A real estate theme with listings that actually work

South is a free block theme for real estate agents and agencies. Its companion plugin, South Listings, adds properties with real fields — price, rooms, area, address, gallery and agent — and a search visitors can filter, sort and page through, with or without JavaScript. The theme brings the rest: a hero with the search box, featured homes, testimonials, an agent band, a journal, an enquiry form, eight colour palettes and dark mode.

Download South

South Listings plugin

Live demo

Documentation

South theme home page: a modern house at dusk under the title Find your home, with the property search box below

Listings with real fields, and a search that works

Every home is a Property with its own fields, so the price badge, the facts row and the search all read the same data. Visitors filter by city, type, sale or rent, rooms, garages, floor area and year built, then sort and page through the results — and because the search lives in the address bar, it works without JavaScript and can be shared as a link.

Property listings in the South theme: cards with sale or rent tags, prices, addresses, bedrooms, bathrooms and floor area

A page for every home

Price and address up top, the description, a table of facts, the features, a rooms-and-sizes panel, a mortgage estimate and a map that loads on request. Beside it, the listing agent with a photo, phone, email and an enquiry form.

A single property page in South with price, address, description, facts, features and the listing agent with a contact form

Eight palettes, checked before release

South’s own brown, Terracotta, Olive, Harbour, Sage and Charcoal, and two dark palettes, Midnight and Graphite. Every one is measured against WCAG AA before the theme is built — text, links, button labels and button edges, in light mode and in dark — and a palette that fails is not written.

The same property section in four of South colour palettes: South, Terracotta, Harbour and Midnight

Dark mode the visitor controls

The switch in the header is the visitor’s, separate from the palette you chose. It follows the reader’s system setting until they decide for themselves.

South property cards in dark mode on a near-black background

What you get

Properties with real fields

Price, sale or rent, type, bedrooms, bathrooms, garages, floor area, year built, address, neighbourhood, features, rooms, a gallery and the listing agent — 22 fields per home, entered in a panel beside the editor.

A search that works

Filter by city, type, sale or rent, bedrooms, bathrooms, garages, floor area and year built, then sort and page through the results. It runs on the address bar, so it works with JavaScript off and a search can be bookmarked.

An agent on every listing

Each home names its agent, with a photo, phone, email and an enquiry form beside the description. Enquiries arrive by email, or go wherever one filter sends them.

Eight palettes, five type pairings

South’s own brown, Terracotta, Olive, Harbour, Sage, Charcoal and two dark palettes, each measured against WCAG AA before the theme is built.

Dark mode

A switch for the visitor, separate from the palette you chose. It follows the reader’s system setting until they pick one themselves.

Maps that load on request

Each property and the contact page carry an OpenStreetMap map that loads only when the visitor asks for it. No API key, and nothing is sent anywhere before the click.

Built from patterns

The hero with its search box, featured homes, the rent call to action, testimonials, the agent band, team, contact and the journal are all patterns you insert and edit like any other block.

Your form plugin, styled

Contact Form 7, WPForms, Gravity Forms, Fluent Forms, Forminator and Ninja Forms take on the theme’s colours and spacing.

Demo content in one click

South Listings can import the template’s nine homes, three agents and three journal posts with their photographs, and remove them again. It creates no user accounts and changes nothing you made.

A journal, too

Market notes, neighbourhood guides, news from the agency. Archives, single posts, categories, author pages, search and a 404 are all designed, with a sidebar that can feature a home.

The South journal with a post, an archive, categories and a featured home in the sidebar

Questions

Do I need the South Listings plugin?

Only for property listings. The theme on its own is a complete agency site — pages, journal, enquiry form, dark mode — and its property templates simply stay empty. Install the plugin for the Property post type, its fields, the search and the demo import. Keeping listings in a plugin means they survive if you ever change theme.

How do I add a property?

Properties → Add New. Write the description in the editor, set a featured image, and fill in price, rooms, area, address and the rest in the Property details panel. The card, the property page and the search all read from those fields.

Can visitors search without JavaScript?

Yes. The search form submits ordinary address parameters to the Properties archive and WordPress filters the listings on the server. With JavaScript, the same search updates in place without a page reload.

Where do the enquiries go?

To the site’s admin email address by default. The south_enquiry_handlers filter hands each enquiry to a CRM, a webhook or a form plugin instead, and South then sends nothing of its own.

What does the demo import add?

The template’s nine homes (six featured), three agents and three journal posts, with their photographs, plus Properties and Find a Home in the menu. Running it twice adds nothing new, and Remove demo content deletes exactly what it added.

Can I turn dark mode off?

Yes. Add add_filter( 'south_enable_dark_mode', '__return_false' ); to a child theme or a small plugin.

Is it translation ready?

Yes. Every string is translatable; languages/south.pot and the plugin’s south-listings.pot are included.

Does it check for updates?

Yes, twice a day, because the theme and the plugin are distributed outside the WordPress.org directory. The check sends the product, WordPress and PHP versions, the locale, whether the site is a multisite, and an identifier derived from the site’s address with the site’s own secret key, so it cannot be turned back into the address. The south_check_for_updates filter switches it off for both.

Is there an HTML version?

Yes. South began as an HTML template, which is still available on its own template page. This WordPress edition is a separate, free theme.

The details

Requires	WordPress 6.6 or newer
PHP	7.4 or newer
Tested up to	WordPress 7.1
Licence	GNU General Public License v2 or later
Downloads	The South theme, and the South Listings plugin for properties
Patterns	19 to insert, plus 14 the templates use
Templates	15, including the property archive, a single property and three property taxonomies, plus 3 template parts
Styles	8 colour palettes × 5 type pairings, and dark mode
Fonts	Open Sans, Montserrat and Playfair Display, self-hosted
Form plugins	Contact Form 7, WPForms, Gravity Forms, Fluent Forms, Forminator, Ninja Forms
Source	github.com/ColorlibHQ/south-wp