For around 90 Euros I´ve got myself a fully operational property database driven website! Although i have needed some help to configure the system correctly, Kathy has been there all the way and has responded to my e-mails/tickets ALWAYS within 1-6 hours. Now that´s what I call customer service!

I don´t normally write reviews and I have no financial gain for writing this - i was just so happy the way my site turned out, that I felt I had to tell the world!!

I think the component is great...I've had a couple of bumps along the way, starting at the time Kathy's husband suffered a heart attack. When I first read that and needed help, I thought "I'm done". I couldn't have been more wrong...Kathy replied almost immediately and helped me fix the problem. More importantly, her replies and instructions are well thought out and pretty easy to understand even for me!

I think anyone with negative feedback hasn't given Kathy the benefit of the doubt by asking for help. If I didn't find help on the forum, I created a support ticket and she was there in a flash.

In my humble opinion, support is everything when you're having a problem and need help. While the software is excellent and worth every penny, the support is even better. Thanks Kathy!

As Previously stated by a very loyal supporter of this component....
"""Besides which, even if she were to stop tomorrow for some unforeseen reason, I can't imagine Kathy would just cancel all her licensing server accounts. She has too much integrity for that.""""
Having paid for a full licence you still always the behest of the developer to continue to use this component.And it’s a poor business model that requires a stranger’s integrity to enable your business to continue trading or worse still if you are developer that have sold the component to other business’s.
The bottom line is no business model on the face of this planet would Accept this method of licensing, lose the licence server lose your business.

I can't disagree more with most of the negative comments made here. I'll try to address each one as I can.

The encryption hysteria is just that. Zend optimizer and IonCube should be found on any decent Web host. They have recently set up redundant licensing servers. In the year I've been using it it's not been down once. The company is clearly in this for the long haul and is not going anywhere, and is constantly engaged in development. If you are still using this component by the time the developer retires, your site will be a dinosaur while everyone else is surfing the Web through the microchip in their head. Besides which, even if she were to stop tomorrow for some unforeseen reason, I can't imagine Kathy would just cancel all her licensing server accounts. She has too much integrity for that.

The only legitimate gripe concerning encryption is if you are an open source purist and want to get into that argument again that swamped the forums last summer. Yes, I would like access to the main php file. No, it hasn't ruined my life or my ability to modify things. Yes, I believe open source is a great thing, a wonder of egalitarian utopianism in this age of greed and cynicism. No, I don't think EZ Realty (or many other encrypted components) should be shunned for encrypting portions of and charging for the product. It allows them to provide top level service (covered later). There is such a thing as your ideals to cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Templates: Of course you should probably use a different template. She does not advertise the template as anything special. It's there if someone wants to use it, and more as a basic thing to start with and customize than as a finished product. And structured tables went out long ago? Well, CSS and the W3C may want it that way in the long run, but Joomla itself still uses tables as do many other components for portions of their display. There's nothing wrong with the use of tables at this point in history.

People getting upset over unnecessary options in the listing forms: yes, you have to go into the language file to change some of these. Like most Joomla components, if you want to customize it, it requires a little fiddling. If you can't handle a language file, you shouldn't be using Joomla where it takes a lot more than that for many things. But necessary is a subjective call. It depends on what you're trying to do. The product works out of the box and has a very logical and thorough work flow that covers everything. If you want to change the names of fields, customization of more of them from the admin I beleive is being worked on for the future, but really it's not that hard now.

Support Issues: Paying for support is not uncommon in the Joomla world. However, Kathy still personally scours the forums and answers as many questions as she can, often helping people with the kinds of newbie question that could have been answered by reading the manual(oh yeah, unlike every other competing product, there's a comprehensive PDF manual now being supplied FREE). There are also a number of dedicated users and a moderator always helping people out, as well as leaving hacks and user tutorials.

The reviewers who pointed out the active support and development are the ones paying attention. In the past year I have noticed that support among Joomla developers is generally getting better, but they can only hope to someday reach the level that Kathy provides. As far as my experience in the Joomla world goes, this is the gold standard. And that means a lot in this community where that is still often the most lacking thing. When you have a problem, want to modify something, find a bug, have an idea for improvement or feature request, Kathy is always right there.

