are self-served without calling the office.
- Built with
- GoCardless · Stripe · TDS/DPS/mydeposits
02Real estate CRM for agencies
CRM built around the property transaction lifecycle, not a generic sales pipeline: viewing scheduling with post-viewing feedback capture, offer management with chain status visible at a glance, pipeline reporting by negotiator and branch, and match-alerting that pairs new instructions to registered applicants. All in a single interface, not spreadsheets and a shared inbox.
03Listing management and portal syndication
Centralised property data management with direct API integration to the major portals. A listing published once pushes to all configured portals, with price changes, status updates, and media refreshes propagating automatically. Portal-specific field validation is built in, since each portal has different mandatory fields and character limits.
- Built with
- Rightmove · Zoopla · Zillow · Domain · REA Group
04Tenant and buyer portals
Self-service portals that handle the routine queries driving inbound call volume: application status, lease document access, rent schedules, and maintenance submission with photo upload for tenants; viewing feedback, offer and chain status, and solicitor milestones for buyers. White-labelled to your agency brand across mobile and desktop.
Document and milestone management for sales and lettings transactions: configurable stage checklists, document request and collection, e-signature for tenancy agreements and contracts, chain visibility across linked transactions, and automated status updates to all parties as milestones complete.
- Built with
- DocuSign · Adobe Sign
06PropTech product development
Full custom PropTech products built from zero: fractional investment and crowdfunding platforms, commercial lease management, short-term rental management, build-to-rent resident apps, and property development sales tools. Fixed cost, full source code ownership, no third-party platform dependency.
Why us
Why teams choose RaftLabs
01Senior engineers build what they scope
The engineers who assess your problem also build the solution. No bait-and-switch, no offshore handoff after the contract is signed. The team you meet in week 1 ships in week 12.
02Fixed price before development starts
We scope the work, calculate the cost, and lock it in writing before any development starts. A scope change is a change request: priced, agreed, or dropped. It never absorbs into the project and appears on the final invoice.
03Shipping production software since 2015
Clients include Vodafone, T-Mobile, Aldi, Nike, Cisco, and Lockheed Martin. Track record across AI, SaaS, mobile, automation, and enterprise platforms in healthcare, fintech, logistics, and hospitality.
04Compliance built in from the start
GDPR, tenancy deposit protection, and AML checks: compliance is scoped in week 1, not retrofitted before launch. We have shipped GDPR-compliant products for UK and European markets, and we build jurisdiction-specific tenancy compliance for the UK, US, and Australian lettings markets.
What does your current property workflow look like on a bad day?
Tell us the workflow, the tools you're using now, and where things break. We'll design the platform and give you a fixed cost.
We have not published a multi-branch agency or lettings platform, so here is the nearest real delivery, told straight. City Break Apartments is a serviced-apartment operator in Dublin. The overlap with real estate software is direct: guest and resident self-service, smart-lock access control, a booking and listing flow, and staff hours lost to manual coordination.
We built the booking website and the mobile app, then wired both into RMS Cloud so availability and reservations stayed in one place instead of drifting apart across systems. Keyless entry ran on 250 OmniTec Bluetooth locks, so a guest checked in from their phone rather than collecting a key from a person.
The hard part was not the app. It was the lock estate. Bluetooth pairing, battery state, and offline fallback all had to work when a guest arrived at 1am with nobody on site, so we built the access flow to fail safe rather than assume a clean signal. If we did it again, we would model the locks and their failure states before writing a line of the booking flow, not alongside it. That single ordering decision was the difference between a check-in that works at 1am and a support call.
The result: self check-ins grew from fewer than ten a week to more than seventy, and direct revenue rose as bookings shifted off third-party channels onto the operator's own site.
Delivery proof
- growth in resident self check-ins after app launch
- 7x
- City Break Apartments, Dublin
- rise in direct booking revenue
- 25%
- bookings shifted off third-party channels
- staff hours per week saved on manual coordination
- 20+
- front-desk and check-in operations
- OmniTec Bluetooth locks activated for keyless entry
- 250
- integrated with RMS Cloud
Read the full City Break Apartments build
How we work
From workflow mapping to live platform
- Step 01
01Workflow and compliance mapping
We start by documenting your property workflow: the transaction types, the stages, the compliance requirements for your jurisdiction, and the portals and systems you need to integrate with. Real estate software fails when it's built to a generic template instead of the specific deal flow and legal requirements of your market. This phase produces a specification your team reviews and signs off before any development begins.
- Step 02
02Portal and system integrations scoped
Listing portal integrations (Rightmove, Zillow, Domain), payment integrations (GoCardless, Stripe), e-signature (DocuSign, Adobe Sign), accounting (Xero, QuickBooks), and CRM connections are all scoped at the start. Integration requirements often affect the architecture decisions, a platform needing real-time Rightmove syndication and direct debit collection is built differently from one needing only listing management. We identify every integration dependency before the build starts so they're designed in, not bolted on.
- Step 03
03Phased build with working software every 2 weeks
Development runs in 2-week sprints. You see working software at the end of each sprint, not a demo environment, but functional features against your actual data model. Core platform first (the workflow that drives the most operational pain), then portals and integrations, then reporting and analytics. Compliance requirements built in at each sprint, not deferred. You review and approve before the next sprint begins.
