Insider Intel: We audited brokers' websites for response times to customer inquiries and the results were eye opening.
Potential buyers expect brokerages to have top-notch websites and human teams who are just as excellent. Your first impression isn’t necessarily the boldness of your tech, it’s your willingness to speak to people who raise their hands and tell you they are interested. We tested to see if big and small brokerages were living up to expectations and the results will surprise you.
Speed Matters, But Silence Speaks Louder
We conducted audits of 30 broker websites during the spring of 2025. PrimeStreet tracked and analyzed the responsiveness of these businesses, including three major corporate brand sites. Our teams reached out for help in buying 100 listings and we recorded the speed and quality of brokerages’ responses.
What we found was unacceptable in a service-oriented industry.
The fastest recorded response time was an impressive two minutes. However, 40% of the inquiries got no response at all and of those which did get a response, many were auto-responses that had no human follow-up. These are inquiries from the brokerages’ own, often expensive, websites.
In a digital-first market, failing to respond isn’t just a missed message - it’s a missed opportunity. Whether brokerages realize it or not, many are leaving business on the table. In addition, they are making large investments in a web presence and traffic generation only to see it wasted by poor response.
Automation vs. Real Connection
Roughly 21% of listings relied on automated responses and 40% were handled manually. Not surprisingly, the majority of automation was found on corporate brand websites, which had faster initial touchpoints, but often lacked follow-up or personalization.
One corporate listing responded via automation within five minutes but never followed up with a human. It checked a box but failed to build a relationship.
In contrast, listings that combined automation with a named agent follow-up performed far better. Named agents were noted for fast, consistent engagement and those are the interactions consumers remember.
Key Stats at a Glance
This chart tells a story: speed matters, but silence kills leads.
Location, Location... Response Time?
The old mantra of what makes real estate valuable was “location, location, location”. The corollary is this: a brokerage or team’s value is “respond, respond, respond”!
How long do you wait for service when the competition is next door and presumably just as good? If business is walking out the door, you can’t fix it by buying more traffic.
The “Leads Aren’t Any Good” Excuse
On the other hand, we all know one root of this problem is that industry belief that “the leads aren’t any good.” To be fair, this isn’t just an excuse.
Most brokerages and teams have good agents that spend hours a day responding to leads only to come away frustrated and reluctant to keep going. The truth is, it's hard to schedule around a specific buyers’ availability. Many agents give up after just one call.
Turning Insight into Action
Lead management solutions, like PrimeStreet's IRIS can respond with a human, from morning to night, 7 days a week. IRIS obeys state calling rules, weeding out inactive leads, and freeing your agents to focus on ready buyers.
IRIS ensures every customer gets immediate, friendly service - prompting questions to gauge their readiness and then hands them off live to an available local agent for the best possible conversation.
Good solutions stay in touch with slow-moving or past customers to keep them engaged until they’re ready to move forward again.
Measure Your ROI
These solutions aren’t just about saving missed opportunities or making agents’ lives easier, they help team leads and brokers understand marketing and recruiting ROI.
Robust reporting shows which agents are most responsive, which lead sources truly deliver, and where to invest next so you can scale up what works and cut what doesn’t.
Recommendations
For brokerages:
- Set and enforce service-level agreements (SLAs) for agent response times.
- Understand the ROI from your marketing and web tech spend
- See where you have agent performance gaps
For corporate brand sites:
- Pair automated responses with agent introductions or concierge-style support.
- Ensure the right leads are going to the right agents.
- Know and address marketing ROI gaps — are misses on your end or are you buying the wrong thing?
For everyone:
- Track multi-touch engagement, not just the first response.
- Establish a 15-minute response benchmark as a new industry standard.
- Your database of old leads has real buyers, don’t let them drift off to the competition.
You spend a lot of money on your website, marketing that drives traffic to it, and in lead acquisition. Often, brokers and teams feel that money is wasted on “poor” marketing options when the real problem is in-house. This leads to abrupt shifts in spend from one promising marketing opportunity to another only to result in frustration and business loss to competitors. The future belongs to those who respond - and follow up. Tools like IRIS, for example, make sure you do both.
Once you have response time and quality under control, you can really start to evaluate your marketing spend and that opens the door to rapid growth. If you have a handle on your ROI, you can spend on marketing with confidence. You make more, develop a deeper pool of returning customers (and referrals for their friends and family) and can grow your teams knowing that you have a successful strategy for keeping them busy and happy.
Happy customers, happy agents, happy accountants. What’s not to like?
See How You Stack Up
Get a Free Lead Response Audit
Is your team really responding fast enough? Are your marketing dollars going to waste because of silence?
We’ll mystery shop your site just like we did in our study — and send you a customized report showing how fast, how well, and how often your leads are being answered.