Real estate pipeline

[CNina-Soto]

Hey everyone, I'm a real estate broker who just brought HubSpot into my boutique brokerage.  I went all in with the paid versions of Hub Marketing and Sales.  I'm working through my onboarding and I'm trying to find the best way to set up the sales pipeline.  Some have told me I should just have all the steps of the transaction in the same pipeline. Others have suggested I create multiple pipelines for Sellers, Buyers, Rentals. Others have suggested that I create a Deal for every single lead that comes in.  I'm wondering for the Realtors in the room, what has worked for you? If you could start all over again what would you have done differently when bringing in Hubspot?

TIA, Cynthia

[Olivia_Bagnall · Accepted solution]

@CNina-Soto 🙂 

Hi Nina! It's Olivia here - ex-HubSpot onboarding specialist turned freelancer. Happy to help!

You'll definitely want to keep revenue streams with different processes in different pipelines and NOT move deals from one pipeline to another. If a deal begins in one pipeline it should be closed and stay in that same one. 

I have worked with real estate agencies in Singapore and they generally have buyer, renter and seller pipelines. What did work really well for one of them though was creating a custom object in HubSpot called 'property' so that you could have a record to represent a property and then attach relevant, buying, selling or rental deals to it. 

If you would like to discuss this in more detail, feel free to drop me a message 🙂 

Olivia Bagnall Inbound Consultant and Project Manager Baskey   o.bagnall@baskey.eu www.baskey.eu Rheingasse 14, 50676 Köln

[Jnix284 · Accepted solution]

Hi @CNina-Soto 

I first started using HubSpot in 2016 while working for a regional homebuilder and have since helped local realtors make the switch as well.

I agree with @Olivia_Bagnall on having separate pipelines for each revenue stream, one common complication I've run into with real estate is when you have a client who is both buying and selling.

With your buying and selling pipelines separate, make sure you account for this in your processes. While you can associate a deal to the same client for each pipeline, how you structure your team could impact your data and communications.

For example, some brokers have dedicated listing agents who specialize in staging, listing, etc., and a different agent reps them when buying - in these situations, I have found that the client doesn't distinguish the two as much as the agency and communications often overlap. They might write their listing agent a reply and throw something in about their own home. If both agents aren't copied, associating communications to each deal will be important - and obviously internal communications to stay on the same page.

If you have a 1:1 agent to client relationship, the agent would be self-managing the communications across both deals, and while easier than the situation above, it will be important to have processes that ensure both deals stay updated (workflows can save a lot of time here if information overlaps).

You can set up a property for client type with choices: buying, selling, both buying & selling, and use that to help with automating data across deals. 

I noticed you are also breaking out by Investor, make sure you have qualifying questions on your lead form so you avoid mixups with the Buyer and Investor pipelines. I think the key question here - is your investor really different than your other buyers? Could including "investor" in the client type property solve for this? Or do you need to isolate your investors for specific revenue reasons? Once the deal closes and you are acting as property manager, you would already have a separate deal for investors in the landlord pipeline, so that revenue is already tracking separately.

There are a lot of ways to slay this dragon, and keeping revenue streams top of mind will help align your processes to your pipelines. 

Hope this helps raise a few questions so you can setup in a way that works best for you, happy to help if you run into any other questions! 🙂

[DiyaHarding]

Reflecting on your journey with HubSpot integration two years ago brings back memories! It's fantastic to see how far you've come since then.When it comes to setting up the sales pipeline, I wanted to share some insights from Grupo EcoQuintas, a reputable real estate entity.Back then, segregating pipelines for Sellers, Buyers, and Rentals was a popular strategy. It allowed for a more targeted approach to each transaction type, optimizing efficiency and productivity. However, consolidating all transaction steps into a single pipeline was also a viable option, providing a holistic view of ongoing deals.

[Jnix284 · Accepted solution]

Hi @CNina-Soto 

I first started using HubSpot in 2016 while working for a regional homebuilder and have since helped local realtors make the switch as well.

