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Websites: launch a property site that feeds your CRM

7 min read · Updated 2026-09-05

“Websites: launch a property site that feeds your CRM” is a Direct University lesson from Direct REI, the AI cold-outreach platform and CRM for real estate investors. Publish a real website straight from your CRM — a listings site with photos, maps, and filters, or a "we buy land" lead-capture site. Every form submission lands in your CRM as a lead.

Direct REI hosts real, public websites for your business — built from the same CRM you already work in. Open Websites in the left nav, click + New website, and you can have a professional site live the same afternoon. No web designer, no separate website builder, no plugins.

Two kinds of sites

You can run both at once (and more) — each site is its own address with its own design.

Creating a site

Click + New website, pick the site type, and choose Complete starter site (recommended — pages, menus, and sample copy pre-built; swap in your words) or Blank. Give it a name and a free web address: yourbiz.directrei.site.

Pick the web address carefully — it can't be changed later. The free address is permanent for that site. (You can always connect your own custom domain on top, which is what visitors see anyway.)

Editing: click anything, change it

The editor shows your actual rendered site — click any section to edit it right there, drag blocks to move them, and grab the edges to resize them on the layout grid (the same way Google Sites works). Undo / redo is one click (or Cmd+Z / Shift+Cmd+Z), and a List view toggle gives you a keyboard-friendly version of the same controls.

Pages are built from blocks — 18 types including hero, your listings, the map, lead forms, photo galleries, video, FAQ, testimonials, steps, feature grids, text columns, an email-list signup, and an embed block for anything else (a Calendly, a checkout button, a widget you paste in). Most blocks have an Align content control (Left / Center / Right) in their settings for the text, buttons, or form inside them. Add pages from templates — About, Contact, FAQ, Get Notified, Privacy & SMS Terms, Legal — and reorder them; the page order is your menu order. The Privacy & SMS Terms template ships pre-written texting-compliance copy (a privacy policy stating mobile opt-in data is never shared for marketing, plus SMS program terms: frequency, STOP, HELP) — carriers check the website named in your texting registration for exactly this, so add it before you register a texting campaign, and have your attorney review the wording.

The editor's tabs:

Owner-financing payment calculator

Every listing shows a payment calculator automatically: the rate defaults to 10% APR, minimum down to $999, longest term to 120 months, amortizing each listing's financed price or its sale price. Visitors slide the loan length (and raise the down payment) and watch their estimated monthly payment update live, with an "estimate only" note. Change the site-wide terms on the Property page template (Pages tab → Owner financing section) — or untick that section there if you don't offer financing. Any listing can override with its own rate, term, down payment or financed price (Edit & add photos → Owner financing — enter just a rate and the 120-month/$999 defaults fill in). 0% interest works too, and the manual down/monthly/term table still shows below the calculator if you keep both.

Forms → leads in your CRM

Every site has a built-in inquiry / cash-offer form, and you can build custom forms too (up to 12 per site, 25 fields each — short and long text, email, phone, number, dropdowns, checkboxes) with each field mapped to a CRM field.

When someone submits:

Compliance bonus: every submission stores a consent record (what the form said, what they checked, when). That's evidence for your files — the normal texting rules from the compliance lesson still apply before you blast anyone.

Preview, publish & what it costs

Drafts are private — the editor gives you a preview link only you can open. When you're ready, click Publish; changes reach the live site within about 5 minutes. You can pause (unpublish) a site anytime.

Paid sites bill $9 for 30 days at a time — to your card on file, falling back to your prepaid credit balance. The included allowance always goes to your oldest published sites, so the same site stays free month after month. Photo storage scales with your plan (account-wide: 100 on Free, 400 on Starter, 1,500 on Pro, 5,000 on Scale).

Analytics — is it actually working?

The Analytics tab answers that per site, over 7, 30, or 90 days: Visitors, Page views, Leads, and Conversion (leads ÷ page views), each against the previous period so you can see direction, not just a number.

Below that: a visits-per-day chart where gold dots mark the days that produced a lead, plus Top pages, Where visitors came from, Devices, and Countries.

These numbers also feed your main Analytics dashboard — there's a Websites category in the widget catalog (visitors, page views, leads, conversion, visits and leads by site, traffic sources, devices), so site performance can sit next to your outreach numbers instead of in a separate tab.

Read conversion before traffic. A site pulling 40 visitors and 6 leads is working. One pulling 900 visitors and 1 lead has a form or an offer problem, and more traffic won't fix it.

Duplicating a site

Built something that works and want it again for another market? Hit Duplicate in the editor's header bar: the copy starts as an unpublished draft with the same pages, design, and properties, and you give it a new name and address.

What does not come along: leads, visit stats, and any custom domain all stay with the original. And because it's a separate site, publishing it is a separate charge (or uses another slot in your allowance).

Custom domains

Connecting a domain you already own (yourbiz.com) is free — open the Settings tab and follow the DNS steps. The free .directrei.site address keeps working alongside it.

Let Oliver build it

On Pro and Scale, you can ask Oliver to do the whole thing: "build me a website for my Texas land business" — he creates the site, writes the pages, and edits blocks on request. Publishing always pauses for your approval, since it puts a page on the public internet (and may bill).

What's next

Wire up Automations so website leads get worked the minute they arrive, and watch Contacts by source on your Analytics dashboard to see what your site is producing.

This lesson lives in Direct University inside the Direct REI app, where you can search every lesson and ask the built-in AI assistant. Sign in to open it there.

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About Direct REIDirect REI is an AI cold-outreach platform and CRM for real estate investors — wholesalers, flippers, builders, land investors, and brokers. Its AI acquisition manager, Oliver, pulls county property records, finds owners, and runs email, SMS, direct mail, and inbound-call tracking from your own mailbox and phone number, replying in your voice. Free plan; paid plans from $23/month billed annually ($29 monthly).

Start free — let Oliver run the outreach.

Free plan, no card. Oliver finds the leads and runs email, SMS, and mail from your own accounts.

Try Direct REI free →