10 tips for following up with real estate leads

You spend a lot of time and money on marketing your apartment communities, but what if all that effort is going to waste? Some surveys show that more than 50% of leasing calls to multifamily properties go unanswered, and every minute that goes by before following up makes a prospect more likely to look elsewhere.

Following up with leads gets even more difficult when you take into account the tech preferences between generations. A Gen Z renter may want to shop for an apartment the way they shop for anything else online, while Millennial or Gen X renters may prefer a more personal experience.

Getting this balance wrong could be detrimental to your ability to fill vacant units.

Whether you focus your lead-generation efforts on or offline (through a mix of web-based and traditional strategies), successfully converting your hard-earned traffic into leases or sales isn’t easy.

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First, you need to create a strong brand reputation by managing tenant satisfaction. Then, you need to conduct consistent, quality real estate follow-ups across your entire portfolio. How to follow up with real estate leads.

Property managers know it can take lots of time and energy to manually follow up with real estate leads – and that effort doesn’t always translate into signed leases. Putting work into pursuing a prospect who eventually ghosts you is discouraging and can lead to burnout.

Rather than tracking all your prospects in a static document, spending extra office hours returning missed calls, or exchanging emails to schedule a community tour, property managers and leasing agents can benefit from the latest advancements in AI and digital CRM tools to capture, track, and nurture leads across the residential lifecycle.

Through a range of automated software, you can not only attract quality tenants but also earn business by converting leads and delivering the most engaging leasing experience possible.

Tip 1. Have a follow-up schedule

It’s obvious enough to make a follow-up phone call to a real estate lead. However, the work doesn’t stop there. You need to set yourself up for success by having a repeatable process for following up with leads.

A good rule of thumb would be to:

1. Reach out right after the first point of contact.
2. Check back in at the end of the week.
3. Touch base at the end of the next week.
4. Send them helpful content at least once a month for the next year.

When it comes to following up with leads, it’s crucial to have a system in place to keep track of how many times you’ve made contact and in which ways. This can help you keep to your follow-up schedule or redirect your efforts if you see there are leads who have not responded. Ideally, a solution like this will also let you set yourself reminders to follow up within a time frame of your choosing.

Tip 2. Utilize follow-up templates

Following up with real estate leads can be a time-consuming (and sometimes frustrating) process when undertaken manually.

As such, every element of automation you can add to your standard course of operations will allow you to be more efficient, creating a smoother experience for yourself and your team.

Where possible, try to design an extensive collection of templates that can be used to quickly respond to all manner of inquiries. Some solutions even allow you to leverage response templates based on the initial point of contact.

Tip 3. Try to follow up as quickly as possible

According to a recent study, online leads expect answers to their questions within 5 minutes. This means that from the moment you receive an email or phone call, every minute you let pass before following up decreases your chances of converting a lead to a lease.

Therefore, it’s critical that you deliver on that expectation. Why? It’s highly likely that your competitors already are, and you don’t want to lose business over something so simple.

This expectation of instant answers, however, also means you need to be prepared to answer questions that come through after business hours, or when you’re simply not by the phone. In fact, 40% or more of inbound calls happen outside business hours.

For all the flaws that chatbots from years gone by had, they served as a reliable way to respond to inquiries in a timely manner. In today’s tech-driven world, many of these tools have far surpassed what came before.

For example, AI-powered chatbots can deliver quick responses with as much personalization as possible. In addition to giving leasing staff the chance to put down their phone and focus on other tasks, many renters from younger generations actually prefer to get their questions answered without having to talk on the phone.

What’s more, AI-powered chatbots can convert web visitors into leads at any hour of the day. Some services even report that 30% of chatbot users convert to leads.

Tip 4. Follow-up more than once on multiple platforms

Just because an initial conversation starts through the query form on your website doesn’t mean you can’t use the email and phone number they provided to your advantage.

Follow up with real estate leads until you have a clear answer (or until you’ve reached out more than 4-5 times).

Beyond that, try to get their attention passively. Use targeted social media and blog content to capture their attention and restimulate their interest.

