Building a compelling website for a real estate agency is a well-trodden path, yet it's fraught with challenges. The market demands a slick, professional front-end, intuitive property showcases, and seamless lead capture. Off-the-shelf themes often feel bloated and restrictive, while a fully custom build can be overkill for smaller agencies. This is the gap that Elementor template kits aim to fill. Today, we're putting one specific contender under the microscope: the Favoury - Property Agency Elementor Template Kit. This isn't just a surface-level overview; we're going to deconstruct its architecture, assess its real-world performance potential, and walk through a complete installation process, developer to developer.

The promise is simple: a complete, professionally designed website ready for import, built entirely with Elementor. But as any seasoned developer knows, the devil is in the details—dependencies, code structure, and the painful process of turning a pretty demo into a functional, client-ready asset. Let's see if Favoury delivers on its promise or crumbles under technical scrutiny.

Deconstructing the Kit: What You Actually Get

First, a critical distinction: this is a template kit, not a WordPress theme. A theme controls the fundamental structure of your WordPress site (the header.php, footer.php, single.php, etc.). A template kit, on the other hand, is a collection of JSON files that contain pre-designed pages, sections, pop-ups, and global styles specifically for the Elementor page builder. It leverages Elementor Pro's Theme Builder feature to override the display of your active theme's header, footer, archive pages, and single post layouts.

This is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it provides immense design flexibility without touching a line of PHP. On the other, it creates a heavy dependency on Elementor Pro. If that plugin is deactivated, your site's entire design vanishes, reverting to whatever your underlying theme (ideally a lightweight one like "Hello Elementor") provides. Your content remains, but the presentation layer is gone.

Upon unzipping the Favoury kit, you'll find what you expect:

• A primary manifest.json file that tells Elementor what's in the kit.

• A series of JSON files for each template (e.g., home.json, about.json, header.json, footer.json, property-single.json).

• A settings.json file containing the global site settings like colors, fonts, and layout defaults.

• An assets folder, likely containing the demo images.

The kit promises a full suite of templates required for an agency: a homepage, about us, property listings (archive), single property details, agent profiles, services, and a contact page. The demo looks clean, modern, and spacious—exactly what you'd expect from a contemporary real estate site. The question is how well this translates from a static demo into a dynamic, manageable website.

The Technical Review: Under the Hood of Favoury

A pretty face is one thing; a robust and performant foundation is another. I'm evaluating Favoury based on four key criteria: Design & UX, Code & Architecture, Performance Implications, and Extensibility.

Design and User Experience (UX)

Aesthetically, Favoury hits the mark. It uses a clean, professional color palette (easily changed via global styles), generous white space, and legible typography. It avoids the cluttered, information-overload trap that many older real estate themes fall into. The user flow is logical: the homepage hero section has a clear call-to-action (CTA), followed by featured properties, service blocks, and social proof (testimonials).

Responsiveness is where many Elementor templates falter. I tested the demo's layout principles on various breakpoints. Favoury holds up reasonably well. The grid layouts collapse into single columns as expected, and navigation menus switch to a standard hamburger icon. However, be prepared to do some manual tweaking. You'll almost certainly need to adjust font sizes, margins, and padding specifically for mobile and tablet views. Elementor's default responsive handling can sometimes lead to awkwardly large headlines or cramped text on smaller screens. This isn't a flaw of Favoury itself, but a reality of working with Elementor that developers must anticipate.

Code & Architecture

Since this is a template kit, we aren't looking at PHP files but at the structure of the Elementor build itself. Favoury relies on a standard set of plugins:

• Elementor (Free): The core page builder.

• Elementor Pro: Essential for the Theme Builder (header, footer, archives) and premium widgets like the Posts widget and Form widget.

The templates are built using standard Elementor widgets. The property "listings" on the demo are likely created using the Posts widget, cleverly styled to look like a property grid. This is a crucial point. Favoury does not include a custom post type for "Properties." It repurposes the default WordPress "Posts" for this. For a small agency with a handful of listings, this might be acceptable. For any serious agency, this is the kit's biggest architectural weakness.

