Real estate agency partner
Sharpness Solutions is a digital agency in Oldenburg, Germany, founded in 1999. We build websites for estate agents and property developers where the listings are not typed into the CMS but come in via OpenImmo from the agency software — including images and the mandatory energy-certificate details. Add to that separate enquiry routes for buyers, owners and investors, landing pages on their own domains, and hosting on our own servers in Germany. Phone +49 441 21 21 63 0, Mon–Fri 9:00–16:00 CET.
The patterns repeat because most agent websites are built like ordinary company sites — as if the property stock were editorial content. It is not: it lives in the agency software, and it changes daily.
The agency software holds the listings; the website is retyped by hand. So a house that sold weeks ago is still online, and new offers appear days late. Across several branches that is no longer a question of diligence — it is a question of architecture.
One visitor wants to buy a house, another wants theirs valued, a third is running the numbers on an investment. If all three land in the same contact form, every reply starts with follow-up questions — and some prospects never write at all.
Every listing needs the mandatory energy-certificate details. Enter them by hand and they will eventually be forgotten; import them automatically and you need an import that notices when a value is missing from the export, instead of silently leaving it out.
The listings sit on the portals, and the agency's own website answers no concrete search question. Whoever searches for an agent or a valuation in their town finds the competition — not because it is better, but because it answers that question on a page of its own.
For BS Immobilienkontor, an estate agency with four branches in north-west Germany, we built the WordPress site including the OpenImmo integration. The listings — around two hundred active offers — are not typed into WordPress; they come in from the agency software, with images, key data and the mandatory energy-certificate details. Whatever is marked as sold in the office disappears from the site on the next import run. The contact routes are separated by intent, because a buyer, an owner and an investor have nothing in common except the page they land on.
For AMR Wohnbau, a residential developer, project marketing runs on a WordPress site with fixed building blocks for project presentation, image gallery, key data and the enquiry route. The company publishes new projects itself as soon as they are ready for marketing — there is no development step between the decision and the publication.
Both projects are documented in our work section; the real-estate sector page describes the thinking behind them: the website is an output channel, not a second data store.
OpenImmo is the XML exchange format of the German real-estate industry. Practically every agency software exports it: an XML file with the property data plus images, usually delivered as a ZIP via FTP or SFTP into an agreed directory. Setting up an integration means agreeing the delivery path, telling full and partial deliveries apart, evaluating the action type per listing, catching empty deliveries — and logging every run, so it stays traceable what was imported and when.
We define the field mapping against a real export, not against the manual: property types, marketing types, area fields and the energy-certificate values sit in different places depending on the software. That is why every project starts with a test export from your agency software. You then get a written assessment of what maps directly, what needs mapping work and where values are missing.
If a mandatory value is missing from the export, it shows up in the log instead of silently producing an incomplete listing. The import does not decide whether a property belongs online — the data in the back office decides that.
The first step towards better enquiries costs no software, only structure: one enquiry route per intent. A buyer names the property and their timeframe, an owner describes their property for a first valuation, an investor asks differently from both. Enquiries arrive in a form you can actually work with — no round of follow-up questions.
The second step is storage: enquiries land not only in a mailbox but also in a searchable overview with status and notes. An email that ends up in spam or gets deleted by accident is then no longer a lost lead. This is exactly how we run our own website.
If your needs grow beyond that — several branches, matching prospects to properties, analysis over years — we build lead and customer management as custom software. Our ongoing CRM project in the vehicle trade shows what that looks like: dedicated objects for customer, case and stock, duplicate detection across several sources, roles and permissions. We do not sell an off-the-shelf agent CRM — if an existing product fits better, we say so.
An agency website answers many questions — a landing page answers one, but completely: the valuation in a specific town, the specialist field, the individual development project. We run such pages as part of the website or on their own domain; additional domains serve the same content and point to the main address via canonical links, so visibility accumulates in one place instead of spreading thin.
Where structured property data exists, landing pages can also be generated from the data — one page per concrete search question. Structure, values and mandatory details come from the database; a language model only handles the enrichment, such as turning attribute lists into readable paragraphs. Without a data basis no sentence is produced, and whether a page appears is decided by the state of the data — not by the model. Our page on AI-assisted landing pages explains the details.
We handle operations and maintenance on our own servers in Germany: updates, backups, monitoring and TLS, with maintenance agreements in four tiers.
Process
A real OpenImmo export from your agency software says more about the effort than any preliminary talk. We review it and tell you what maps directly, what needs mapping work and where values are missing — in writing, even if you commission someone else afterwards.
We look at what runs in your business: which agency software, which CMS, which portals, how many branches. And the question of who records a property first and which fields are maintained there. You receive the result in writing, even if you do not commission us afterwards.
A real OpenImmo export says more about the effort than any preliminary talk. We review it and tell you what maps directly, what needs mapping work and where values are missing. If an integration does not pay off for your stock, we say that too.
The property pages follow a fixed order — profile, key data, description, images, location, enquiry — plus the separate enquiry routes per intent and a fixed place for the mandatory energy-certificate details. Design starts once the structure holds.
Built on WordPress or TYPO3, with the OpenImmo import set up including a log per run, and test runs against your real stock. Acceptance is measured against the data from your agency software, not against a sample record.
Maintenance, updates and hosting on our own servers in Germany. After that, growth where it pays off: landing pages for individual towns or topics, dedicated domains, analysis of the enquiry routes.
OpenImmo is the XML exchange format of the German real-estate industry. A delivery consists of an XML file with the property data and the associated images, usually as a ZIP via FTP or SFTP in an agreed directory. Practically every agency software can export it.
Very likely. OpenImmo is the industry standard, and where a standard exists we use it instead of rebuilding it. A test export settles it: we review it and tell you in writing what maps directly and where it gets difficult.
We work with both daily. For estate agencies WordPress has proven itself — the OpenImmo integration for BS Immobilienkontor and the AMR Wohnbau website run on it. For larger structures with many editors and approval workflows, TYPO3 is the right choice. We recommend by requirement, not by preference.
The agency software keeps an action type for every listing. When a property is marked as sold in the office, it disappears from the website on the next import run. Nobody has to remember to take anything offline.
From the OpenImmo export. The values are taken over per listing and shown in a fixed place on the property page. If a value is missing from the export, it shows up in the import log instead of silently producing an incomplete listing.
Yes. BS Immobilienkontor runs four branches on one site, with one shared stock from the agency software. Whether a branch additionally gets its own landing page or domain is then a visibility question, not a technical one.
No, and we do not claim it does. Your agency software feeds the portals directly — that stays as it is. Your own website is the channel you own: no portal rules, your own enquiry routes, and visibility for search questions nobody answers on the portals, such as the valuation in your own town.
Yes. We take existing WordPress and TYPO3 sites into maintenance and operations and build on where it pays off — an integration can often be added to an existing site without rebuilding everything.
That depends on your export and your stock — which is why we do not quote a flat rate into the blue. After the test export and system survey you receive a written assessment of scope and effort, which you keep even if you commission someone else.
We do, if you wish: hosting on our own servers in Germany, updates for core and plugins, backups, monitoring and TLS. Maintenance agreements come in four tiers with agreed response times — the tiers are listed on our support page.
Enquiry
Tell us which agency software you use and what the website should do. You will receive a written assessment of integration, effort and open points — even if you commission someone else afterwards.