Real Estate Solutions

There is a number that should haunt every real estate professional reading this: 27 percent.

That’s the share of captured leads that ever receive a single follow-up contact. Not a second touch, not a drip sequence, not a closing call — a first contact. Three out of four people who raise their hand and say “I might want to buy or sell a home” never hear back from the agent they reached out to.

I’ve spent twelve years consulting with agents, teams, and brokerages on their technology and operations. I’ve sat in planning meetings with solo agents running $2 million in GCI and with managing brokers overseeing two hundred licensees across six offices. The operational problems are different at each scale, but the root cause is always the same: the business of real estate is built on relationships, and the operations of real estate are drowning those relationships in paperwork, data entry, and fragmented tools.

The 10-Hour Problem

The NAR 2025 Technology Survey paints a picture that every agent recognizes. Seventy-nine percent use eSignature tools. Seventy-five percent use social media for business. Sixty-eight percent have tried AI in some form. But ask any agent what they actually spend their day doing, and the answer isn’t “negotiating offers” or “building client relationships.” It’s email. It’s re-entering the same property data into three different systems. It’s chasing a lender for a pre-approval letter while simultaneously trying to schedule a showing while also wondering if that open house lead from Saturday ever got a follow-up text.

The average agent loses over ten hours per week to non-revenue admin tasks. That’s forty hours a month — an entire work week — spent on activities that generate zero commission. For a solo agent closing fifteen transactions a year at an average commission of $8,000, those ten weekly hours represent roughly $60,000 in potential production capacity that evaporates into compliance forms and CRM updates.

Why 13 Apps Aren’t the Answer

The average brokerage operates thirteen separate technology platforms. CRM here. Transaction management there. E-signatures over here. MLS access through one portal, marketing tools through another, commission tracking in a spreadsheet that nobody trusts. Each tool solves one slice of the workflow, but none of them talk to each other, and every handoff between systems is a place where information gets lost, deadlines get missed, and clients get forgotten.

I’ve watched agents pay for Follow Up Boss, Dotloop, Zillow Premier Agent, a social media scheduler, a drip email service, and a showing management tool — six subscriptions totaling $500 or more per month — and still lose deals because a lead response took four hours instead of four minutes. The tools aren’t the problem. The gaps between the tools are the problem.

What Actually Needs to Change

The highest-performing teams I work with don’t have more tools. They have fewer gaps. Their systems are designed so that when a lead comes in, the response goes out automatically. When a contract is executed, the transaction timeline populates itself. When a closing happens, the post-close nurture sequence starts without anyone clicking a button.

This is what automation looks like in real estate — not replacing agents, but connecting the tools they already use so that information flows and nothing falls through the cracks. An email from a lender triggers a deadline update. A form submission from an open house triggers a personalized follow-up sequence. A closing date in your transaction manager triggers a twelve-month client care program that generates your next referral.

The pages that follow break down the specific workflows where real estate professionals lose the most time and money. Each one identifies the gap, quantifies the cost, and maps the automation that closes it. Whether you’re a solo agent trying to compete with teams that have three ISAs, or a managing broker trying to reduce the back-office overhead eating your margins, the problems are specific and the solutions are concrete.

Your leads are waiting. Seventy-three percent of them are still waiting.