Products that help real estate agents manage their communication and follow-ups with prospective and current clients.
Overview
Customer relationship management (CRM) software helps agents and their teams manage their lead database. A large part of real estate sales involves constantly following up with contacts to build an active client pool and sphere of influence. CRMs help support this effort.
Business trends
There are a lot of CRMs. But their feature sets are not all that different. There are three types of groups that emerge among real estate CRMs.
- Expensive and feature rich: Many CRMs cost over $50 per month but offer tons of integrations, automations, and added features like transaction management. If an agent has a large enough budget, most features become available. Often this includes the ability to send SMS texts within the app or quickly sync with dozens of other software systems and lead sources an agent uses. Services like Follow Up Boss or Realvolve fall into this category.
- Cheaper and freemium: Many CRMs take a lighter approach and offer a cheap but structured service. These CRMs limit service offerings and integrations to keep things simple. For agents who just need to track contacts and don't need a lot of bells and whistles, these CRMs are often highly effective. For example, RealOffice360 has a completely free version and LionDesk starts at under ~$25 per month per agent.
- Traditional interfaces: Some CRMs have had staying power by maintaining a less-modern interface that agents have been using for many years. Many agents prefer the simplicity of these platforms as well as the lack of constant updates that change design or functionality. RealtyJuggler and Referral Maker both fall into this category.
That said, nothing is stopping a real estate agent from using a major non-real estate CRM like Salesforce or HubSpot. But often the specialized focus on pre-built real estate templates and lower price points convinces agents to use an option focused on real estate. This all comes down to personal preference. In many cases, agents also just use the service provided by their brokerage or coaching system. For example, Referral Maker is a CRM offering directly provided by coaching company Buffini & Company, while real estate brokerage Compass acquired real estate CRM Contactually to help build an in-house CRM for agents.
