Ease of Use
I would rate the overall ease of use of the RealHomes theme at 4/5.
Here’s why:
- RealHomes shines in its installation process, which is simple and direct, especially compared to many other premium WordPress themes.
- Users are unable to mix and match different pages from various demo sites, as the theme does not offer an option to import selected pages only.
- Changing the design variation at a later stage can be cumbersome, requiring additional steps like regenerating images and testing all pages.
RealHomes scores highly on ease of installation and initial setup.
But its ease of use is slightly hampered by inflexibilities in demo content import and certain aspects of design variation changes and plugin installation.
Installation Process
The RealHomes theme is exclusively available for purchase and download through the ThemeForest section of the Envato Marketplace.
Once you have completed the purchase, you can download the theme's .zip file directly from your Envato account.
To install the theme, follow these steps:
- Go to appearance > themes > add new > upload theme
- Find and choose the .zip file that you downloaded
- Click on the install now button
After that, you will see the welcome page where you’re prompted to select your preferred design variation and save the changes.
But you will also notice the admin notification at the top prompting you to enter the item purchase code (from ThemeForest) to verify the plugin.
This is what the welcome page looks like after you verify your theme — you will also notice another admin notification prompting you to install some plugins.
Since RealHomes is one of those premium themes where you only need to install the main theme, the installation process is easy and straightforward.
Plugins and Design Variations
Continuing from above, you can click the begin installing plugins button from the notification or go to appearance > install plugins page.
You will need to install and activate all the required plugins while it’s optional if you want to install the recommended plugins.
⚠️ Note: Although you can delay the plugin installation (you can always return to it), I recommend you complete this process if you want to set up the theme right away.
What makes RealHomes good from other premium themes out there (especially multi-purpose ones) is that you can select a design variation from the start.
Go back to the RealHomes (theme settings) > design page and you will see three available design variations:
- Classic
- Modern
- Ultra
Select the one you want to use for the long term and click the save changes button:
⛔ Warning: Although you can change the design variation later, it’s a little hassle since you need to regenerate your images and test all pages.
Demo Import
RealHomes indicated on their documentation that before you proceed in importing any demo site, you will need to change the permalink settings.
Go to settings > permalinks and select the post name option to become the default permalink structure of your site:
Changing the permalink structure is important since the import script is designed to function with pretty permalinks.
After that, you can head over to the theme settings > demo import where you can choose the demo site (more on this later) you want to start with.
Once you select a demo site to import, you will see the plugins that are required for this demo:
After you click on the continue and import button, the theme will start importing the demo content that you selected.
The downside here is that there is no way to mix and match different pages from different demo sites as you don’t get an option to import selected pages only.
👋 My thoughts here
There are 2 things that I like here:
- Straightforward installation process
- Design variation and demo import
With all the themes I reviewed so far, most themes only have either of them — straightforward installation or demo import feature.
This is why I like the fact that RealHomes is making it easy for users to select a demo site to start with while keeping the installation simple.
For areas of improvement:
- Plugin installation
- Changing design variation
Since they already have a button for installing plugins from the notification, it would help if it does that (the installation) directly without redirecting the user to another page.
For changing the design variation, my comment here is that maybe they can design it in such a way that changing the design variation later would be seamless.
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Features
I would rate its overall features as 3.8/5.
Here’s why:
- RealHomes excels in providing extensive real estate functionality, particularly through its Easy Real Estate plugin.
- Users encounter a glitch when trying to change typography settings, with no options available beyond the default.
- While the theme provides a good selection of demo sites, there's room for more variety to cater to a broader range of real estate website styles.
Overall, RealHomes offers robust real estate features and customization options, making it a strong choice for real estate websites.
However, improvements in typography settings and a more user-friendly organization of theme options could enhance its overall rating.
Core Features
I installed and activated all the plugins required and recommended by RealHomes to get all the features needed.
Here are the core features:
1. Theme Options
RealHomes appears to have a lot of features in the customizer settings (though they can be better arranged).
This is what it looks like ( you have to scroll down to see all the theme options available):
I won’t be able to mention some of them — so I will only include here the highlights and the ones that caught my eye.
The first one here is the login and register options inside the header category (I’m a little surprised that they put this here).
Some of the settings here include:
- The option to select which page the user will be redirected to after logging in
- Adding a login and register page
- Enabling email confirmation before the user can log in
- Login background image and quote text and author
By the way, there are custom header and footer templates available as well and you can change them on either the header or footer settings.
Since RealHomes is a real-estate-specialized theme, most of the options available are related to properties and real estate.
