Following a listing from appraisal to registration
How the Real estate pack tracks each listing from appraisal to registered or let, what holds a listing back, and what the pack deliberately leaves out.
By Achekam · · 5 min read · For Real estate businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
Launching soon. The Industry CRM add-on described in this article is launching soon. This article describes it as it will work at launch.
Ask an agency principal how many listings are under offer and you will often get a pause, then a look at the whiteboard, then a call to the agent who "has most of them". Stock lists live in spreadsheets, offers live in agents' inboxes, and the only person who knows that a sale is stuck with the conveyancer is the agent who is waiting for the call.
The Real estate pack in Achekam's Industry CRM gives every listing one place and one status. This article explains how a listing moves from the first appraisal to registered or let, what stops it moving before it should, and the work the pack leaves to you.
Two kinds of record
When a business switches the Industry CRM on, it picks one of twenty industries. Each industry pack sets the words the screens use, its record types, pipelines, workflows, document requests, documents to sign, reminders, starter catalogue, ledger accounts and home-page counts.
The Real estate pack is built for an estate agency's sales and lettings, and it keeps two kinds of record:
- A Listing, with its viewings and offers. This is the property you have been asked to sell or let.
- A Buyer brief, which records what a buyer is looking for.
Viewings and offers belong to the listing, so the history of a property, who saw it and what was offered, stays with the property rather than with the agent who happened to show it. When a lead is converted, the customer and the pack's main record are created at once and that record's workflow starts, so a seller who calls in does not have to be typed in twice.
The listing stages
Every listing sits in one stage at a time. The pipeline runs:
| Stage | What it means in practice |
|---|---|
| Appraisal | You have valued the property and are seeking the mandate |
| Mandate signed | The seller or landlord has given you the mandate |
| On the market | The property is being marketed and shown |
| Under offer | An offer has been accepted and conditions are running |
| With the conveyancer | The transfer or lease is being prepared |
| Registered or let | The sale has registered or the tenant has moved in |
| Withdrawn | The seller has taken the property off the market |
The descriptions in the second column are general agency practice rather than rules the pack imposes, but they are how most agencies would read each stage. Withdrawn is a real outcome, not a failure to hide: a pipeline that keeps withdrawn listings visible tells you how many mandates turn into nothing.
The home page counts come from the records, tasks and ledger themselves, and none is typed in by hand. Among them are open records, records in each stage, pipeline value, overdue tasks, tasks due today and key dates in the next 7 days. So the answer to "how many listings are under offer" is on the screen rather than on the whiteboard.
Conditions that stop a listing moving too soon
In the Industry CRM a record cannot move into some pipeline stages until set conditions are met, such as a customer being named, an amount being set or a signature being done. The kinds of condition a pack can use are: fields set, a customer set, an amount set, a workflow stage done, a whole workflow done, a particular kind of task done, or rows completed on a sub-form.
For an agency this is the difference between a pipeline that reflects reality and one that reflects optimism. An agent who drags a listing forward to look busy meets the same conditions as everyone else. When a listing will not move, the useful question is what is missing, and the answer is usually something the agency needed anyway: a named seller, an agreed price, a signed document.
What the pack does not do
Some agency work stays outside the pack by design, and it is better to know that before you plan around it. The Real estate pack:
- keeps no trust account. Deposits held in trust stay in the systems and bank accounts you use for trust money today. In South Africa, section 54 of the Property Practitioners Act sets out the duty to keep separate trust accounts for client money, when that money may be invested and when it may be paid out.
- does no rental management. Monthly rent collection, landlord statements and maintenance for managed rentals are not part of it. A listing can end as let; managing the let afterwards is outside the pack.
- publishes nothing to property portals. Your listings are loaded onto portals the way you load them now.
- does not match buyers automatically. A person filters the buyer briefs.
None of this is hidden in the small print. Each is a boundary worth knowing before you plan your office routines around the pack.
Filtering buyer briefs by hand
When a new listing comes on the market, someone has to decide which buyers to call. Because the pack does not match buyers automatically, that someone is a person in your team, working through the buyer briefs.
A routine that keeps it manageable:
- When a listing reaches On the market, go through the buyer briefs for that area and type of property.
- Read each likely brief properly rather than calling everyone on the list.
- Call the strongest matches first, and keep a note of who was contacted.
- Review buyer briefs that have had no contact for a while and close the stale ones.
A person reading a brief can weigh things a filter cannot: the buyer who said three bedrooms but would take two near the right school, or the investor whose finance is already approved.
Once viewings begin, collecting viewing feedback for the seller covers the next step.
Where to begin
Before switching the pack on, decide which current mandates go in first, and agree as a team that a listing's stage is changed in the pack and nowhere else. If you run more than one agency company, set it up in each entity's own workspace, as described in keeping books for more than one agency entity.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
