The 4 Real Estate Processes Worth Automating
Real estate is fundamentally a relationship business, which is exactly why agents should not be spending their relationship capital on sending status update emails and chasing leads who came in overnight. The four processes below are repetitive, time-sensitive, rule-based, and happen constantly. They are perfect automation targets.
1. Lead Follow-Up Automation
Every day, real estate agents lose deals to agents who responded faster — not agents who knew more or had a better track record. The research is unambiguous: 100x more likely to connect when contacted within 5 minutes versus 30 minutes (Harvard Business Review). The problem is that leads come in at 11pm from a Zillow form, 7am from a Facebook ad, and 2pm while you are showing a property. Manual follow-up is structurally incapable of hitting that window consistently.
Automated lead follow-up connects every lead source — Zillow, Realtor.com, your website, Facebook Lead Ads — directly to your CRM and triggers an immediate, personalized response sequence. The lead receives a text within minutes. A CRM record is created. The sequence continues on a time-based cadence until the lead responds or is manually marked active. When the lead replies, the sequence stops and you are notified.
The real cost of slow follow-up: A team generating 50 leads per month with a 3% conversion rate closes 1.5 transactions per month at $7,500 GCI each. Improving conversion by just 1 percentage point — a realistic outcome from consistent 5-minute response times — adds 0.5 closings per month, or $45,000 in additional GCI annually. That is the math on a one-time automation build.
How automated lead follow-up works:
Step 1 Lead captured from Zillow, website, or Facebook ad → Step 2 Immediate SMS + email sent within 5 minutes → Step 3 CRM record created in Follow Up Boss / kvCORE / LionDesk → Step 4 Day 1 follow-up message sent if no response → Step 5 Day 3 follow-up → Step 6 Day 7 follow-up → Step 7 Day 14 follow-up → Step 8 Monthly long-term nurture until response or disqualification
2. Transaction Milestone Updates
At peak season, a productive agent carries 8–12 active transactions simultaneously. Each one has a buyer or seller who wants to know what is happening. Offer accepted — now what? Inspection done — what did it find? Appraisal ordered — when do we hear back? Agents spend an estimated 30–60 minutes per week per active transaction answering status questions that have known, automatable answers.
Transaction milestone automation connects directly to your transaction management system — Dotloop or Skyslope — and fires a pre-written update to buyers or sellers the moment a milestone is logged. The update explains what just happened, what it means, and what comes next. The agent is CC'd for awareness. Nothing falls through the cracks; clients stay informed without a single manual send.
Step 1 Milestone logged in Dotloop or Skyslope (offer accepted, inspection scheduled, appraisal ordered, clear to close) → Step 2 Automated email and/or SMS sent to buyer or seller with milestone explanation and next steps → Step 3 Agent CC'd on email for awareness → Step 4 CRM contact record updated with milestone timestamp
3. Showing Confirmation & Feedback
Booking a showing sounds simple. In practice, it involves an email to the listing agent, a call to confirm availability, a confirmation sent to the buyer's agent, a reminder the morning of, and then — if you remember — a follow-up asking for feedback. Each showing takes 15–20 minutes of coordination that can be handled automatically. Multiply that across 10–15 showings per week and you are looking at 2.5–5 hours of scheduling administration every single week.
Showing automation handles confirmation, reminders, and post-showing feedback collection without any manual touchpoints. Feedback from buyers is compiled and delivered to the listing agent in a clean summary, providing market intelligence that would otherwise require a phone campaign to collect.
Step 1 Showing requested via ShowingTime or Calendly → Step 2 Confirmation sent to buyer's agent automatically → Step 3 Reminder sent 1 hour before showing to all parties → Step 4 Post-showing feedback form sent to buyer's agent 2 hours after → Step 5 Feedback responses compiled and emailed to listing agent as a summary
4. Post-Close Review Request
You close a deal. You are immediately focused on the next one. Two months later, you realize you never asked your buyer or seller for a Google review, and the moment has passed. This is the pattern for most agents — not because they do not value reviews, but because asking feels awkward and the timing is easy to miss. Meanwhile, 72% of clients will leave a review if asked at the right moment (BrightLocal). The right moment is 3–7 days after close, when the experience is fresh and the gratitude is real.
Post-close review automation fires a personalized review request on a fixed delay after the transaction closes in your CRM. If no review is left within 7 days, a single follow-up is sent. The request links directly to your Google Business profile or Zillow agent page. Reviews compound over time — agents with 200+ reviews at 4.9 stars win the first-call inquiry before any conversation starts.
Step 1 Transaction marked closed in CRM (Follow Up Boss / kvCORE) → Step 2 3-day delay → Step 3 Personalized review request SMS with direct Google Business or Zillow link → Step 4 7-day follow-up sent if no review detected → Step 5 Sequence ends; contact tagged as post-close in CRM
What Does Real Estate Automation Cost?
Every build at Aplos AI is priced at a flat rate of $150/hr, scoped in hours before we start. No surprise overages. No recurring monthly fees. You pay once for the build; you own it indefinitely.
| Automation | Estimated Hours | Flat-Rate Range |
|---|---|---|
| Lead Follow-Up Nurture Sequence | 30–45 hrs | $4,500–$6,750 |
| Transaction Milestone Updates | 25–40 hrs | $3,750–$6,000 |
| Showing Confirmation & Feedback | 20–30 hrs | $3,000–$4,500 |
| Post-Close Review Request | 20–30 hrs | $3,000–$4,500 |
Payback timeline: One additional closing per quarter — a realistic outcome from consistent 5-minute lead response — at $7,500 GCI pays back a lead follow-up automation build in the first quarter it runs. Most agents see improved conversion in the first 30 days. The automation keeps compounding for as long as you use it.
Does This Replace Follow Up Boss or kvCORE?
No. We connect what you already use. If you have Follow Up Boss and Dotloop and Twilio, we build the layer that makes them work together without you manually triggering anything. You keep your existing CRM. You keep your transaction management platform. You keep every tool you already pay for.
The automation layer runs on n8n — an open-source workflow automation tool that acts as the bridge between your existing stack. It is self-hosted on infrastructure you control, which means your client data and lead data stay in your systems. You are not routing sensitive contact information through an unfamiliar third-party SaaS vendor.
Every automation we build is documented and handed off to you fully. If a lead source changes, a new transaction platform is added, or you want to modify the follow-up cadence, you can — or we handle it as a small scope change.
What the Delivery Looks Like
From signed scope to live automation, most real estate builds are delivered in 1–2 weeks. Here is exactly what that includes:
Loom video walkthrough — recorded for your team so every agent and admin understands how the automation works, what triggers it, and what to expect. No live training sessions required.
Written handoff document — covers how each automation works, how to troubleshoot common issues, what to do if a tool's API changes, and where to find the logic if you want to modify a step later.
Full access and ownership — everything runs in your accounts, on your infrastructure. No proprietary dashboards to log into. No vendor lock-in. You own the automation from day one.
On your end, we need: API access to your CRM and transaction management platform, and approximately one hour for a final walkthrough to confirm everything works correctly in your environment with your real data.
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