Can Zoho CRM handle property listings, or only contacts?

Listings become a custom module with their own fields, stages and layouts - address, price history, tenure, EPC, availability - related to contacts, viewings and offers. That relationship is the point: it is what makes buyer matching and vendor reporting automatic rather than manual.

Will it pull enquiries from Rightmove, Zoopla or Bayut?

Yes. Portals send enquiries by email or webhook depending on the portal and your contract, and we parse either into a lead with the property and source attached. Where a portal offers a proper feed we use it; where it does not, email parsing is reliable enough that the difference is invisible in practice.

How are agent commissions handled?

Splits are configured as rules - listing side, selling side, agency share, referrer - and applied when a deal is marked agreed, so the figures exist before completion rather than after. Forecast commission is reported off the live pipeline, and the invoice is raised from the same numbers.

We have years of data in spreadsheets. Can it come across?

Yes, and it is usually the part worth doing carefully. We de-duplicate, normalise addresses, reconcile contacts against properties, and run the import on a sandbox first so you can check the result before it becomes the live database.

How long does a brokerage rollout take?

Three to six weeks for a single office, including configuration, portal capture, migration and training. Multi-branch setups with per-branch pipelines and commission rules usually run six to ten.

Industry Solution

Zoho CRM for Real Estate

Capture property enquiries, match buyers to listings, and automate follow-ups so no lead falls through the cracks.

Talk to a specialist

Overview

Agency is a speed-to-lead business. The same enquiry lands with four other agents at the same moment, and the one who replies first usually keeps it. Everything else - the viewing, the offer, the commission - is downstream of a reply that either happened in two minutes or did not.

So we build the CRM around that first reply, and then around the thing most agency systems leave out: the property itself. Listings become their own module, related to the people enquiring about them, the viewings booked on them, and the offers made against them. An agent opens a buyer and sees every unit that buyer has been shown; opens a unit and sees everyone who has ever asked about it.

From there the admin that eats an agent's week - chasing viewing feedback, re-sending details after a price drop, assembling the ID and proof-of-funds pack, working out who gets what share of the fee - becomes automation rather than evenings.

The problem

What gets in the way

The operational friction we hear about most often from real estate teams.

Enquiries arrive in five places at once

Portals, the website, WhatsApp, the office line and walk-ins all land somewhere different. Whoever happens to notice one owns it, and the ones nobody notices are never counted as lost because they were never counted at all.

The first reply decides the deal

Portal enquiries go to several agencies simultaneously. A reply inside a few minutes converts at a completely different rate to one the next morning, and manual triage cannot hold that pace across evenings and weekends.

Listings live apart from the people asking about them

Availability, price changes and status sit in a spreadsheet or the portal back-office, while buyers sit in the CRM. Matching one to the other is a manual search somebody has to remember to run.

Viewings are arranged by text message

No record of who saw what, no prompt to collect feedback afterwards, and nothing to show a vendor at the end of a quiet month except an agent's recollection.

Commission is worked out after the fact

Splits between the listing agent, the selling agent, the agency and any referrer get calculated in a spreadsheet once the deal closes - which is exactly when a disagreement about them is most expensive.

The stack

Which Zoho apps, and what each one does

Not the whole suite for its own sake - these are the apps a build like this actually uses, and the specific job each one is there for.

Zoho CRM

Properties as a module of their own, related to enquiries, viewings and offers, with the pipeline running listing to instruction to offer to completion.

Zoho Forms

Website, landing page and valuation-request forms that write straight into the CRM with source, budget, area and move date already attached.

Zoho Campaigns

Drip sequences segmented by area and budget band, so a buyer who is six months from moving still hears from you in month five.

Zoho Sign

Reservation forms, sole-agency letters and tenancy agreements signed from a phone, with the countersigned copy filed automatically.

Zoho WorkDrive

Title deeds, floor plans, EPCs and KYC documents held against the property record instead of on one agent's laptop.

Zoho Analytics

Cost per enquiry by portal, viewing-to-offer ratio by agent, and a commission forecast built off the live pipeline rather than last month's close.

How it runs

The automations, step by step

What the system does on its own, in the order it does it - so you can check it against how your week actually goes.

Portal enquiry to booked viewing

The path that decides most deals, with the human only involved once there is something worth a human.

1Enquiry arrives from a portal, the website form or a tracked phone number, and is created as a lead with its source recorded.
2An assignment rule routes it by area and property type, round-robin within the duty team, so it has an owner before anyone has read it.
3An automatic reply goes out within the minute carrying the property details and a link to the agent's live availability.
4If nothing has been logged against it in thirty minutes, it escalates to the team lead as a task.
5When a slot is picked, the viewing is written to the agent's calendar and a reminder goes to the applicant the morning of.

Matching buyers to new and reduced stock

The follow-up that normally depends on an agent remembering a conversation from three weeks ago.

1Requirements are captured on the contact: area, bedrooms, budget band, chain position and target move date.
2Overnight, new instructions and price reductions are matched against every open requirement.
3Matches go out as a branded email; opens and clicks raise the contact's score.
4Crossing the score threshold creates a call task for the owning agent, with the matched units already attached.
5Three unopened matches in a row moves the contact to a slower nurture track instead of burning the list.

Offer through to completion and commission

The stretch where deals quietly stall, made visible by making every stage ask for something.

1An offer is logged against the property with amount, conditions and chain position, and the vendor is notified the same day.
2Accepting the offer opens the compliance checklist - ID, proof of funds, mortgage in principle - as tasks with owners and due dates.
3Reservation paperwork goes out through Zoho Sign and files itself back against the property on return.
4Stage changes notify the solicitor and update the vendor automatically, so chasing calls stop being the update mechanism.
5Completion flips the property to sold, applies the commission split, and raises the invoice without anyone re-keying the figures.

What we build

The scope of a typical real estate engagement.

Property listing and inventory module, related to contacts and deals
Portal, web-to-lead and tracked-call enquiry capture
Round-robin assignment with response-time SLAs and escalation
Automated buyer-to-listing matching on new stock and price drops
Viewing scheduling, reminders and feedback capture
Vendor reporting pack, generated and sent on a schedule
Compliance checklists with document collection and e-signature
Commission splits, forecasting and invoicing

What changes afterwards

The difference this makes to how the business runs day to day.

First contact in minutes

Every enquiry is acknowledged automatically and owned by a named agent before anybody has opened an inbox.

Nothing arrives unattributed

Each enquiry carries the portal, campaign or page it came from, so spend can be judged on completions rather than clicks.

One view of a buyer

Every enquiry, viewing, piece of feedback and offer for a person sits on one record, which survives an agent leaving.

Commission visible before it is earned

Splits are set when the deal is agreed, not reconstructed afterwards, and the forecast updates as the pipeline moves.

FAQ

Real Estate CRM - FAQs

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