Is it just us or did 2022 feel like yet another once-in-a-lifetime year for Canadian real estate? From the largest rate hikes in 40 years to record inflation, it seems like the breakneck growth of last year is finally slowing down.
What isn’t slowing down though is our commitment to building the best real estate website platform. 😉
This year we released over 200 updates, from small bug fixes to major overhauls of our hosting infrastructure!
Let’s dive into everything that was launched and take note of our holiday hours. But first, a RealtyNinja tradition… the annual team collage!
View our previous team collages over the years: 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021.
RealtyNinja 2022 Holiday Hours
We will be closed from Dec 26, 2022 to Jan 01, 2023, and will reopen Jan 02, 2023.
We’ll be monitoring our email inboxes over the holiday break in case of emergencies only. If you have urgent requests or website changes you’d like us to help with before the break please get in touch as soon as you can.
2022 Year In Review
In case you missed it, check out our blog post from July this year that outlined everything we launched in the first half of the year. A few notable items from that post:
- Upgrading RealtyNinja’s core hosting and security architecture
- Better Product Updates via updates.realtyninja.com
- Showing a Custom Success Message after submitting a contact form
- Some much-needed love given to our Listings-Only (IDX) Accounts
- Listing unavailable – special error page
- Show buildings from multiple groups in one widget
- Show agents from multiple groups in one widget
- Improved integration with Top Producer, Reach CRM and others
Since then we’ve completed the revamp of our hosting infrastructure and released more great improvements to our website platform. Here’s a few highlights from the second half of this year:
RealtyNinja’s core hosting and security architecture migrated to AWS
Over the past year-or-so we’ve been carefully moving our entire website platform’s hosting and security infrastructure over to Amazon Web Services (AWS). It’s the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud hosting platform, and pivotal to our ability to continue to provide a high level of service as we grow.
We have now completed that process, and all components are now running on AWS!
By hosting our entire website platform on AWS we’re able to improve and monitor performance in real-time, roll out new improvements faster, and take advantage of the many built-in security features. Win!
You can read about these improvements in more detail here.
Select multiple property types on MLS® searches
The MLS® Search and Quick MLS® Search widgets now allow for multiple property types to be selected!
You can also pre-set multiple property types on your niche MLS® search pages (via widget options on any MLS® search).
We have updated the MLS® searches on all Katana-based websites with this change.
SEO Update: Helping Google Understand Your Website Better
We launched a series of technical updates that will help Google better understand your website, potentially rank better and will result in less SEO errors/recommendations from Google Search Console.
Display listings from all groups (including showing active and sold listings together)
The “Listings” and “Listings Showcase” widgets can now display listings from ALL custom listing groups on your website combined together.
You can even include your sold listings, mixed-in with all active listings!
Check out the links above for details and where to find the new options:
Listings Showcase widget displaying active and sold listings:
Listings widget displaying active and sold listings:
Listing & building photo upload layout improvement
We’ve completely revamped the way listing and building photos are displayed in the backend of your website. The new grid layout allows you to see more items on your screen at once, which makes re-ordering and adding captions much easier.
This is the old layout for reference. Photos were smaller and each item had its own row, which took up a lot of space on your screen and made re-ordering cumbersome.
And a bunch of other product updates…
- Open house data now available for CREA DDF® listings
- Re-import an active listing from the MLS® with one click
- Link to another website from your main navigation menu
- Listing & building photo uploads increased to 50 per batch
- Improvements to Pillar 9™ MLS® data
- Listing meta data updates for Edmonton board members
- Tons of other performance enhancements, features, security patches, bug fixes and other behind-the-scenes stuff
Notable bug fixes
- Fixed: Open house tag removed on sold listings
- Fixed: Issue with replacing slide photos on tall header widgets
- Fixed: Incorrect time displayed in some lead emails
- Fixed: Bug affecting list of addresses when adding a building
- Fixed: Bug affecting page deletion on Listings-Only (IDX) accounts
New Semi-Custom Designs
Our Design Ninjas added 2 brand new semi-customs to our growing collection.
First, we have Kagome. This affordable design is packed to the brim with amazing touches that will be sure to catch potential clients’ eyes! From the banner image and full page animations to special interactive surprises, this theme is great for those looking to “wow” with their professional and dependable brand vision.
The next one is named “Miro“, after our Design Ninjas adorable puppy. It’s a beautiful and warm design with a unique menu, community box layout, testimonial carousel, and gorgeous visual pageflow (check out those backgrounds!).
Stand-Out Design Customizations
Aside from dev updates, we’ve also designed some pretty awesome websites for Canadian agents this year. Here are some of our faves from this year.
You can find more customized RealtyNinja websites on our site.
More Memorable Highlights From 2022
Along with product updates and design customizations, our team created some great (free) resources this year for Canadian real estate agents.
- Freebie: 16 REALTOR® Thank You Card Canva Templates – Check out these 16 thank you card Canva templates to show your appreciation to your clients!
- How to Do a Basic SEO Audit on your Real Estate Website – A 10 step SEO checklist covering some of the essential factors that will help you rank higher in search engines.
- 51 Free Canva Templates For Real Estate Agents & Teams – Professionally designed and fully editable. Easily adapt them to match your own brand and content.
- Marketing Checklist: Your First Year as a Real Estate Agent – Follow this marketing checklist in your first year as a real estate agent to spend your resources wisely.
Get more free marketing resources and downloads.
“Fantastic team great at collaboration for Realtors. Really loved their suggestions, support and helpful insights over the years. Highly recommended!”
Todd JameS REAL ESTATE
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Featured Partner: Helpscout
Help Scout is a communication platform that helps teams across an organization have better conversations with their customers. Quick to set up and easy to use, companies use Help Scout to create email inboxes like support@ and info@, put live chat on their websites, build help centers, and more. And all of those customer interactions flow into a single view that looks just like an inbox, but offers powerful collaboration and automation tools under the hood.
DEAL for RealtyNinja Customers: 10% Off & 15 Day Trial
Thank you! Really.
Thank you for your business, your trust, and your confidence. For over 12 years you’ve provided us with the opportunity to create software we care about for great people. We wouldn’t be here without your support.
Happy Holidays, Ninjas!
We have huge plans for next year, including some really innovative tools that will keep your website on the leading edge of technology. We can’t wait to show you what we’ve been working on! Keep your eyes on our newsletter and this blog for updates.
From all of us at RealtyNinja, we hope the holidays bring you joy, peace and celebration.
Reminder: We will be monitoring our inboxes for emergencies over the holidays, but if you need anything done before the break, let us know ASAP so we can fit it in before we go!
