How fast you have to answer a new development inquiry

Nobody enquires about one development. A buyer looking at a tower in your city has an afternoon, a browser with eight tabs open, and a form to fill in on each of them. Whoever answers first is not merely first in the inbox — they are the only one in the conversation while the buyer is still thinking about it.

The reply that arrives tomorrow answers a different question

An inquiry is a moment. Someone has just looked at your renders, worked out roughly what they can afford, and written down a question: is there a two-bedroom facing the water under 1.2 million? Answer inside that moment and you are talking to a person who is still in it. Answer at ten the next morning and you are interrupting somebody’s day with a message about a building they have half forgotten, after two other projects have already told them what they wanted to know.

This is not about being polite quickly. A reply that says “Thank you for your interest, one of our associates will contact you shortly” is not an answer, and it does not hold the moment. The buyer asked something specific. Until that is answered, the inquiry is still open.

Where the hours actually go

Before fixing anything, find out what your own numbers are. Three are worth having:

• Median time to first reply, measured from the inquiry to the first message that answers the question — not to the auto-responder.
• Share of inquiries outside gallery hours. For most developments it is the larger half: evenings, weekends, and whatever time it is where an overseas buyer lives.
• Share of inquiries from brokers. They are usually the majority, and they want something different — see what belongs in a broker kit.

Most sales teams are surprised by the second number. The gallery is open six days a week from ten to six; buyers enquire at eleven at night, from bed, in whatever language they think in.

Three windows, and what each is worth

• Seconds. The buyer is still on the page. The answer lands while they are reading, and the conversation keeps going: what else is available, what floor, can I see it Saturday.
• Minutes. They have moved on to the next tab but not out of the mood. A good answer pulls them back, especially if it contains a real unit and a real price rather than a promise to follow up.
• Hours or days. You are now in a queue with everyone else, competing with two projects that have already booked a visit.

What to do about it

The honest options are: hire people for nights and weekends, accept the gap, or automate the first answer. Most developments cannot justify the first and quietly choose the second.

Automating it is only worth doing if the automatic answer is a real answer. That means it has to:

• Read live inventory. “Is 1204 still available?” has one correct answer and it changes weekly. An assistant working from a PDF exported in June will tell a buyer about a unit you sold in July.
• Follow your price rules. Some developers quote exact list prices, some quote ranges, some nothing until a person is on the line. Whatever answers first has to obey the same rule your team does.
• Answer in the buyer’s language. In a market with overseas buyers, the reply that arrives in Spanish or Portuguese at midnight is worth several that arrive in English at nine.
• Book the visit. The point of answering fast is the appointment. If the automatic answer ends with “someone will call you”, you have only moved the queue.
• Know when to stop and fetch a person. A buyer ready to reserve, a large budget, a question about contracts: those belong with your team, immediately and with a summary.

What to measure afterwards

Not messages sent. Measure median first reply, the share of inquiries that turn into a booked visit, and the number of conversations your team had to take over — that last one tells you where the automatic answers are thin. And read the transcripts. The questions buyers ask at midnight are the ones missing from your website.

Ask Sofia was built for this: she answers on your website, WhatsApp, phone and SMS at any hour, from your live price list and your rules, books the visit and hands over the buyers who should be talking to a person. See how it works, or what separates that from a chatbot.