I was talking with an agent recently who was deciding between Luxury Presence and a competitor. They asked a familiar question:
“Shouldn’t I own my website instead of leasing it from a platform?”
I understand where that instinct comes from. We have all been taught that ownership equals control, and control equals long-term value. But in real estate websites, that framing misses what is actually happening under the hood.
The ownership debate is really a portability debate. And most agents are being sold a version of portability that does not exist in practice.
The Portability Myth
When a vendor tells you that you “own your WordPress site,” what they usually mean is that you can download some files and a database. In theory, that sounds reassuring. In reality, those files are the least important part of a high-performing real estate website.
A modern real estate site is not just pages and themes. It is a web of tightly coupled systems:
- IDX licenses and MLS specific data agreements
- Property search infrastructure and listing ingestion pipelines
- Compliance layers for MLS rules, fair housing, and data display requirements
- ADA accessibility tooling and monitoring
- Consent management, privacy controls, and security hardening
- Ongoing SEO, performance, and algorithm adaptation
None of that is meaningfully portable.
You cannot simply “take your site with you” and expect it to work the same way. The moment you leave a platform, you are renegotiating IDX access, rebuilding search, revalidating compliance, and re assuming legal and operational risk.
Calling that ownership is, at best, a half truth.
WordPress Is Not the Asset People Think It Is
WordPress is often positioned as the escape hatch. Own WordPress and you are never locked in.
But WordPress was designed for blogging in 2003. It was not designed for luxury real estate in 2026.
What agents actually end up owning is:
- A theme that breaks when WordPress updates
- Plugins that conflict with each other and your IDX feed
- A stack of third-party services that all disclaim responsibility
- A site that quietly drifts out of compliance unless actively monitored
More importantly, WordPress ownership transfers responsibility, not leverage. When regulations change, and they do constantly, you are the one exposed. When an ADA audit or nuisance lawsuit shows up, you are the one coordinating vendors, lawyers, and fixes.
That risk does not disappear because you can export a database.
What Agents Are Really Trying to Own
When agents say they want to own their website, they are usually not talking about PHP files or hosting accounts. They want to own:
- Their content and brand
- Their listings and data
- Their leads and client relationships
- The freedom to change partners if something stops working
Those are reasonable goals. They are also completely compatible with a managed platform, as long as the platform is built correctly.
The Hidden Cost of “Owning” the Stack
Regulatory requirements around IDX, fair housing, ADA accessibility, privacy, and security are not static. Real estate websites are increasingly audited, scraped, and targeted because they sit at the intersection of consumer data and regulated advertising.
If you truly want to own your site end-to-end, you are also choosing to own:
- Continuous compliance monitoring
- Accessibility remediation as standards evolve
- MLS rule interpretation across markets
- Security posture and breach response
That is not passive ownership. That is an ongoing operational commitment.
Most agents did not get into real estate to become compliance managers for web infrastructure.
Own What Matters
The real question is not whether you own your CMS. It is whether your website reliably helps you grow your business without pulling you away from clients or exposing you to unnecessary risk.
You should own your brand, your content, your data, and your relationships. You should expect your technology partner to own uptime, performance, compliance, security, and continuous improvement.
That is how every other critical system in your business already works.
The idea that website ownership equals freedom sounds appealing. In practice, it often just means owning a growing pile of hidden costs and responsibilities that are not worth it.
Own your business. Be clear-eyed about what website ownership really means.
About the author
Zac Hays
Chief Product Officer, Luxury Presence
Zac Hays is the Chief Product Officer at Luxury Presence, where he leads product and design and focuses on how AI can transform the way teams prototype, collaborate, and deliver value. Over the past 20 years, he has built and scaled product organizations across startups and large companies, including Microsoft, TiVo, Autodesk, and BuildingConnected, where he joined as the first executive hire and helped grow the business to a $285M acquisition by Autodesk. At Autodesk, he led a global product development organization of 100+ product managers, designers, researchers, and engineers. He is an active voice in the product community, sharing lessons on how AI is reshaping product management, and outside of work, spends time with his two young daughters in San Francisco and at Oracle Park cheering on the Giants.
