Web 2.0 real estate portal and search engine design

BaseEstate.com

We are small company started two years ago and are just starting to get traction in the market. We provide a real estate search engine for selling, rentals and commercial property in the USA, Australia and UK. Two years from now we plan on standing next to Trulia and Zillow - help us make that happen.

The site will need to be attractive to a wide demographic of people. The majority of visitors are home buyers, 30-60 years of age in the USA. We don't want something too different but an experience that will make it stand out from other portals and make people want to come back.

While the site must look good, this is not a brochure site, content and functionality is as important as looks. The site should not be overdone with stock art that has no real purpose. The banner and logo section will need to be replicated across all pages so it should be easy to do so. Footer will contain a fair amount of text information for SEO.

The current site is at http://www.baseestate.com. The current logo and color scheme may be retained but probably touched up a bit.

Two sites that I like the design of are http://www.move.com, http://www.themovechannel.co.uk and http://www.zoopla.co.uk, they are stylish but not overdone, particularly Zoopla.

The kind of elements that should be on the home page are
1. Navigation bar
2. Search box
3. Information boxes such as 'About Us' and 'Featured Properties'

The current logo is at http://www.baseestate.com/content/logo.png.

Files that will be required are a layered .psd and any clipart or stock images or non-standard fonts if required.