A HomeStack Tech Agent Q&A with Luana Oliveira, Central Florida Realtor and founder of Orange Slice Properties
When Luana Oliveira moved to Central Florida, she didn’t know anybody. Fourteen years later, she’s the founder of Orange Slice Properties, a company that has grown to 22 agents in just 18 months. She did it without buying real estate leads, by showing up authentically online and in person and treating every open house and client conversation as a chance to build community. In this conversation with Rachel Paolucci of HomeStack, Luana shares how she built a local presence from scratch, why her open houses feel like neighborhood parties, and how a custom HomeStack app became one of her team’s biggest advantages.
Luana grew up in a small town, and when she arrived in Central Florida without a network, she set out to bring that small-town feel with her.
Her career has touched nearly every corner of real estate. She started in new construction, then built a long-term property management company. That chapter shaped her most, teaching her how to handle tough conversations and be “a bit of a sunshine” in hard markets. She grew that company into a successful brokerage, then joined a large national brokerage and saw what scale and support could offer.
Along the way, she built her brand through consistent, authentic social media. Her early posts weren’t polished, but she kept showing up, and people started coming to her open houses just to meet her in person.
About 18 months ago, Luana launched Orange Slice Properties. Today, the team has 22 agents and a reputation for doing real estate the personal, community-driven way.
Luana moved to Florida without an existing network, and her answer is consistent, authentic social media combined with real, in-person community.
“I love social media because it doesn’t cost any money, and I think being able to show up authentically as yourself is the best way to attract your right-fit potential client,” she said.
Coming from a small town, she set out to bring that small-town feel to how business gets done in Central Florida. Orange Slice Properties hosts local community events such as Slice of Celebration and Ladies Nights, and those events do the trust-building that flyers alone can’t.
According to Luana, people are craving community, and they want proof that the person they see online is the same person they’ll meet in real life. Prospects regularly show up to her open houses and events simply to meet her.
“If you’re showing up online, and then that shows up the same way in person, you’re like, yes, that’s her, that’s the person I want, I already like, know, and trust her,” she explained. Consistency between your online and in-person presence is, in her words, a great credibility builder.
Her advice is blunt: “Let it be ugly. Just let it be ugly.”
Luana says looking back at her early content makes her cringe, but without those rough first attempts, she never would have improved. She encourages agents to set pride aside, avoid analysis paralysis, and accept that audiences value authenticity over perfection. There is no single tool that solves it. The answer is to keep showing up.
She also recommends following creators outside of your real estate market for inspiration, because “nobody wants to see a copy-paste. They want to see you for who you are.”
Luana says she rarely feels tech FOMO, because she believes you don’t need much to do real estate. But when she saw what a HomeStack app could do, her reaction was, “How do we not have this?”
Her reasoning centers on value. Today’s buyers are highly informed and can find listing data on Zillow and similar portals, so agents need to offer that information “plus plus plus plus plus.” A branded app lets her team deliver home search along with neighborhood guides, preferred vendors, and resources, all with each agent’s face and brand on it.
“We’re a one-stop shop,” she said. “Everything you need from before you buy the house till after you buy the house is in this app.”
The feature Luana highlights most is real-time activity notifications. Instead of waiting on emails or logging into a CRM, her agents get a push notification when a client is active in the app.
“I literally get a push notification that says, so-and-so is live in the app right now, so you’re catching them at the exact moment that they are in that app,” she said. That timing, she explains, increases both conversion and ease for agents.
In a brokerage market where “everybody’s offering different levels of sameness,” the app is one of Orange Slice Properties’ strongest recruiting differentiators. Luana points out that even brokerages with their own apps usually brand them to the company, not the agent.
With HomeStack, each agent can position themselves as the local expert, manage their own dashboard, and connect the app to their own CRM. The app has its own dedicated slide in Orange Slice’s recruiting pitch deck, separate from the rest of their tech stack, because it consistently gets a “wow” reaction. Most recruits download it on the spot to see the consumer experience for themselves.
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Orange Slice Properties treats open houses as outdoor community events, taking advantage of Florida weather. The team plays music, grills food, runs giveaways, and even sets out a dog water bowl so every dog owner stops to chat.
“We’re selling community, so let’s make it feel like community,” Luana said. The goal isn’t only the house on the market. It’s meeting neighbors and future buyers and sellers. (“We love the nosy neighbors,” she added.)
The app plays a direct role. Custom signage includes QR codes to the app, and the app’s open house mode sends every sign-in straight into the CRM. No more sorting through crumpled paper sign-in sheets after a hot day outside, which means agents follow up faster and convert more of those leads. Luana also finds that people are more willing to download a helpful app than to hand over their phone number on a sign-in sheet.