And it costs too much? Are you kidding? Have you shopped turnkey Real Estate web sites lately?

I could go on, but lets just say I give it five stars.

And Fantastic Component. Fantastic Support! by pcbytes, June 30, 2008 is correct in what they say.
BUT and Metaphorically speaking: "The dagger in the heart"
is the method that the developer has chosen to licence the product:
After you Purchase a full licence for the product it(the component)relies on existence of the developers licence server for periodic authentication...Therefore If this licence server disapears your admin functionality disappears.
Bottom Line If you are a Developer of real estate web sites and you rely on this component you could in future months or years have a lot of legal claims against you from Aggrieved clients on the grounds of the above licence server.
OR
If you have just built a single real estate web site over the last couple of years it could vanish on the grounds of the above licence server issue.
Great pity as previously stated by other user’s brilliant service great component.
But for whatever reason the current licensing method can only end in tears for a lot of users.

This is a nice component but i would recommened using it with your own template and not the template supplied. I mean table structures went out along time ago.

Also the amount of time i spent working out bugs even after i upgraded to the latest version was not worth it.

There's a few key features that i really think they are missing for a component such as this. Also removing fields that are not there is a total mission.

I would rather recommend trying something else or researching and making sure this is really what you want.

After reading some of these latest reviews, and spending several months using this component, it is hard to believe we are using the same component.

Some of these reviews claim the component is overly complicated, while others say it is too simple. Some say it is full of bugs.

Well I'm here to tell you that none of this is true. I'm not going to discuss the features, as these are well documented already. EZ Realty is a feature packed component that is extremely simple to use. Yes it calls home, and yes there are a few (4 I think) encrypted files. Without getting into the whole Open Source debate, software piracy is a fact.

There are 100's of commercial components and modules for Joomla, and a developer is entitled to protect their work. These encrypted files in no way impact on the functionality or reliability of the software.

There are few, if any, customisations that cannot be done using all of the files that aren't encrypted. The developer goes out of her way to help with these customisations. She works above and beyond the service that many software companies provide. I work for a mainstream software company in the UK, and am ashamed to say although we are quite a large million pound company, our support isn't a patch on that provided by Raptor Sevices.

EZ Realty is used by customers all over the world. A quick look at the free support forum will tell you that. The person who was unable to use American addresses perhaps didn't spend enough time testing this.

I have been using the component for 6 months, and have seen at least 2 bug/security fixes in that time. Bugs are a fact of software development. The difference between Raptor Services and other developers and software companies is that this developer goes out of her way to fix these bugs extremely promptly.

EZ Realty is a fantastic feature rich component, at a great price. No it's not free, but is not designed for a quick hobby site. It is designed for somebody wishing to run a Real Estate site as a business, and does that fantastically.

More importantly, the support provided by Kathy at Raptor Services is second to none, and I for one will be using her components for many years to come!

does not support Community Builder - instead uses its own user management/contact system - this was changed in later versions of EZ Realty yet the Community Builder integration remains within the description on Joomla.org.

this plugin sounds great until you actually try to use it. EZ Realty is overly simplistic. Most freely available open source software has much better features which you don't have to pay for.

1) the software "calls home" AFTER you've paid for the license - this means your license can be deactivated at any time - this was addressed by another reviewer.
2) After one month you pay for support services including the forum for questions which may already be answered - also addressed by another reviewer - $30/month? - for what?
3) in the version I used, there was no image handling/dynamic resizing - EZ keeps the native size of images and uses HTML rescale - how can you efficiently run a site like that?

Why should a user pay for something which is mostly available for free and has community support that is also free?

In my opinion, steer clear. You're better off using FREE, community supported software like CMS or Open Realty rather than paying for something which is overly buggy, has critical features missing and offers far less.

Like previous post tell, you cant get the help you need. Too many bugs.
The script became complex but with unnecessary fields or options.

when you need some decent URLS, I mean sef urls, not something like ...1.html, 2.html...is better to hire a programmer and maybe you have some luck.