A proper real estate site needs a dedicated "Property" CPT with custom fields for price, square footage, number of beds/baths, location data, and more. Using standard posts and categories is a workaround, not a solution. You will either need to create this CPT yourself (using a plugin like CPT UI and Advanced Custom Fields) and then rebuild the archive and single templates to pull from this new data source, or you'll be stuck with a very limited system.

The kit makes good use of Elementor's Global Colors and Fonts. This is a huge plus. It means you can change the primary blue or the default body text font in one place (Site Settings) and have it update across the entire site. It's a sign of a well-constructed kit that was built with maintainability in mind.

Performance Implications

Elementor sites have a reputation for being heavy, often referred to as "Elementor Bloat." This kit, like any other, is not immune. The final performance of a site built with Favoury will depend heavily on your optimization efforts post-installation.

Potential bottlenecks include:

• Large Images: The demo images are beautiful but are likely not optimized for the web. You must compress and resize all your own property photos.

• DOM Size: Elementor achieves complex layouts by nesting div elements. A page built with it will inherently have a larger DOM tree than a hand-coded page. Favoury's layouts are relatively clean, but it's still a factor.

• Plugin Stack: The more plugins you add (e.g., for CPTs, image optimization, caching), the more potential for performance hits.

Out of the box, with unoptimized images and no caching, a site built with this kit would likely score poorly on Google PageSpeed Insights. To get it into the green, you will need a solid caching plugin (like WP Rocket or Litespeed Cache), server-level optimization, and diligent image compression. The kit provides a good starting point, but the performance responsibility lies with the developer.

The Complete Installation & Configuration Guide

Let's move from theory to practice. Here is a no-nonsense guide to getting Favoury installed and configured on a fresh WordPress instance.

Phase 1: Prerequisites & Environment Setup

Do not attempt to install this on a live site cluttered with other plugins and content. Start clean.

• Clean WordPress Install: A fresh installation of the latest WordPress version is non-negotiable.

• The Right Theme: Install and activate the "Hello Elementor" theme. It's a bare-bones theme designed to be a blank canvas for Elementor's Theme Builder. Using a heavy, feature-rich theme alongside this kit is redundant and will only hurt performance.

• Required Plugins: Install and activate Elementor (from the WordPress repository) and Elementor Pro (a paid subscription). Ensure they are both up to date.

• System Requirements: Go to Elementor > System Info in your WordPress dashboard. Check for any red flags. The most common issue is a low PHP memory limit. You want this to be at least 256M, preferably 512M. You may need to edit your wp-config.php file or contact your host to increase it.

Phase 2: Importing the Template Kit

With the foundation in place, the import process is managed by Elementor's own tools.

• Navigate to Templates > Kit Library in your WordPress dashboard.

• In the top right corner, you will see a button that says "Import Kit". Click it.

• An uploader will appear. Select the favoury-template-kit.zip file you downloaded.

• Elementor will now process the kit. It will first show you a list of the templates included in the kit and check for plugin requirements. If you have Elementor and Elementor Pro active, you should see all green checkmarks.

• Click "Next". You will now be presented with a choice of which templates to import. For a new site, you'll want to import everything: Templates, Site Settings, and Content.

• The import process will begin. It can take a few minutes as it unpacks the JSON files and adds them to your Elementor library. Do not close the browser tab during this process. Server timeouts are a potential issue here on cheap shared hosting. If it fails, it's often due to server resource limits.

Phase 3: Post-Import Configuration (The Real Work)

Importing the kit is just the beginning. Your site is still a collection of disconnected templates. Now you need to wire everything together.

1. Assigning Global Templates

The kit imported a header, footer, and archive layouts, but WordPress doesn't know to use them yet. You have to tell it.

• Go to Templates > Theme Builder.

• You should see your imported Header, Footer, and perhaps an "Archive" or "Blog" template.

• For the Header, click "Edit Conditions". Add a condition to "Include" on the "Entire Site". Save & Close.

• Repeat the process for the Footer, setting the condition to "Entire Site".

