Chatbot for Real Estate Agents: How to Set One Up
Buyers and renters do not wait for office hours. They browse listings in the evening, wonder about fees, areas or how viewings work, and move on to the next agency if nobody answers. A chatbot on your website can answer those questions from your own pages at any hour and save the details of interested visitors for your team. It will not replace the conversation with a person, and it should not pretend to. Here is how to set one up in five steps, using only what it can really do.
Step 1: List the questions buyers and renters ask
Open your inbox, your contact form messages and your notes from calls. Write down the questions you answer most: what areas you cover, how the buying or renting process works, what fees apply, which documents are needed, how to arrange a viewing. Write each in the visitor's words. Sort them into questions with a stable answer, such as your process and fees, and questions that depend on the day, such as whether a property is still available. The chat is good at the first group and should pass the second to your team.
Step 2: Add your listings and key pages
Create your chat and enter your website's address. Choose the pages the chat should learn from: listing pages, area guides, buying and renting steps and fee pages. You can add PDFs, Word files and text for anything that is not on the site. Pages behind a login cannot be read. OneType answers from the pages and files you add; it does not connect to property portals or to booking, ordering or POS systems. When your pages change, your sources are read again on the schedule your plan sets, or on demand with Sync now. Ask the chat real questions in the test chat, and check that each answer shows the page it came from.
Step 3: Decide what happens when it cannot answer
Some questions will not be on your pages. The chat never states a price, date or term your pages lack: when your content has no answer, it says so and offers a next step. Choose that step: a contact form, an apology, or a person from your team. With handoff turned on, which needs a paid plan, a visitor can ask for a person during the hours you set, and your team gets the chat with a short summary of what they want. Outside those hours, or when nobody is online, the visitor gets a contact form instead. For wording that must always be the same, such as how your fees are described, write a saved answer.
Step 4: Capture leads with consent
A visitor becomes a lead through the contact form in the chat, which needs an email, or by typing their own details while chatting, which can be saved depending on the agent's settings. Each lead lands in Contacts with its conversation and the last question asked, so your first message can answer it. The agent saves only what the visitor typed about themselves and never records marketing consent on its own; an optional marketing opt-in is stored with the time it was given. Your team is alerted in the dashboard bell and by email, and on plans with integrations also in Slack or Discord once you connect them. An alert shows the name (if given) and which fields were left, never the email or phone number. Add the chat to your site with one script tag and check that OneType shows "Live on" followed by your site's address.
Step 5: Check the conversations and fill the gaps
After a week, read the conversations and the list of questions the chat could not answer, grouped by meaning with a count, most asked first. Each group is one answer away from covered: write it as a saved answer or add it to a page. As for your own systems, a CRM integration is not available yet. Export contacts as a CSV file, or send each new lead to your own system with signed webhooks, which need a plan that includes webhooks. Can it book viewings? Not today: it can capture the visitor's details and question so your team can reach out and agree a time.
Try it on your own website
See the real estate setup: a chatbot for real estate, learn how leads and contacts work, or start free.