Tip 5. Track all follow-up attempts

It’s critically important that you don’t overstep the boundary that is unique to each buyer or renter.

If it feels like you are pressuring someone to take action, their confidence in working with you is going to fall dramatically.

For this reason, it’s important to have a record of each interaction you’ve had with a lead. This helps you ensure you’re not overwhelming someone who’s already been contacted several times on through different channels.

Conversely, tracking your interactions gives you an opening to understand your lead better. If a lead isn’t returning calls, there’s a chance that isn’t their method of choice, and if they haven’t been contacted via email, you may still have a chance.

A robust CRM should make it easy to track all communications between you and your lead, regardless of where they took place. With solutions like these, you can quickly catch up on any past interactions.

Tip 6. Always provide value

It’s intimidating to follow up with a real estate lead. You so desperately want them to convert.

If you “touch base” with someone too many times, with no purpose, too quickly… you’re bound to ruin any chance of successfully converting them.

As such, you should always be looking for a way to add value to every interaction – making sure you aren’t wasting the time of your buyer or renter. Ultimately, you want to prove yourself to be a useful asset to them when it comes to making their decision (not an annoyance).

For example, follow up with real estate leads by highlighting special amenities or differentiators that make your community stand out from the rest. If you host lots of resident events, let your lead know! If your property is near a local attraction, that’s also worth communicating.

This way, you can remind them your property is still available, helpfully answer questions, and provide advice… without ending up on their blacklist.

Tip 7. Solve pain points

One of the easiest ways to maximize your sales process is to always look to solve the pain points that your buyers and renters are facing. For example, consider whether they:

1. Are worried about making a bad decision.
2. Don’t trust you to provide truthful and factual information.
3. Feel pressured into making a choice before they’re ready.

In these instances, you might consider extending an offer for them to come and take a look at a property themselves with no expectations.

After all, it can be difficult to make a choice when you have someone hovering over your shoulder. Recognize the challenges your real estate leads face and provide the solutions.

Tip 8. Increase personalization

When it comes to real estate lead follow-up, you have to walk a fine line.

You need to find the balance between:

1. Introducing technology to your processes to speed up response rates.
2. Making the journey feel personalized for your prospective buyer or renter.

Before sending any communications, spend a few extra minutes personalizing your response and modifying the language appropriately.

This is where CRM systems and AI chatbots can come in handy as they can provide you with insight. For example, you could see in one system that they called after hours but used the chatbot when no one answered, and they asked specifically about your community’s pet policies.

With this information, you can follow up with a real estate lead with information they find relevant, adding a personal touch to the leasing journey.

Tip 9. Focus on the call to action

As you work with your prospective customers to move them through the sales pipeline to a new lease, remember the power of a clear and informative CTA. 

If you’re using an online leasing system, provide a portal for your prospects to view currently available apartments or search for a specific apartment to reserve at their convenience.

Tip 10. Know when to step away

No matter how hard you try, not every lead is going to convert.

Some may already be leaning towards a property elsewhere, or their financial situation could change.

Recognize the signs of disinterest and be prepared to move on.

• Short and curt responses. 

• No responses. 

• Long waits between responses. 

At the end of the day, if you are putting in all of the effort and getting nothing in return, presume the lead has gone cold.

It’s your prerogative to decide whether another real estate follow-up is actually worth your time and money or not.

Step back with your head held high. You’ll get the next one.

Still have questions about how best to follow up with real estate leads? Learn about how MRI Software helps you track, nurture, and covert leads with leasing and resident engagement tools that are capable, not complicated.

Conduct real estate lead follow ups with MRI Software

There’s something you need to know.

When it comes down to it, the key to successful real estate activity is to provide:

1. The information your customers need.
2. When it is convenient for them.
3. On a platform that they like.
4. At the ideal point of engagement.

This would give you the best chance of making that conversion.

Give your prospective residents what they want, when they want it, and you’ll reap the rewards in the form of healthy occupancy rates and strong tenant retention.

All this can be made easy through MRI Software’s range of multifamily lead management tools. To track and complete real estate lead follow-ups on an effective and efficient schedule, contact us today.