My First Real Estate Build: 2 Hours for the App, 2 Days for the Photo Gallery

Built with Softr
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Hey everyone!

Long-time coder, first-time Softr builder here. My background is in the trenches with SQL, MVC, ASP.NET, Python – the works. I’m fully embracing the no/low-code movement and have been genuinely blown away by the power of building data-driven sites with Softr.

I’m working on what I thought would be a simple project: a real estate website for a small “mom and pop” client, starting with their admin panel for property management.

The first couple of hours were pure magic. Seriously. I had the SoftrDB tables set up, a dashboard with a list of properties, and the basic “Add/Edit” actions working in what felt like minutes. I was thinking, “This is incredible! I’m a superhero!”

And then… I hit the photo gallery. :sweat_smile:

My journey started with a simple question: “How do I display a gallery of multiple images for a single property?”

That one question sent me on a nearly 24-hour deep dive that I’m still trying to climb out of. My “old-school coder” brain kicked in, and the journey has included:

  • Realizing a multi-file field just shows a list of filenames (not ideal for a gallery!).

  • Restructuring the database into a two-table relational model (Properties <> GalleryImages).

  • Building a dynamic “Property Details” page to manage the one-to-many relationship.

  • Learning about stateless pages and the absolute necessity of passing state via URL parameters (hello, {URL_PARAM:recordId}!).

  • Discovering all the undocumented quirks of the new editor’s UI (I think I’ve clicked on everything at this point, haha).

  • And finally, hitting a “Bad Request” wall that seems to be a fundamental bug with the native database’s file field itself (support ticket is in!).

So, my question to all you seasoned Softr pros is this: Is this the way?

Did I go down the right, albeit complex, path by building a relational database for a simple photo gallery? Or is there a much simpler, “no-code” native way that my coder brain completely missed? It feels like I went from 0 to 100 on the complexity scale because of one very common feature.

I’d love to hear how others who have built real estate sites (or anything with a photo gallery) have approached this. What’s your workflow? Did you hit these same walls, or did you find a more elegant path?

Thanks in advance for any wisdom you can share! Excited to learn from the community.

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Hi @mfeijo - Thanks for sharing your experience. I’ve held off on building any real estate related apps in Softr due to the limited options of displaying images and other dynamic data. I’d love to see how you’ve worked around these limitations. Do you have a link you can share? I’m hoping we get better native image support soon. Currently, displaying dynamic data is somewhat limited.

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Not yet. I should be building the public portion of it soon and can post here to get people’s opinions and insights. I finished the admin, and it came out ok.

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I’m building a real estate site for my own small brokerage business and I agree, the image functionality in Softr is not ideal for our usecase. I requested Drag & Drop upload for images here – maybe throw some support behind it so they prioritize it!

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With the ability to embed custom code blocks could that be used to better render images, even embedding a more custom display system that takes the signed urls and renders them the way you are thinking?

And could you take advantage of n8n to listen to row creation and updates to maybe do some of the data work for you eg turn those attached files into file rows making data entry easier? You can do a lot with these events.

Really interesting topic though.

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Hi @mfeijo! I would also love to see your finished app to see what is possible with some work and skill.

I also am wondering how to build an app based around image carousels (showing restaurant customers their vegetables’ journey from seed to table). It would be great to use Softr if it can be made to work.

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Our vibe coding block is an absolute game changer for image carousels. If you haven’t tested it out, I would highly recommend it for showing multiple record images in a larger gallery like this!

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@pford it would be super helpful to have more examples of using the Vibe Coding block. Some short walkthrough videos of concepts, prompts and results for a variety of purposes would be ideal; some from Softr Central, and some from the Softr Community, of course. Hopefully we’ll see more and more use cases and successes. It is indeed a remarkable thing!

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Hi Mark, actually we have an excellent little video here of some that have been created recently: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/bhRVwl1NXrg

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