At buyer consultations, the app appears on the slide right after search criteria and wants-versus-needs. Rather than asking whether buyers want to download it, the agent tells them to download it right then, so their search can populate as soon as the call ends.
“It’s more of a directive to download the app, even, than a casual introduction to the app,” Luana said.
Luana believes sellers value agents who think outside the box and who invest in their own business. The app gives her team concrete advantages to present: marketing listings as coming soon or off-market on an additional platform, and connecting sellers with preferred vendors to prep the home, all in one place.
Because every agent promises maximum exposure through databases, email lists, and portals, a branded app is a genuine differentiator. That matters most for newer agents: “If you’re an agent that doesn’t have a ton of sales or a massive track record, but you have a better toolbox, they’re more willing to consider you.”
“Because they’re not built for the agent,” Luana said. Brokerage portals, in her experience, don’t give agents control over search criteria or client conversations, and they’re built for the brokerage rather than the individual agent. With her own app, the data is private and belongs to her team.
A standout feature for her team is Collections, a HomeStack feature Orange Slice Properties helped test early. Collections lets multiple clients and multiple agents chat together about homes inside the app. Couples, business partners, and co-listing agents all see the same information in real time, regardless of time zone or whether they use iPhone or Android. That replaces the dead-end cycle of screenshots and texts, and keeps momentum going instead of “let me go home and talk to my wife about it.”
She also appreciates that the preferred lender appears on every listing in the app, making pre-approval easy for buyers.
Promote it everywhere. “Anything that you could think should be linked there should be linked there,” Luana said. She now refers people to her app over her website.
Rachel noted a trend from recent AI seminars: consumers are visiting websites less, just as they’re shifting from Google toward AI tools like ChatGPT. Luana agreed, adding that an app adapts to whatever new phone formats come out, including the wave of foldables, while websites have to be redesigned to keep up.
Her biggest surprise was how easy the process was. “I’m blown away that we have a real app in a real app store, and it was that easy.”
Having owned a brokerage and worked in a big box, Luana wanted the best of both: a boutique brand without the admin burden of running a brokerage alone, and the back-end support, referral network, and collaboration of a larger organization. Side, a HomeStack partner that encourages agents to build their own brands and personalities, gave her that. She described it as only the second time in her career she’s felt “I need this.”
Push notifications are Luana’s main retention tool. “Everybody can get in front of their clients with call, text, email,” she said, but a push notification straight to a past client’s phone stands out. Her team plans to use them for coupon codes, open house announcements, free home valuations, community events, and past client events. The app is also built into the team’s drip campaigns.
Referrals reward that effort: NAR’s 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers found that 91% of buyers would use their agent again or recommend them to others.
Adoption across her team has been strong because Luana led by example: she posted an app video first, and within a week her agents were sharing their own. A structured rollout plan with HomeStack helped the launch go smoothly.
“We have to communicate with our clients the way they want to be communicated with,” Luana said. “I don’t think apps are gonna make bad agents better, but I think they make good agents great.”
Her recommendation: have a conversation, see what the technology can do, and take the pieces that fit your business, because it isn’t one-size-fits-all.
Ready to build a pipeline your team owns? See your branded HomeStack app in action.
Buying real estate leads can add volume quickly, but the pipeline stops when the spending stops, and every lead still has to be won. Luana Oliveira grew Orange Slice Properties to 22 agents without buying leads. Her team earns trust through social media and community events, then uses a branded HomeStack app to capture sign-ins and follow up in real time.
Agents can build leads they own through consistent social media, community events, open houses, and referrals from past clients. Luana’s team ties each one to its app, with QR codes at open houses, push notifications for past clients, and an app download at every buyer consultation. For more tactics, see these 55 lead generation ideas for real estate agents.
Luana Oliveira, a Central Florida Realtor with 14 years of experience, founded Orange Slice Properties. Her brokerage is Side, and her company has grown to 22 agents within about 18 months.
The team uses a custom-branded real estate app built with HomeStack, featuring home search, neighborhood guides, preferred vendors, open house mode, push notifications, and Collections.
Collections is a HomeStack feature that lets multiple clients and agents chat together about properties inside the app, so everyone sees the same information in real time.
She hosts them outdoors as community events with music, food, giveaways, and custom signage with QR codes to the team’s app, which captures sign-ins directly into the CRM.
According to Luana, brokerage apps are built for the brokerage, not the agent. A custom app gives agents control over search criteria, client conversations, and their own private data.
