A boutique estate agency replaced portal dependence with a custom buyer matching system that surfaced properties before they were publicly listed.
Duration
12 weeks
Year
2024
Services
Pre-portal window
48 hours
Match delivery
< 30 min
CRM integration
Reapit
Build duration
12 weeks
The challenge
The client was a boutique estate agency operating in a specific cluster of South London postcodes. They had built a strong local reputation and a waiting list of registered buyers — people who had explicitly told them what they were looking for and asked to be contacted when something matched. The problem was that their CRM system and their website were completely disconnected. Matching a new instruction against the registered buyer list was a manual task that required a member of staff to read through each registration and compare it to the new property's details. Instructions were reaching the public portals before their own registered buyers had been contacted — the reverse of what should happen.
The secondary problem was portal dependence. Rightmove and Zoopla were generating the majority of their inbound enquiries, and both platforms were raising fees each year. The agency wanted to build a direct relationship with buyers that didn't depend on portals — a reason for buyers to register with them directly and come back to their own site first.
The solution
We built a buyer registration portal on the agency's own website and connected it via API to their existing CRM (Reapit). When a buyer registered, their requirements — bedrooms, price range, property type, must-have features, preferred streets — were stored in structured format and synchronised to the CRM as a tagged buyer record.
When a new instruction was added to the CRM, a matching algorithm ran automatically against all registered buyer records. Matches were ranked by fit score — number of requirements met, weighted by the buyer's stated priorities. The top-matched buyers received a personalised email within 30 minutes of the instruction being added, with property details and a direct booking link for a viewing, before the property appeared on any portal. The agency had a 48-hour pre-portal window to convert registered buyers — a window that had previously existed only in theory.
The website was rebuilt around local SEO architecture. Instead of a single 'properties for sale in South London' page, we built dedicated pages for each postcode area and street cluster the agency served, each populated with relevant sold data, local amenity descriptions and current listings filtered by that area. These pages were designed to rank for high-intent searches like '[street name] houses for sale' and '[postcode] estate agent' — searches with buyer intent that the portals couldn't match because they covered too large a geographic area.
Key features
A structured buyer registration form on the agency's own website captures specific requirements — not just bedrooms and budget, but preferred streets, must-have features, and dealbreakers. Registered buyers are sync'd to Reapit CRM automatically.
When a new instruction is entered in the CRM, a matching algorithm identifies and ranks registered buyers by fit score. Top matches receive a personalised email with property details and viewing booking link within 30 minutes — before portal listing.
Dedicated landing pages for each postcode and street cluster in the agency's patch. Each page includes current listings, recent sold data and local context. Designed to rank for street- and postcode-specific search queries where portal authority is lower.
A multi-step valuation request form qualifying seller intent (timeline, current situation, previous valuations) before booking. Responses route to the appropriate senior negotiator rather than a generic inbox.
A quarterly market report template generated from CRM data — average sale price, days to offer, list-to-sale ratio by area — published as a signed-up email for registered buyers. Drives direct repeat visits without portal intermediation.
Outcome
In the first three months after launch, the agency converted a meaningful proportion of new instructions to registered buyers before portal listing — a metric they had never been able to measure before because the matching process had been manual and inconsistently executed. The buyer registration form became their primary lead capture mechanism, outperforming their Rightmove lead generation product on a cost-per-registered-buyer basis within 60 days. The postcode SEO pages began ranking for several target searches within 90 days, generating organic enquiries that had previously been captured by the portals.
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