How fast a Realtor should respond to a lead, what happens to conversion after five minutes, how to measure your own response time, and how to get under a minute.
Respond in under five minutes, and ideally under one. Portal inquiries go to several agents simultaneously, so response time is usually the difference between a conversation and a dead record in your CRM.
Speed to lead is the elapsed time between when an inquiry is created and when your first genuine reply reaches the lead. An auto responder that says thanks, we received your request does not count. The lead needs an answer to what they asked.
Measure the median, not the average. One lead you answered three days later will distort an average and hide a real problem.
Inside the first five minutes the lead is still in browsing mode with the listing open. They are receptive because they just asked a question and expect an answer. After that window they close the tab, and every later message is an interruption instead of a response.
There is also a competitive layer. Because portals distribute the same lead to multiple agents, the winner is often just whoever replied first, regardless of experience or brokerage.
Look at when your inquiries arrive. For most agents a large share land in the evening, overnight, and on weekends. Those are the exact hours when a manual process fails, because you are at dinner, at a showing, or asleep.
You do not need to answer them personally. You need something answering in your voice at 2am that hands you a qualified conversation in the morning.
Pull your last 50 inquiries. For each one, record the inquiry timestamp and the timestamp of your first outbound message. Take the median per source. Most agents who believe they respond in minutes discover a median measured in hours.
Then grade yourself against realistic targets and fix the worst source first. The free speed to lead grader on this site does the math for you.
There are only three real options: hire an inside sales agent, put your team on rotating coverage, or automate the first response. An ISA costs a salary plus training and still sleeps. Rotation works until someone is at a closing.
Automation is the only one that holds at 2:14am on a Sunday. Diviine connects to Zillow, Realtor.com, IDX, Gmail, Outlook, SMS, and missed calls, replies in under 60 seconds, and books the showing. It is a 30-day free pilot to see your own numbers before you pay.
Within five minutes, and under one minute where possible. Portal leads are sent to multiple agents at once, so the first substantive reply usually wins the conversation.
Less than for portal leads, because you are not racing another agent. It still matters for the impression it creates, but a referral will usually wait an hour without penalty.
No. A generic acknowledgement does not answer the question the lead asked and often reads as a bot. What works is a specific reply referencing the property or area they inquired about.
Automate the first touch. Diviine answers overnight inquiries in under 60 seconds, qualifies them, and either books the appointment or hands you a warm thread in the morning.