I've had plenty of time to use this component and this is my thoughts:

pros:
- easy to install
- load of features
- tweakable: but only basic stuff, and only if you know about programming and html
- nice customer support (but with catch)

cons:
- expensive
- encrypted core code
- not polished and slightly buggy: Even with claimed multilingual functionality, some main parts remain untranslated.
- no subcategories
- slow development: programming and user support is done by one person.
- need to pay for support after 1st month of purchase,
- need to pay for their forum access, even if some already reported bugs aren't resolved under one month. It is OK to charge for user support, but only if support is needed. Charging access to already answered stuff is greedy.
- image manipulation could be better: lacks image ordering system

In the beginning, EZ Realty looked like excellent stuff.
1st core got encrypted, than it's price went up. Then owner removed user support forum. Wtf? Than forums went back. BUT only if you paying 30$ monthly subscription fee. Yes, they stated that is support fee, but IMO it is ridiculous to charge forum access to customers who spent their time to fill those forums with their suggestions and advices to other customers. We cant see if current bugs are resolved unless we don't pay monthly fee.
With core files encrypted we cant repair some bugs or extend basic functionality such as adding extra images per property, for example.

EZR could be excellent product if programmer ever decide to hire help, to leave code unencrypted and to leave forum access free.

This software is excellent! If you are serious about setting up your own real estate listing site, this is the software you should use! It factors in almost every possible thing you could ask for. And Kathy is always working on improving the software and adding new features.

The support truly is legendary. Kathy has gone out of her way to help me with some problems I was having. She is GREAT!

Now, with that said, I should mention that tinkering may be necessary depending on your situation. I live in Canada and had to change a lot of the language files to suit my needs. Was it hard? No. But, as a person fairly new to web design, and PHP, it took me awhile to figure things out.

There were other things I customized that caused me some distress, but that was because I was inexperienced. People skilled in wed design will have no problem. And noobs like myself need not be afraid...you just have to be willing to get your hands dirty and learn some new tricks! And if you need help, the forum is great for answering questions.

I give Kathy 5/5 stars! well done!

Wow. The software is excellent, it covers an incredible array of choices, templates and possibilities. Very yummy stuff. The couple issues I had were taken care of admirably, customer support is exemplary. I'd suggest this software any day.

EZ Realty looks good in the demo, but a look under the skirt tells you not to go there. The licensing situation (Zend and Ioncube) with a "call home" function is ridiculous when you consider it is being sold with the greatest open source script on the web. One transfer only to a different host (how difficult is this to handle) and if you want to make changes to the search mechanism, forget it as it is encrypted and the developer is too busy to make the change or supply you with the code to do it yourself which I might add, is simple to do. Purchase this and end up with a lame duck like mine. The fact that the developer is recommending Mambo over Joomla should get the alarm bells ringing.

After taking an extensive tour through the demo site, this component/extension really looks the goods for a real estate site until you get into the details.

First of all the biggest disappointment was the lack of a demo area for the backend. As a developer I need to get my potential client to play with a backend area to make sure it suits their needs. I'm not a real estate agent, so I can't make this judgement.

The fact that the extension is encrypted is also a problem because it's never going to be upgraded to a 1.5 Version because of licensing issues. I believe that Joomla's development will proceed further down the 1.5 track and that sooner or later 1.0 will become archaic and consequently the extensions that don't move will also fall into that category.

The licensing situation with this component obviously also has a "call home" function and the vendors gratiously allow you to transfer it to a different IP/Host "once only". That's a pretty dramatic and restrictive statement in my view.

From what I have seen of the frontend, this looks like a great extension. It's just a great shame that it can't be investigated further prior to purchase and that the licensing is so restrictive.

I like the look and the support but the component is not open source (not good). can't do any hacks or custom work on it. It is what it is.

This component is not USA (America) compatible. It does not offer State, City and zip code compatible to the U.S.

State is ok the way it is but City and zip code must be a blank text field not an option.

Too much money. The price when way up and the developer got greedy now I'm not interested in the component anymore. Way too high, not worth the money anymore.