Reale Estates – Property Marketplace Website
A money-making property marketplace: landlords list homes, seekers pay by M-Pesa to unlock a landlord's contact, landlords pay to feature listings, and you track every shilling from the admin.
Overview
Reale Estates is a ready-to-run property marketplace for Kenya, built in plain PHP and MySQL so it runs on any cPanel hosting without a framework. It earns money from day one in two ways.
1. Contact unlocks: home seekers browse and filter listings for free, then pay a small fee by M-Pesa (STK push, the PIN prompt on their phone) to unlock a landlord's phone and email for one property. Once paid, the contact unlocks instantly and they can chat with the landlord on the site.
2. Featured listings: landlords pay by M-Pesa to push a listing to the top of search results and the home page for 7 or 30 days, with a gold "Featured" badge. You choose the plans and prices.
Landlords and agents register, verify their phone number by SMS and add listings with photos. Every new or edited listing waits for your approval, so fake or low-quality listings never go live. Seekers and landlords chat inside the site, and both get email and SMS alerts for new messages.
The admin panel has everything you need to run the business: an approval queue, reported listings, users, an Earnings page (today, this week, this month and all-time revenue, a 30-day chart, monthly totals, top listings and landlords, and every payment with CSV export), and a Settings page where you change the logo, site name, contacts and prices, and connect M-Pesa, SMS (Africa's Talking) and email. No file editing is needed, and every connection has a Test button.
Payments are built to be reliable: confirmations from Safaricom are checked against the price, an M-Pesa receipt can never be used twice, and if a confirmation is ever missed the site asks Safaricom directly. Cancelled or failed payments let the buyer resend the prompt.
Security is built in: hashed passwords, login lockout, CSRF protection on every form, safe photo uploads, and blocked access to private folders. Clean URLs, SEO tags, a sitemap and structured data help your listings show on Google. An install wizard sets everything up in minutes.
You can launch before M-Pesa is approved: until it's connected, unlocks are free, and you switch payments on from the admin when you're ready.
Features
- M-Pesa STK push payments for contact unlocks
- Paid featured listings for landlords (7 / 30-day plans you set)
- Earnings dashboard: daily, weekly, monthly and all-time revenue
- 30-day revenue chart, monthly totals, top listings and landlords
- Every payment listed with filters and CSV export
- Admin Settings: logo, site name, contacts, prices – no file editing
- Connect M-Pesa, SMS and email from the admin, with Test buttons
- SMS alerts via Africa's Talking (phone codes, messages, approvals)
- Email notifications and payment receipts
- Three account types: home seeker, landlord/agent and admin
- Every listing approved by the admin before going live
- Built-in messaging between seekers and landlords
- Landlord phone verification by SMS code
- Report a listing, with admin review of reports
- Search and filters: buy or rent, type, location, bedrooms, price
- Rent, sale and land listings with units available
- Payments confirmed even if the buyer closes the page early
- Secure logins with lockout, CSRF protection, safe photo uploads
- Clean URLs, SEO tags, sitemap.xml and structured data
- Fully responsive on phones, tablets and desktops
- One-click install wizard
Installation guide
What you need
- PHP 8.0 or newer (8.2 recommended)
- MySQL 5.7+ or MariaDB 10.3+
- PHP extensions: PDO MySQL, GD, fileinfo
- Apache hosting with .htaccess support (any cPanel host)
- SSL certificate (free AutoSSL on cPanel)
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1
Upload the files
In cPanel File Manager, open public_html, upload the ZIP and extract it. Turn on "Show hidden files" so you can see the .htaccess file.
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2
Create a database
In cPanel → MySQL Databases, create a database and a user, then add the user to the database with ALL PRIVILEGES.
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3
Run the installer
Open yourdomain.com/install/, enter the database details, your website name, contact phone and email, and your admin email and password, then click Install.
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4
Delete the install folder
In File Manager, delete the install folder so no one can run the installer again.
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5
Log in as admin
Go to yourdomain.com/login with your admin email and password. You will land on the admin dashboard.
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6
Make it yours
Replace images/reale-estate.png with your logo and images/hero.jpg with your own photo. Set the unlock fee (UNLOCK_FEE) in config/config.php.
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7
Turn on SSL
In cPanel → SSL/TLS Status, click Run AutoSSL so your site opens with https://.
Prefer not to do it yourself? We can install it on your hosting and set up your logo and content for you. Ask for installation help · Full setup guide
Changelog
v1.0.0: M-Pesa STK push payments for contact unlocks, paid featured listings, earnings dashboard with CSV export, admin Settings page (logo, prices, M-Pesa, SMS, email), SMS alerts via Africa's Talking, email notifications and receipts
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