WhatsApp for real estate developers

In most of Latin America, southern Europe, the Middle East and a good part of Asia, a buyer who wants to ask about a residence does not fill in a form. They send a WhatsApp message, the way they would to a friend, and they expect the reply to arrive the way a friend’s would. For a new development selling to those buyers, WhatsApp is not an extra channel. It is the one the conversation actually happens on.

The two WhatsApp products, and which one you need

There is the WhatsApp Business app — free, on one phone, fine for a single associate — and the WhatsApp Business Platform, the API version, which is what a sales team needs. The difference that matters: the app ties the number to a handset, and the Platform puts the number behind software, so several people, or an assistant, can answer on it, and every conversation is on the record rather than on someone’s personal phone. When an associate leaves, the conversations do not leave with them.

Four rules that shape everything else

• You cannot message first without a template. Messages you start are pre-approved templates, reviewed by Meta before you may send them. Writing them well takes a couple of days of back and forth, so do it before you need them, not the week of the launch.
• There is a 24-hour window. Once a person messages you, you can reply freely for 24 hours. After that, starting again means a template. This is why answering fast matters even more here than elsewhere — see how fast you have to answer.
• Opt-in is required to message someone first, and it must be opt-in for WhatsApp specifically, collected somewhere you can point to later. A list of phone numbers from a portal is not consent.
• The number is committed. A number connected to the Platform cannot also be used in the ordinary WhatsApp app. Use a number the sales team does not personally rely on.

Setting it up without a bad surprise

• Verify the business first. Meta’s Business Verification takes days and sometimes weeks, and nothing interesting is possible until it clears. Start it before anything else.
• Choose the display name carefully. It is what buyers see, it has to match the business, and changing it later is a review of its own. Use the project’s name if buyers know the project; use the developer’s if they know the developer.
• Decide who owns the number. If a vendor connects it under their own account, some things — templates, voice calling, moving to another vendor — become a request to them rather than a setting you control. Ask, in writing, whose account the number will live under.
• Set an out-of-hours answer that is a real answer. “We are closed, we will reply tomorrow” on a channel people use at midnight is worse than nothing.

What good answering looks like on WhatsApp

The channel is informal and fast, and writing for it is not writing an email. Short messages. One question at a time. No blocks of marketing copy. The buyer’s language, chosen by what they typed rather than by which country the number is from. And — the part most automations get wrong — the answer to the actual question: is there a two-bedroom facing the water, what does it cost, can I see it Saturday.

That last part only works if whatever answers can read your inventory as it stands today, and obeys whatever rule you have about quoting prices. An assistant that answers from a brochure will quote a price you no longer sell at.

What to keep an eye on

• Quality rating. Meta scores your number on how people react to your messages. Blocks and reports lower it, and a low rating lowers how many people you may message a day.
• Template approvals. Marketing templates are held to a stricter standard than utility ones. A message that reads as an advertisement to a reviewer will be refused.
• Who is answering at 11pm. If the answer is “nobody”, the channel is doing half its job.

Ask Sofia answers on WhatsApp inside the conversation your buyers already started, in seven languages, from your live price list — and on your website, your phone line and by text with the same rules. See the channels or how to go back to an old lead list without burning it.