I agree with @Olivia_Bagnall on having separate pipelines for each revenue stream, one common complication I've run into with real estate is when you have a client who is both buying and selling.

With your buying and selling pipelines separate, make sure you account for this in your processes. While you can associate a deal to the same client for each pipeline, how you structure your team could impact your data and communications.

For example, some brokers have dedicated listing agents who specialize in staging, listing, etc., and a different agent reps them when buying - in these situations, I have found that the client doesn't distinguish the two as much as the agency and communications often overlap. They might write their listing agent a reply and throw something in about their own home. If both agents aren't copied, associating communications to each deal will be important - and obviously internal communications to stay on the same page.

If you have a 1:1 agent to client relationship, the agent would be self-managing the communications across both deals, and while easier than the situation above, it will be important to have processes that ensure both deals stay updated (workflows can save a lot of time here if information overlaps).

You can set up a property for client type with choices: buying, selling, both buying & selling, and use that to help with automating data across deals. 

I noticed you are also breaking out by Investor, make sure you have qualifying questions on your lead form so you avoid mixups with the Buyer and Investor pipelines. I think the key question here - is your investor really different than your other buyers? Could including "investor" in the client type property solve for this? Or do you need to isolate your investors for specific revenue reasons? Once the deal closes and you are acting as property manager, you would already have a separate deal for investors in the landlord pipeline, so that revenue is already tracking separately.

There are a lot of ways to slay this dragon, and keeping revenue streams top of mind will help align your processes to your pipelines. 

Hope this helps raise a few questions so you can setup in a way that works best for you, happy to help if you run into any other questions! 🙂

[CNina-Soto]

Thank you very much. This makes me rethink my setup.  I really appreciate your insight.

[Olivia_Bagnall · Accepted solution]

@CNina-Soto 🙂 

Hi Nina! It's Olivia here - ex-HubSpot onboarding specialist turned freelancer. Happy to help!

You'll definitely want to keep revenue streams with different processes in different pipelines and NOT move deals from one pipeline to another. If a deal begins in one pipeline it should be closed and stay in that same one. 

I have worked with real estate agencies in Singapore and they generally have buyer, renter and seller pipelines. What did work really well for one of them though was creating a custom object in HubSpot called 'property' so that you could have a record to represent a property and then attach relevant, buying, selling or rental deals to it. 

If you would like to discuss this in more detail, feel free to drop me a message 🙂 

Olivia Bagnall Inbound Consultant and Project Manager Baskey   o.bagnall@baskey.eu www.baskey.eu Rheingasse 14, 50676 Köln

[CNina-Soto]

Thank you Olivia, I went ahead and created pipelines for Seller, Buyer, Renter, Landlord, and Investor.  I'm a bit confused with the property object.  Could you expand on that a bit more?

[Olivia_Bagnall · Accepted solution]

Hi @CNina-Soto Happy too! 

So when we say 'object' in HubSpot, we mean contact, company, deal or ticket. As recently as last year, Hubspot gave their users the option to create custom objects - for example 'Property'. This means that 'Property Records' could be associated to ther obkect types and have their own custom fields. It means that if you have a three buyer deals, they could all be assocaited to the same property record and you would see all communications realted to that property in the one place, be it from the buys, landlord, seller, etc ... 

I hope this helps! https://knowledge.hubspot.com/crm-setup/use-custom-objects

It is an Enterprise feature but if you find you are struggling to get the standard objects to be what you need them to do then you could certainly consider it. 

Please feel free to reach out anytime!

[Verilo]

Oliva,

Is there an alternate to custom objects? I a the CRM starter suite and willing to upgrade to professional sale hub but enterprise is too big a jump. 

I am a business broker and want to associate a deal with a 'business listing' that may have mutlple buyers. I am wondering if I can use products or tickets or something else to represent a business listing.

Ideally I want to automatically inform a 'contact' associated with a 'ticket / object / product' that a 'buyer' has been added to a specific stage of the pipline.

Any tips?