A good example of this is the settings for the properties search page:
Some of the settings here include:
- Selecting the search page
- How many properties to display
- How many properties to mark on the map
- Display featured properties on top
- Statuses to exclude
You can’t see it from the above as it’s one level higher — but there’s also a settings page for the search form basics.
If you want to get overwhelmed, look no further than the property detail page:
There are so many sublevels here, which makes it easier to find the right settings.
For example, for the sections manager, you can freely change the order for the design variation that you selected by simply dragging the sections.
Backing up, the pages for agents and agencies (separate) also get their own customizer settings (got similar settings as well).
For example, you can change how many agents/agencies to show on a page, the description for each agent/agency, sort control, and more.
There are certainly a lot of options available in RealHomes — and the most useful ones are related to properties.
Unfortunately, I don’t think they heavily support other features though like the blog and design elements (but I guess that’s what Elementor is for).
2. Easy Real Estate
The Easy Real Estate plugin is what gives RealHomes its real estate functionality — which is why it’s a required plugin.
Basically, this is the real estate manager plugin that runs in the back-end of your website:
Although you can submit properties on the front end, this is where you can do admin tasks like:
- Adding a new property
- Configuring the property features, types, and location settings
- Configuring the agencies/agents settings
This is what you see when you add a new property in the back-end:
By the way, the property settings that you see above are different depending on the design variation that you choose.
But you can see that it has a lot of options available — and RealHomes is definitely not holding back on this feature.
For example, you can pin the property location on the map settings:
All the property options you see here — basic info, map, gallery images, floor plans, etc. are all meant to make the listing as detailed as possible.
There’s even an option to add property videos if you have some!
Besides those, if you scroll to the bottom, you can also see some miscellaneous options for the property header, footer, and more.
The last page I want to show you is the settings page:
As you can see, there are a lot of settings for changing the price format, URL slugs, maps, social, property, and more.
For example, for the maps, you can change the website map service — whether Google Maps, MapBox, or OpenStreetMaps.
The Easy Real Estate plugin definitely gives the RealHomes theme its awesome real-estate functionality.
3. Front-End Features
It wouldn’t make sense if there weren’t any front-end features, right? How else would users be able to submit property listings?
To make it short, the back-end functionalities that you see all translate to the front-end part of the website, starting with the dashboard:
There are a lot of goodies here.
Users can:
- See what properties they already listed
- Add a new property
- See which properties are pending for view
Users can also view their profiles and change information like their name, email address, contact number, address, and website.
If you ask me, I would say that RealHomes has good front-end features available for users that make property management easy.
Demo Sites
But how are the demo sites? Are they any good?
Yes, the demo sites from RealHomes are all pretty good and will allow real estate business owners to start their own real estate websites with a boost.
Here’s the demo screen you will see from the theme settings:
Currently, there are 19 demo sites available, and you can filter them out by design variation, language, recently made, and more.
In terms of quality, all the demo sites look good (though this is more of a subjective view):
All in all — I like the quality of the demo sites in RealHomes. Unfortunately, there are only a few of them as of now.
👋 My thoughts here
In terms of features, here are the things that I like:
- Comprehensive theme options (though there’s a little twist)
- Easy Real Estate plugin
Why a twist on the theme options?
That’s because I realized that besides those settings related to real estate, all the other settings in the customizer are subpar.
As for the areas for improvement:
- Arrangement of theme options
- Demo sites variety (we could use more of them)
- Typography glitch
For the arrangement, well, they could arrange it in a way that doesn’t make it look too bloated, like putting together regular settings.
The typography glitch, however, is a different matter. When you try and change the typography, you don’t see any other options.
Without investigating it further, I’m not sure what to do more here — like should I install another plugin? Reinstall the theme?
Fortunately, there’s a workaround here (you don’t need to “not” use this theme) — simply install a fonts plugin to handle the fonts functionality.
Reliability
My rating for the overall reliability is 3.8/5.
Here’s why:
- The developers frequently release updates to introduce new features, address bugs, and enhance security, as evidenced by the recent changelog.
- Both the Ultra and Agency Elementor RealHomes demos have notably longer loading times compared to other themes, with a full load time of over 6 seconds.
- Despite the longer loading times indicated by GTmetrix, the real-world experience of using the demo sites feels faster.
RealHomes scores well in terms of regular updates and maintenance, ensuring the theme stays current and secure.
However, its performance in load times, particularly in comparison with other themes, indicates a need for optimization.
Performance
RealHomes, as any real-estate WordPress theme should be, is on the heavier side due to having a lot of images.
