How to manage Idealista leads before they go cold

Every portal enquiry is the same five minutes of work: read it, answer it, decide whether it is real, and put it where you will see it again tomorrow. Do that badly on a Monday with fourteen waiting and you lose the two that mattered. Here is the routine, with the messages.

Why a portal enquiry is not a normal lead

A referral arrives warm and on its own. A portal lead arrives cold, in a crowd, and it is not yours alone: the same buyer usually clicked “contact” on several listings in the same area, and some of those listings belong to other agents.

Three things follow from that.

• The volume is lumpy. Nothing for two days, then eleven in one evening after a price change or a portal newsletter. A routine that only works on quiet days is not a routine.
• The intent is mixed. Neighbours checking what their own flat is worth, people who will buy in three years, investors sending one line to every listing under a certain price, and two or three buyers who are genuinely looking this month. You cannot tell them apart from the first message, which is why everyone gets an answer.
• Speed decides more than the pitch. When several agents receive the same buyer, the first useful reply is usually the one that gets the conversation, and the conversation is what gets the viewing.

What an enquiry actually gives you

Before you build a routine, know what lands on your phone. It differs by portal, and it is worth checking your notification settings once so nothing sits unseen in a web inbox.

Idealista

Contacts arrive in the Inbox inside idealista/tools, and idealista also emails you an alert about the messages you receive, plus a push notification if you use the app. A contact shows the person’s name, their message, their phone number and the listing they wrote about, and the same screen lists the calls you received or missed with the ad that prompted them (idealista/tools help).

Fotocasa

Fotocasa Pro describes its own contact handling as “ten control de tus contactos vía email y/o teléfono” — your contacts reach you by email and/or phone, next to the statistics for your listings (Fotocasa Pro). Habitaclia is another Spanish-market portal worth the same one-off check.

Kyero

Kyero sends enquiries to an email address you choose: an account can hold more than one, and you can change which address receives them. The enquiry carries the buyer’s questions, the property, and your own reference number for it, and the buyer is told you will reply to their email directly (Kyero help). It is a portal aimed at buyers abroad, and its agent directory lets a visitor filter for agents who speak their language — so expect enquiries in English, German, Dutch and the Scandinavian languages, not only in Spanish. On the coast that mix is the normal week; see how agents on the Costa del Sol work.

What no portal gives you is a qualified buyer. The name, the message and the listing reference are raw material. Budget, timing, financing, whether they are even in the country — all of that you have to ask for.

Step 1: answer the same day, in their language

Answer in the language the enquiry was written in, even if you then continue in another one. A buyer who wrote in German and got a Spanish template back has already learned something about how the rest of the purchase will go.

A good first reply does four things and still fits on a phone screen: it names the property, it answers the question that was asked, it adds one thing that is not in the ad, and it ends with a question that is easy to answer. Keep the brochure for later.

Step 2: qualify in the next two messages

Never send a questionnaire. Two questions per message, each attached to something you can do for the buyer, and you have the whole picture by the third exchange. Five things to know before you give up a Saturday.

1. The budget, and whether it includes costs. In Spain the purchase costs sit on top of the price: transfer tax or VAT, notary, land registry, lawyer. A buyer whose “maximum” has not counted them is shopping one bracket above what they can sign.
2. The timing. “When would you like to have the keys?” separates this quarter from next year far better than asking how serious they are.
3. The financing. Cash, a mortgage in Spain, or a mortgage at home. A buyer paying cash and a buyer waiting on a bank abroad are two different timelines, and you want to know which one you are on before the second viewing.
4. The area, honestly. Most enquiries name a listing, not an area. Ask what took them to that one — the school, the golf, the airport run, the sea view — and you will often find that two streets away suits them better and is still on your books.
5. The paperwork they have started. A foreign buyer will need an NIE, and usually a Spanish bank account and a lawyer. None of that is your job, but whether they have started tells you how far away a completion really is, and whether they are buying as a non-resident.

Write the answers down as they arrive, in the client’s own words. In four weeks you will not remember which of eleven enquiries was the Dutch couple with the dog, and “budget 450, outdoor space for the dog, flying in the third week of October” is what makes the next message worth reading.

Step 3: get the lead out of the portal inbox the same day

A portal inbox is a message list, not a pipeline. It cannot tell you who has not replied to you, who is closest to a viewing, or who you promised to call back in March. Advertise on two portals and you have two message lists and still no single list of buyers.

Whatever you use — a CRM, a spreadsheet, a notebook — the rule is the same: one list, updated the day the enquiry arrives, with a stage against every name. The day it slips to “I’ll do it at the weekend”, the list stops being true.

In LeadWing that is one paste. Copy the enquiry — the portal message, the email alert or a forwarded WhatsApp — into the paste-a-lead box and it comes back as a filled-in form: name, email, phone, the language they wrote in, nationality if they mentioned it, and a summary of what they want, with budget, area, property type, bedrooms and timing. Check it, fix what is wrong, save. From there it is a client card moving through new, contacted, qualified, viewing and reserved — which is what a CRM built for the Spanish market is for.

Step 4: a follow-up rhythm portal leads survive

Most portal leads are not lost to a competitor. They are dropped: answered once, never written to again, and quietly re-activated by whoever does write, six weeks later. The first reply is the easy one. The fourth message is where the deals are.

A rhythm that suits portal enquiries: the answer on day zero, a short second message the next day if there was no reply, a third three days later carrying something new — a price change, a listing that fits better, a viewing slot — then week two, then once a month with a reason to write.

Two rules keep it from reading as spam: every message carries new information, and every message ends with a question. “Just checking in” is neither. The full cadence, with the messages in English, Spanish and German, is in the follow-up guide.

This is the part worth automating. LeadWing’s auto-engage watches for the clients who have gone quiet and prepares the next message in their language; you read it, change what you want, and send it yourself.

Step 5: know which portal actually pays

Portals are a monthly subscription, and by month six most agents cannot say which one produced a signed deal. You do not need a reporting tool to fix that, you need one habit.

Tag the source on the card the day the lead arrives. There is no portal field to fill in: put it in the first line of the notes — “Idealista, 4 Sep, ref 1234” — and if you sell for more than one agency, put whose listing it was in the agency field. Then once a quarter count three numbers per portal: enquiries, viewings, signed deals.

The middle number is the one nobody tracks and the one that tells the truth. Forty enquiries a month that turn into one viewing cost you more than the subscription; six that turn into four viewings deserve your better photographs.

Five mistakes that quietly cost deals

1. Replying with only a question. “Hi, when can you view?” reads as a form letter. Answer what they asked first; then ask.
2. Answering in the wrong language. Match the language of the enquiry, and record it on the card so the next message does not fall back to yours.
3. Calling first, three times, then giving up. An enquiry written at 23:40 is a message, not a call request. Write first, then ask permission to call — an unknown Spanish number is rarely called back from abroad.
4. Leaving the lead in the portal inbox. It will be buried under new enquiries within a week, and nothing there reminds you of anything.
5. Deleting the “not now” buyers. Someone nine months away is a good lead with a date on it. Park it with the date and a reason to write again.

You can run all five steps on paper, and plenty of good agents do. The reason to use a tool is that steps three to five stop depending on your memory: see what LeadWing does and what it costs.