Best practices for Real Estate using Hubspot CRM

Smart CRM & Sales Hub Tips, Tricks & Best Practices
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Hi All,

New to HubSpot - looking for some best practices/guidance specific to the commercial real estate industry, namely multifamily investment (not brokerage).

We’re in the set-up/onboarding stage and wanted to see if anyone would be willing to share best practices on how to set up your platform for real estate acquisitions.

The main thing I’m looking for guidance on is essentially around how to best set up our platform. For context, I have property information (ie, about the physical asset) and two contacts for each property (Owner / Property Manager). These are all “investments/targets” we are going to pursue acquiring. I’d like to store the information as effectively as possible so that the contacts are tethered to the physical property and I can enroll them in sequences together to be contacted at different intervals/stages. Going through onboarding, it seems like we’re trying to force the data into HubSpot out of the box, and it seems like a more tailored real estate setup may pay off more down the road.

Key questions:

  1. I’m thinking about re-classifying the property (physical asset) as the “deal” in Hubspot; currently, we have them as “Companies”. This way, it would show up as an opportunity with a stage and contacts attached to it.
  2. Are you able to tailor sequences to bounce between different contacts? ie, if I wanted to reach out to owner X times first, then at a certain stage in sequence, reach out to the Property Manager, is this possible? Or is it not possible/better to keep each contact in a deal on it’s own sequence - ie, run outreach for the asset through the Owner. Then initiate outreach through the Property Manager separately.
  3. Is there a fast way to optimize data importing? We are testing on a sample size of 50, but I have a goal to work up to importing 5k properties (physical assets) with contacts for each. Mapping them to the correct deal has been time-consuming even at this lower number, so I’m concerned it will be a huge time suck if I’m doing this at scale. I’m sure I’m missing a way to do this more effectively and systematically.

Commentary/guidance or video resources are all welcome. Thanks in advance!
Moderator Note: this post was reviewed for relevancy and optimized for clarity on 3/30. Thank you for your contributions to the HubSpot Community!

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@PGeary ,

My initial reaction is that you should probably be working with an experienced HubSpot Architect who works for a Solutions partner. There is a lot to unpack in this post, and I’m a little concerned about doing it justice in a brief post.

1.) Since you are using Professional, I am inclined to agree that using the Deal Object is probably the best approach for properties in this model. If you want to track purchase and sale transactions using the deal object as well, these can be tracked in separate pipelines.

2.) Your best bet here is to have two sequences: One that reaches out to the owner, and a second that reaches out to a property manager. With an Enterprise subscription, you can enroll contacts in sequences automatically using workflows, and this would allow you to “bounce” between the two sequences automatically. Unfortunatley, this option is not available on your current subscription.

3.) The key with any multi-object import is to have a unique identifier for each object so HubSpot creates the associations correcltly. In your case, your owner and property manager will have email addresses that should be unique to them. You’ll need something similar for properties, such as for example, a unique property number. This could be as simple as having a column in your property spreadsheet be sequential numbers. 0001, 0002, 0003, etc. With that done, you just need your property spreadsheet to list the email addresses of the relevant owner and manager in their own distinct columns of the spreadsheet. This article tells you more about how to do that.

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Hey @PGeary

I agree with you that classic onboarding is not going to meet your needs.
When we work with clients like you in the Real State industry the configuration of the data model is a bit different and to make it more robust it usually involves using custom objects like Properties or Property Manager/Brokers.
Of course you can then differentiate in your database investors from buyers and customize your marketing and sales actions for that.

About the secuences (as you describe them) I think it 'd be better work with Workflows and for the import it could also be solved with syncs form the API depending on where you are getting the information of the properties from.
If you need coaching on how to achieve a HubSpot portal that best suits your business let me know.

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@PGeary , I agree with @Lucila-Andimol that workflows may be a better choice for your flows that need to switch between recipients, as long as your Property Managers and Owners are opted into Marketing Email, since emails sent through workflows are marketing (bulk) emails and not Sales (1:1) emails. Understand also that emails sent through workflows will be tracked as marketing activites and not sales activities, if that matters to your process.

