Real Estate Answering Service: What to Look For

It is 11am on a Saturday. Your agents are hosting three open houses, and the office line is ringing with a buyer asking about a listing across town and a homeowner thinking about selling. Neither leaves a voicemail. The buyer calls the next brokerage on the listing site, and the homeowner books a listing appointment with an agent who answered.

Summary: A good real estate answering service answers every call while your agents are out, books the showing on the call, puts seller inquiries in front of an agent the same day and logs everything for Monday. It answers from your listing information only and leaves price conversations and negotiation to your agents.

What should a real estate answering service handle?

Calls to a brokerage fall into a few groups, and a service has to tell them apart:

• Buyer inquiries. Which listing, what they want to know, their timeline and financing, captured before an agent calls back.
• Showing bookings. Open house and private showing times booked during the call, not left as a request.
• Seller calls. A homeowner asking about a listing appointment is the most valuable call your office gets. It should reach an agent fast.
• Rental and renter calls. Rental questions, applications and repairs, kept separate from sales.
• Evenings and weekends. Buyers call after work and after Saturday open houses, when the office is closed.

What each missed call costs in commission is worked through in what missed calls cost a real estate agency.

What should it never say?

An answering service speaks for your brokerage, so set its limits before it takes a call:

1. Price questions come from your listing information. It gives the list price you have set for that listing, and nothing it has not been told.
2. Offers and negotiation go to an agent. A buyer ready to make an offer is a call to transfer or a hot lead to send right away.
3. Sellers are passed on, not valued. A listing appointment request is booked or put through to an agent; the service never suggests what a home is worth.

Buyer or seller: what a good handoff looks like

Take the two Saturday calls from the top of this guide.

The buyer asks about the listing across town. Frontly answers from your listing details, books her into the 2pm open house and sends the confirmation. The listing agent sees the booking with her notes: preapproved, wants two bedrooms near the train. Had she said she was ready to make an offer, the call would have gone straight to the agent.

The homeowner is thinking about selling. Frontly calls the agent who covers his neighborhood and gives a short spoken briefing first: a three-bedroom colonial, hoping to list in the spring. The agent is mid-showing, so the backup number rings the office. Nobody is free, so Frontly books a listing appointment into the time you set aside for them and texts the agent the details. The agent calls him back from the car, already briefed, before he calls anyone else.

Seven questions to ask before you choose

1. Does it answer on weekends and holidays? That is when buyers are looking.
2. How many calls does it answer at once? A new listing brings a rush of calls together. Frontly answers every caller at once.
3. Can it book showings during the call? Frontly books the times you set and sends the confirmation to the buyer.
4. Does it tell buyers, sellers and renters apart? Each needs a different next step, and seller calls need the fastest one.
5. Can a caller reach the listing agent? Frontly transfers to the agent's cell with a short spoken briefing, tries a backup such as the office, and texts or emails the inquiry when the agent is at a showing.
6. Does it work with your CRM? Frontly connects to Follow Up Boss and BoldTrail (kvCORE); Lofty needs the vendor to approve the connection first.
7. Can it make the follow-up calls? Frontly calls open house visitors and past inquiries when a matching listing comes up, and logs who is still looking.

AI or a human answering service?

A human answering service puts a person on the call; depending on the service and the hours you buy, it takes a message or books the showing. An AI answering service answers every call at once, books the showing while the buyer is on the phone, and records each call the same way, in more than 40 languages, including Spanish, so every buyer is booked in without a language barrier.

Many brokerages put weekends, evenings and the open house rush on the AI and keep their agents for the conversations that win listings.

Frontly for real estate brokerages

Frontly answers buyer, seller and renter calls 24/7, books showings, sends hot leads to the listing agent and calls your past leads back. Setup time depends on verification, workflow complexity and integrations.

See how it works on our real estate answering service page, or hear it book a showing with a free test call.