• For the Archive template, set the condition to include "All Archives". This will control the look of your blog/post listing page.

• For the Single Post template, set the condition to include all "Posts". This controls the layout when you view an individual blog post (or, in Favoury's default setup, a single property).

• Setting Your Homepage

WordPress still thinks your homepage is the default blog feed.

• First, go to Pages > Add New. Create a new page and name it "Home". You don't need to add any content to it; just publish the blank page.

• Now, go to Settings > Reading in the WordPress dashboard.

• Under "Your homepage displays", select "A static page".

• For the "Homepage" dropdown, select the "Home" page you just created.

• Save Changes.

• Finally, navigate back to Pages, find your "Home" page, and click "Edit with Elementor". You should see the imported homepage design. If not, you may need to manually import the home template from your library onto the page.

• Content Population and Form Configuration

This is the most time-consuming part. You need to go through every single page and template (Home, About, Contact, etc.) and replace the demo text and images with your client's actual content. This is straightforward but tedious.

The contact forms will not work out of the box. You must configure them:

• Edit the page containing a form with Elementor.

• Click on the form widget.

• Under the "Actions After Submit" section, ensure "Email" is selected. You can also add other actions like a redirect.

• A new "Email" section will appear. In this section, you MUST configure the "To" field with the email address where you want to receive submissions. You can also customize the subject line and message format.

• Failure to do this is the #1 reason people complain their forms don't work.

• Customizing Global Styles

The final step is branding. Use the global settings to make the site your own.

• While editing any page with Elementor, click the hamburger menu icon in the top-left corner and select "Site Settings".

• Here you can access Global Colors and Global Fonts. Update the primary, secondary, and text colors to match your brand. Do the same for typography.

• Because the kit was built correctly, these changes will propagate across the entire website, saving you hours of manual adjustments.

Final Verdict: Who is This Kit For?

Favoury is a visually appealing and well-structured Elementor template kit that provides a significant head start for building a real estate website. However, it's not a one-click solution. Its value is directly proportional to the technical skill of the person using it.

For the Freelancer/Small Agency: This is the sweet spot. If you're comfortable with the Elementor ecosystem and know how to set up Custom Post Types and optimize a WordPress site, Favoury can save you dozens of hours on front-end development. You get a modern design foundation that you can then elevate with a proper back-end structure. This kit is a tool, not a finished product. For those looking for more tools, the vast library at gpldock is a valuable resource, offering everything from plugins to themes.

For the DIY Real Estate Agent: Proceed with caution. While the import process seems simple, the post-install configuration requires a solid understanding of how WordPress, Elementor, and web forms work. The lack of a built-in property listing system is a major hurdle that a non-technical user will struggle to overcome. If you're looking to build your own site without a developer, you might find yourself overwhelmed.

For Enterprise-Level Agencies: This is not the right tool. Large agencies need robust, scalable solutions with deep MLS/IDX integration, advanced search and filtering capabilities, and a custom CRM backend. Favoury is a presentation layer, and a very good one at that, but it lacks the enterprise-grade architecture required for high-volume, data-heavy operations. If you're in the market for more options, browsing through a category of Free download WordPress themes and kits can provide a broader perspective on what's available.

Scorecard

• Design & Aesthetics: 9/10 - Clean, modern, and professional. It looks the part right out of the box.

• Ease of Use (for a developer): 7/10 - The import is easy, but the lack of a Property CPT means significant work is required to make it a true real estate site. Good use of global styles is a major plus.

• Performance (out of the box): 5/10 - As with any Elementor-based product, it's heavy by default. Requires significant optimization (caching, image compression) to achieve good page speed scores.

• Flexibility & Extensibility: 6/10 - Highly flexible within the Elementor UI. However, the architecture (relying on Posts instead of a CPT) makes true back-end extension and complex functionality difficult without a rebuild of the core loops.

• Overall Value: 7/10 - For a developer looking to fast-track a project for a small to mid-sized agency, Favoury provides excellent value as a starting point. It's a high-quality design foundation that, with the right technical expertise, can be built into a powerful and effective website.