Project Overview

Homer Estates is a growing estate agency that needed a website upgrade to better reflect their brand and deliver a smoother property search experience. Their existing site was built on an off-the-shelf Elementor theme, which worked with Property Hive. This did the job but offered only basic functionality and a generic, cookie-cutter design.

Challenge

The site faced several limitations:

1. Elementor dependency
   Bloated code, slower performance, and inflexible layouts.
2. Limited search
   The default Property Hive search lacked usability and felt clunky.
3. Generic design
   Templates looked like many other estate agency sites, offering little differentiation or brand personality.

The goal was to gradually move away from Elementor while keeping the site functional – building custom WordPress pages that would be faster, more maintainable, and better reflect the professional service provided by Homer Estates.

Solution

I designed and built a set of custom WordPress templates that overrode Elementor on key pages. This allowed a phased transition toward a fully block-based, performant site without breaking existing functionality.

The main improvements delivered were:

Property Search Page

A bespoke split layout with property cards on the left and a live Google Map on the right. This design makes it easy to scan listings while instantly visualising their location.

Single Property Page

A custom template showcasing photography, features and enquiry actions in a clean, modern layout that matched Homer’s branding.

Print Templates

Automatically generated, branded property brochures. The data was pulled directly from Property Hive. This eliminated the need for manual design work while ensuring consistency.