- Step 04
04Launch and handover
Production deployment with monitoring and alerting configured. Staff training and onboarding documentation covering the features your team will use daily. Full source code handover: the platform, the infrastructure configuration, the integration credentials. No vendor lock-in, no ongoing dependency on us to keep the system running. Post-launch support available as a separate retainer if needed.
Ready to replace the spreadsheets and the shared inbox?
Tell us your portfolio size, your current tools, and what's breaking. We'll scope the platform and give you a fixed cost.
We are not tied to one framework. We pick the stack that fits your portfolio size, your integration requirements, and your handover needs, then document every choice so any competent engineering team can maintain it. The technologies we reach for most often on real estate builds:
| Layer | Technologies we use | Where it fits |
|---|
| Frontend | React, Next.js, TypeScript, Mapbox, Google Maps, Tailwind CSS | Listing search, map-based property views, agent dashboards, and tenant portals |
| Backend | Node.js, NestJS, Python, FastAPI | Transaction logic, syndication services, and rent collection workflows |
| Databases | PostgreSQL, PostGIS, Redis | Property and portfolio data, geospatial search, and caching for fast listing queries |
| Integrations | MLS and portal feeds (Rightmove, Zoopla, Zillow, Domain), Stripe, GoCardless, DocuSign, Adobe Sign, Xero, QuickBooks | Listing syndication, payments and direct debit, e-signature, and accounting |
| Cloud and DevOps | AWS, Google Cloud, Docker, CI/CD | Containerised, production-grade deployment with monitoring and alerting |
The rule holds at every layer: no proprietary frameworks that lock you in, and no stack we cannot hand to your team on day one. Geospatial features (map search, radius queries, boundary matching) run on PostGIS rather than a bolt-on service, and portal syndication is built against each portal's own feed specification, not a generic connector.
We price by project, not by the hour. Most teams start with the one workflow that hurts most, a tenant portal, a listing tool, or the CRM, and grow the platform from there. After a scoping session you get a fixed quote with a defined scope, timeline, and price, so you know the number before development starts.
| Project type | Cost range |
|---|
| Focused single-function platform: tenant portal, viewing management CRM, or listing management tool | $40,000-$80,000 |
| Full property management platform: tenant portal, rent collection, maintenance, financial reporting, and landlord portal | $80,000-$150,000 |
| Full-stack agency platform: CRM, listing management, portal syndication, transaction management, and client reporting | Scoped per build |
What pushes cost up: the number of portal and MLS integrations, direct debit and payment collection, jurisdiction-specific compliance, and the complexity of your deal flow. What keeps it down: a narrow first scope focused on the workflow driving the most operational pain, clean existing data, and managed cloud services early on. We scope every platform before pricing it, and all projects run at a fixed cost agreed before development starts.
| Capability | Off-the-shelf CRM or portal tool | Platform built for your deal flow |
|---|
| Transaction model | Generic contacts, companies, and deals | Viewings, offers, chains, and the real status transitions of a sale or let |
| Chain tracking | Not modelled; run on a spreadsheet on the side | Linked transactions above and below a sale, with alerts when a chain link reports a problem |
| Portal syndication | Manual re-entry, or a paid connector per portal | Direct Rightmove, Zoopla, Zillow, and Domain feeds; publish once, propagate everywhere |
| Compliance | Bolted on per market, or left to the user | Deposit schemes, AML, and right-to-rent scoped into the data model for your jurisdiction |
| Data and roadmap | Export what the vendor allows; wait on their backlog | You own the data model and extend the platform without asking permission |
- Portal field and format mismatches
- Each portal has different mandatory fields, character limits, and status classifications. A feed that validates for Rightmove can reject at Zoopla. We validate against each portal's own specification before publish, so a listing does not silently fail to appear.
- Deposit-scheme and compliance drift
- Tenancy deposit rules, right-to-rent, and Material Information requirements change, and a hard-coded rule ages badly. We keep jurisdiction rules configurable rather than baked into the transaction logic, so a regulatory change is an update, not a rebuild.
- Keyless and hardware edge cases
- Smart locks fail in ways software does not: dead batteries, dropped Bluetooth, no signal at 1am. We learned this on a real build, and now design access flows to degrade safely, with a fallback that still lets a guest or tenant in.
- Migration data loss
- Moving years of tenancy, viewing, and offer history off spreadsheets and a shared inbox is where launches slip. We migrate and reconcile the full record before go-live, so the platform opens complete rather than half-populated.
- Chain-status staleness
- A chain view is only useful if it is current. We build the alerting so a stalled link surfaces to the negotiator, rather than sitting quietly until a completion date is missed.
Key Insight
Where real estate software is heading: AI moving from a bolt-on to the default layer. Lease and contract abstraction that reads a signed PDF and populates the renewal and escalation fields, valuation and lead-scoring models trained on your own deal history, and listing copy drafted from the property record. We build the data model clean enough that these sit on top of your platform when you want them, rather than forcing a rebuild. For the AI side specifically, see our AI for real estate service.