The question now is — how does it fare in terms of performance?
To assess its performance, I installed the demo site “Ultra” (the one I like the best) and analyzed it using GTmetrix.
Here are the results:
I already expected these results with all the images in the demo site — scoring a D grade with 57% performance.
I decided to test out another demo site with fewer images since it’s a good way to know if it’s really the images that are pulling the performance down.
Here are the results:
The results were a little better:
It got a B grade this time with 86% performance — a bit better than the ultra demo site, although the fully loaded time is still the same.
To provide a comparison, let's see how the RealHomes theme performs in comparison to the multi-purpose themes I've previously tested on GTmetrix:
Theme | Fully Loaded Time | Total Page Size | Total Page Requests |
Elementor Simple Kit | 1.3 seconds | 1.51 MB | 53 |
Elementor Pearl Kit | 3.7 seconds | 1.57 MB | 106 |
Betheme Default Template | 1.6 seconds | 0.97 MB | 55 |
Astra Outdoor Adventure | 905 milliseconds | 1.54 MB | 21 |
Ultra RealHomes | 6.3 seconds | 5.58 MB | 94 |
Agency Elementor RealHomes | 6.63 seconds | 3.32 MB | 97 |
Here are some comments:
- Both demo sites loaded in 6.3 seconds, which is notably higher than the other themes here (this can be due to more complex features and higher-quality images).
- The fact that both themes have similar loading times despite the other one having a smaller page size (almost half) suggests optimization is a little weak.
These speeds suggest that the complex features and high-quality images used in RealHomes can definitely affect its loading times.
On the bright side, loading in 6 seconds doesn’t mean you have to wait that long to view the website since in the real world, the demo sites felt fast.
If you’re considering RealHomes, it’s important to be aware of their comparatively longer loading times and larger page sizes.
Updates and Maintenance
RealHomes developers frequently release updates to introduce new features, fix bugs, and patch security vulnerabilities.
You can see the changelog here:
Here are some highlights from the changelog:
- RealHomes has introduced new design variations to enhance the user experience and provide more customization options.
- New customizer settings have been added, including Property Grid Card 2 and Grid Card 3 styles, and background image settings for banners.
- The translation files for multiple languages in the theme and plugins have been updated so the theme remains accessible and user-friendly for a global audience.
Multiple problems were resolved like an image deletion issue during property updates via the front-end dashboard and one that’s related to a PHP notice.
The theme was last updated two months ago which shows that it’s actively being updated by its developers — a big green flag.
👋 My thoughts here
As expected, the theme doesn’t have good loading times when tested with GTmetrix due to using a lot of images and complex features.
But to be fair, it’s already doing a good job as it is — plenty of themes that don’t use as many images perform poorly.
In addition, the demo site I was using where I installed the RealHomes theme doesn’t really seem slow, which means it’s at least designed well for user experience.
For updates and maintenance, RealHomes doesn’t have an issue with it as it was updated regularly (last was 2 months ago) and they also have a changelog.
Support
I would rate the overall support of RealHomes at 4.2/5.
Here’s why:
- They offer a range of support options including a detailed knowledge base, user guides, and a dedicated support portal.
- A significant drawback is the absence of live chat support — many users expect and prefer real-time assistance, particularly for urgent issues.
- RealHomes provides extensive documentation and a separate knowledge base, each covering different aspects of using the theme.
RealHomes offers strong customer support with excellent responsiveness and a wealth of informational resources.
Their engagement in ThemeForest's comment section particularly stands out as a positive aspect.
Customer Service
RealHomes provides excellent customer support with different options including asking from their website and a discussion page on ThemeForest.
What caught my attention was the reviews in ThemeForest — a lot of them are pointing out how great their support is:
You can conveniently access the support choices directly from the plugin options through theme settings > help and you will find the following customer support options:
- User guide
- Knowledge base
- Get support
To get support from the developers, you will need to log in or register on their support website (you can use the item purchase code from ThemeForest).
Unfortunately, they don’t have any live chat support, which could mean they don’t have 24-hour support or they don’t have enough personnel.
On the bright side, users (and even those who are yet to buy) can also ask questions on the comments page on ThemeForest.
They seem to be active there too replying to all the comments.
The answers also aren’t just redirecting users to the support website, they’re actually answering them in full!
From the comment section of the theme page on ThemeForest, I can already see that RealHomes is good at customer support and won’t leave the users hanging.
Knowledge Base
RealHomes has both a knowledge base (support website) and a separate detailed documentation (main website) housed on different websites.