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Hey @PGeary , how are you? I am reading what you raised as problems and also what @Lucila-Andimol answered you, which is very good.

1/ Definitely, using companies for properties is a bad idea, okay?

2/ The idea of using businesses or deals for this is better.

3/ But the best model is that you use a custom object, a property object, precisely for the physical assets.

That would greatly simplify your data model, the way you see it in HubSpot and, at the same time, the way you are going to import it by linking the properties with the contacts.

If it were your possibility to create custom objects, you would have a more robust, better and clearer data model, right? For that, you would need enterprise (and today it’s probably very easy to upgrade just 1 seat is a low investment ~130).

If you are going to stay with Pro, switching to deals is a better idea than staying with companies.

And then, for the part of sequences or contact automations, as Lucila also told you, it is a better idea to use workflows. If you want to automate this in two steps, contact one contact first, then another and so on. For that, you need the marketing hub, not just the sales one, right?

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Hi @PGeary, I’m setting up Hubspot for my RE investment firm as well. Using hubspot to track acquisitions. We are a small shop - only two partners on the west coast. Wanted to see if it’s worth connecting and sharing what I’ve learned along the way / what I would do differently.

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When using HubSpot CRM for real estate, it’s essential to follow best practices to streamline your processes and improve client relationships. Start by customizing the CRM to fit the unique needs of real estate, such as tracking properties, deals, and appointments. Utilize the contact properties and pipelines to organize leads, clients, and prospects at every stage. Automate follow-up emails and task reminders to ensure consistent communication. Integrate HubSpot with other tools, like email marketing platforms, to enhance your campaigns. Lastly, regularly analyze your CRM data to assess performance and identify opportunities for growth, ensuring a more effective sales strategy.

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Effective investments is essential to make informed decisions and maximize returns in the commercial real estate industry. At Leni Co, we offer insights and tools to simplify reporting and improve efficiency for multifamily property owners and investors.

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I faced the challenge of using HubSpot for a Real Estate agency last year. The firm provided marketing and sales services to real estate developers. So in essence they had two sets of customers: the B2B developers on one side and the B2C property purchaser. In addition, each developer could have multiple projects and of course each project had multiple units for sale. Faced with the challenge of customizing HubSpot to support this company’s objectives I structured their HubSpot as follows:

  • I created a two tier hierarchy for Company objects: The developers became Parent Companies and the development projects became Child Companies
  • Managing the actual units for sale was more challenging. I choose to use the Commerce features Product library.

The problem was that the Items selected from the Product library, once copied over to the Deal were just that - copies. The individual products in the library were essentially templates. The problem we faced was when an agent would negotiate with a prospect on the possible purchase of a specific unit, they needed to place a “Hold” on that unit until the end of the negotiations. Similarly, the product had to be flagged as “Sold” once a Deal was closed so no other agent would inadvertently sell it to someone else! Unforunately my client only had a Sales Professional hub and I had no way (maybe its not possible in any case) to use Workflows to update the Product record. That had to be done manually.
I no longer support that client but the new Object Library Real Estate Listing looks like it would resolve a lot of the challenges I faced. If anyone is using it I’d love to speak with them about their experience.

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It sounds like you’re diving into a pretty robust setup with HubSpot for managing real estate investments! I recently came across a helpful resource that could be worth exploring if you’re trying to optimize property management and data storage. The Living on the Côte d’Azur website offers a range of useful content about real estate in the French Riviera. While it’s more tailored to those looking at life and investments in that region, I think the ideas and approaches they share about managing properties and understanding the local real estate market could spark some ideas for your CRM setup as well.

The structure of how properties and contacts are tracked could align well with your current thinking about re-classifying properties as “deals” in HubSpot. Plus, they often touch on the practical side of real estate decisions, which could give you some creative insight into handling large-scale imports and property data more efficiently.

Definitely not a direct recommendation for your HubSpot CRM, but if you’re thinking about a broad view of real estate management, it’s a resource that’s worth browsing for fresh perspectives!