Why Use a Real Estate CRM? (Plus 4 Top Options)

So much about growing your real estate business comes down to leads — attracting them, interacting with them, and nurturing them along the path to becoming an eventual client. It takes a lot of effort and a bit of luck.

What if there was something else that could help?

There is. A real estate CRM.

CRMs — customer relationship management tools — are a one-stop shop for managing your leads. They’re a central place where you can safely store lead information, track your interactions with them and identify opportunities for more strategic connection.

For real estate agents who want to get serious about their pipeline of leads, a real estate CRM is one powerful tool you might want to add to your toolbox.

In this post, we’re discussing why you should use a real estate CRM and what a real estate CRM can do for your real estate business, as well as four of the best real estate CRMs out there today.

What a Real Estate CRM Can Do For Your Business

Not entirely sure what functions a real estate CRM can perform for your business? Let’s take a look.

Contact management

A CRM is your modern rolodex (but so much better). Email addresses, phone numbers and mailing addresses for your leads, clients (past and present) and network — all in one place. 

But it’s not just contact information; a CRM can store every useful detail about your contacts, such as age, occupation, neighbourhood, etcetera. It can automatically pull this information from emails and other interactions, or you can manually add it. A real estate CRM provides you with a complete client profile.

Interaction tracking

Turning leads into clients requires ongoing nurturing. Keeping track of when, where and how you engage with leads (and with past clients) is important. CRM tools can automatically log every interaction, such as newsletters sent, phone calls made and events attended.

Strategic engagement

Real estate agents are busy. You don’t have time to look at each individual lead and identify the right opportunities and the best time to strike. A CRM helps do the work for you. CRMs have marketing automation features that can trigger follow-ups and other marketing efforts based on lead activity, timing and other data. They can even do the work (such as deploying a real estate drip email campaign) for you.  

Integration with other tools

The best CRM tools can integrate with other marketing tools, such as email providers and email marketing platforms, calendars, prospecting tools, transaction management tools and yes, your real estate website. A CRM that brings together data and insights from these different tools is incredibly powerful.

Why You Should Use a Real Estate CRM

You know what a real estate CRM can do. Here’s why you should use one:

It can take your lead generation and nurturing to the next level (and beyond) while saving you time and effort.

A real estate CRM will stay on top of leads for you and show you the best ways to nudge those leads along the path to becoming clients (and even do some of that work for you). 

In a nutshell, it can improve your efficiency, organization, strategy and, ultimately, your profitability.

Four of the Best Real Estate CRMs in 2024

The world of CRM tools is a bit crowded. Not every platform is the same and what tool works well for someone in, let’s say, software sales, won’t necessarily work well for real estate agents.

If you’re looking for the best real estate CRM for 2024, we can help. Based on our homework and feedback from real estate agents like yourself, these are four of the best CRMs for real estate agents.

Follow Up Boss

One of the CRMs most recommended by real estate agents, Follow Up Boss is a CRM designed specifically for the real estate industry. 

Agents give it top marks for its:

• Ease of use. The learning curve isn’t as steep as other CRMs and it can be used pretty much “out of the box” if you’re not quite ready to dive into customizations.
  
• Action Plans. Every lead entered into FUB gets an “Action Plan”, which tells you when and how to follow up, and even does some of the follow-up for you.
  

• Built-in dialer. Do you use a real estate dialer software to make outbound calls? FUB comes with its own (plus text message marketing), allowing you to make calls directly from the CRM and capture that information in one place. (Note: the dialer is not included in the base plan for solo agents and small teams but can be added at an additional cost.)
• Integrations. FUB can be connected to more than 30 other tools you use to run your real estate business, such as Zapier, Mailchimp, Gmail, Outlook and so on.

What you might not like:

• Mobile app. CRMs are complex tools and that complexity doesn’t always translate well to a mobile app. Many agents say the FUB app experience isn’t the best.

Pipedrive

Pipedrive isn’t specifically for real estate agents but that doesn’t mean it’s any less useful or powerful. 

Agents give it top marks for its:

• User friendliness. Agents praise Pipedrive for its use of simple language to describe features and functions, its user-friendly dashboard and its all-around intuitiveness. That’s a good thing; the easier a tool is to use, the more likely you are to use it.
• Customizable pipeline. Real estate sales pipelines and processes don’t look like those of other sales-based industries. Pipedrive lets users customize their stages and create pipelines for different scenarios, so you can make sure Pipeline accurately reflects how you do business.
• Pricing structure. Pipedrive’s various plans make it accessible to a wide variety of real estate agents and teams, and their unique needs. If you’re a solo agent and don’t need all the bells and whistles (e.g., revenue forecasting), there’s an affordable plan for you.

• Mobile app. Compared to other CRMs, Pipedrive users have mostly positive things to say about the app and its usability.
  
• Integrations. Pipedrive can be integrated with a whopping 250+ tools and services, so you can sync your activities and efforts and maximize Pipedrive’s effectiveness.

What you might not like:

• Possible glitches. Every tech tool has its issues and Pipedrive is no different; some users report that the platform is glitchy and can be unstable. 

Hubspot

Hubspot is another CRM for all sales, not just real estate. But it’s incredibly popular and absolutely a top choice for agents looking for a real estate CRM.

Agents give it top marks for its:

• Email tracking. Hubspot offers enhanced email tracking that notifies you as soon as a lead opens your email, automated email sequences that will follow up as soon as your lead acts on something via your email, and scoring that identifies hot leads based on how they interact with your email. Users say they love the feature for how much more effective it makes their email marketing efforts.
• Affordability for solo agents. If you just want to dip a toe into the world of CRMs, or if you only require basic features, then Hubspot is completely free. If you’re looking for more, the first tier of the paid plan is still very affordable for a one-person team.
  
• Customer service. The exact level of service will depend on your plan but Hubspot’s support team gets glowing reviews from customers for their willingness to go the extra mile. 
• Integrations. Hubspot’s huge library of integrations boasts more than 1,400 third-party tools and software, so you’re pretty much guaranteed to be able to connect with nearly all your other business tools. 

What you might not like:

• Lack of intuitiveness. Some users say that understanding and locating certain features can be tricky. If you’re not used to CRM tools, the platform’s learning curve may be a bit steep. 

KvCORE

KvCORE is a cloud-based real estate platform that is known for its AI-powered Smart CRM, which serves as a powerhouse virtual assistant, showing you the best opportunities and automating day-to-day tasks so your agents can focus on what they do best – building relationships.

KvCORE is the #1 rated real estate platform, and is built to power your entire brokerage with next generation technology your agents will use and love.

Agents give it top marks for its:

• AI-powered Smart CRM. A serious follow-up machine. Leverage kvCORE’s powerful automation to engage more SOI contacts from one central place and close more deals.
  
• Lead validation and scoring. When new contacts are added to KvCORE, you can request data validation on the info that is created or entered into the system. This will check things such as name, email, and other contact info to cross-reference it with thousands of online sources of data that contain that information.
  

• Automated task plans. These are a set of workflows predetermined for each lead. Emails will be sent to entice leads to go through the funnel depending on the actions they take.
• Integrations. KvCORE can be connected to many third party tools to run your real estate business, such as Zapier, DocuSign, Google Ads and myRealPage.

What you might not like:

• Price. KvCORE is a premium product, and the pricing can be a bit steep for some businesses.