The documentation covers almost everything from installation and demo import down to miscellaneous settings.
Here’s an example of their documentation page:
It’s good and filled with elements that can help you understand the steps:
- Annotated images
- Links to related pages
- Steps broken down into bits
The documentation also lets you search for any topics (and while we’re not there yet, the knowledge base has no search function).
The knowledge base contains various topics related to using RealHomes like errors and how-to guides that users may need to know.
Here’s an example:
Similar to their documentation pages, knowledge-based articles also have annotated images, links to other pages, and digestible steps.
From what I can see:
They’re using the documentation to teach users how to use and install the theme while the knowledge base handles topics/questions related to using the theme.
👋 My thoughts here
RealHomes has great support — and if the review section is to be believed, a lot of users find their support amazing enough to include/write about it in the review.
The only areas where I wish RealHomes could improve are:
- Live chat support
- More support channels
Having no live chat support could be a drawback for users who prefer real-time assistance or those in different time zones who may need immediate help.
While they’re already doing a good job at giving support, it will help if they have more channels where users can ask questions/support.
Pricing
I would rate the overall pricing of RealHomes at 3.8/5.
Here’s why:
- RealHomes offers good value for its price of $69, considering the comprehensive features and functionalities tailored for real estate companies.
- A significant downside is that the regular license purchased from Envato Market is valid for only one website.
- The inability to get refunds for changes of mind, low quality, or lack of expertise to use the item can be a concern for some buyers.
RealHomes' pricing offers good value for its specialized features and the benefits included in the purchase.
Still, the single-site license limitations, refund policy details, and extra costs for extended support and transaction fees slightly lower its pricing appeal.
Cost Breakdown
RealHomes provides transparent pricing and exceptional value thanks to its features and additional offerings related to real estate.
You have the option to buy it directly from the Envato Market:
For $69, you get the following benefits:
- Everything that RealHomes offers
- Future updates
- 6 months of support from the theme’s creators
⚠️ Note: The downside of buying a theme from Envato Market is that the regular license is for one website only.
As the purchase is exclusively available through the Envato Market, the additional costs include:
- A credit card handling fee at the time of purchase
- Extending support to 12 months for an additional $21.38
Money Back Guarantee/Refund
Since RealHomes is exclusively offered on the Envato Market, only the refund policies of this marketplace apply.
Here’s a summary of their refund policy:
Circumstance | Eligibility | Notes |
Item is “not as described” or doesn’t work as it should | Yes | If the item is materially different from the description or doesn't work as expected. |
Item has a security vulnerability | Yes | If it can't be fixed easily, you may be entitled to a refund. |
Item support is promised but not provided | Yes | If you don't receive the promised support, you may be entitled to a refund. |
Items that have not been downloaded | Yes | If not downloaded within 30 days from the date of purchase. |
Resolving disputes – asking Envato to help | Discretionary | If you and the author can't agree on a refund, Envato may intervene. |
You don’t want it after downloading | No | — |
Item didn’t meet expectations or is of low quality | No | — |
Change of mind | No | — |
Bought by mistake | No | — |
Lack of expertise to use the item | No | — |
Item removed or author no longer active | No | Advised to download items immediately after purchase. |
Purchase made over 180 days ago (supported items) | No | For Themeforest and CodeCanyon supported items. |
Purchase made over 30 days ago (unsupported items) | No | For Themeforest and CodeCanyon unsupported items and other specified Envato Market items. |
👋 My thoughts here
I hold a similar perspective regarding all products offered on the Envato Market.
Here's what I appreciate about RealHomes:
- Buying the theme provides access to all core features with no hidden costs and ensures future updates
- Typically, having 6 months of support is enough for most situations
However, this pricing model may not always be ideal.
There are challenges associated with themes exclusively available on the Envato Market, a fact well-known to frequent WordPress theme buyers.
Here are areas where RealHomes could enhance its pricing:
- Introducing a multi-site licensing option
- Improving the refund and money-back guarantee policy
It seems that RealHomes might be limited in this aspect because they exclusively sell it on the Envato Market, which makes them subject to the marketplace's regulations.
Final Thoughts
If you’re in the market for a real estate theme like RealHomes, it's important to align your choice with the specific needs of your real estate business.
RealHomes excels with unique features, frequent updates, and strong support, making it a top choice for comprehensive real estate solutions.
However, factors like the performance under heavy image loads, the single-site license limitation, and the absence of live chat support are crucial considerations.
Before making a decision, weigh these aspects against your project requirements and technical capabilities.
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