AI phone assistant for estate agents
Viewing requests arrive in bursts and none of them wait. Tel-Agent answers, gets the property and the availability, and books it back to you.
- Which property
- Viewing slots
- Buyer or tenant
Why estate agents miss the calls that matter most
An agency's calls arrive in bursts, tied to when a listing appears rather than to office hours. Miss the burst and the enquiry goes to whoever picked up. The eight-in-the-evening call is somebody who looked at the photos after work, and they are ringing three agencies before bed.
How the AI receptionist handles a property enquiry
It answers, including in the evening, and asks which property.
It asks whether the caller is buying or renting.
It takes when they could view - evenings and Saturdays are most of the answer.
It asks about a chain or a notice period, which is what separates a viewing from a browse.
It proposes viewing times and confirms, or writes the enquiry to a review list.
What the agent is told to ask
Written by you, in your own words, as the assistant’s instructions.
What a property phone assistant should and should not do
What it does
- Answers evening and weekend enquiries
- Captures the property, the intent and the availability
- Qualifies with the chain or notice-period question
- Proposes viewing times and confirms them
- Keeps enquiry data on the agency's own machine
What it never does
- Write directly into a live viewings diary
- Negotiate on price or terms
- State that an offer has been accepted or refused
- Give an opinion on value or on a survey
- Send applicant data to a third-party server
Sales
Every viewing request answered, including the eight o'clock ones.
- Which property
- Chain position
- Viewing slots
Lettings
Budget, move-in date and referencing - before a viewing is offered.
- Move-in date
- Budget
- Pets and sharers
Property management
Maintenance calls, sorted by urgency before anybody reads them.
- Is it an emergency
- Which unit
- Access arrangements
Questions
Why do estate agents miss calls?
Because the calls are tied to when a listing goes live rather than to office hours, and they arrive in bursts. The eight-in-the-evening enquiry is somebody who looked at the photos after work, and they are ringing three agencies.
What does it take?
Which property, buying or renting, when they can view, and a number that works. That is enough to book a viewing without a second call.
Does it write viewings straight into a live diary?
It proposes times and confirms, or writes to a review list. It does not write into a live diary in v1 - one wrong entry costs an agent a Saturday.
Does it answer outside office hours?
That is most of the point. The eight-in-the-evening enquiry is somebody who looked at the photos after work, and they are ringing three agencies before bed - the one that answers is the one that gets the viewing.
Can it qualify an enquiry?
It asks about a chain or a notice period, which is what separates somebody ready to move from somebody browsing. That answer is on the note before an agent spends a Saturday on it.
Does it work for lettings as well as sales?
Buying or renting is the second question it asks, because the two go to different registers with different follow-ups. A tenant enquiry handled as a buyer enquiry wastes both sides' time.
Does the EU AI Act allow an AI to answer an enquiry about a property?
Yes, under Article 50 of Regulation 2024/1689, which asks that the caller be told they are speaking to a machine - that line belongs in the greeting you configure. Nothing about this work falls under Annex III, the list of high-risk uses. The distinction the Act draws is between assisting and deciding, and this agent assists: it never screens, ranks or turns away an applicant. Austria's KI-Servicestelle at RTR publishes the same reading of the transparency duty.
Who is the data controller for what a caller to an agency says on the phone?
You are. An enquiry about a property is ordinary personal data, though a tenancy enquiry carries more than the caller expects, and Tel-Agent is self-hosted with your own model keys, so the recording, the transcript and the record it writes stay on your server and never reach Dpro GmbH. There is no processor agreement to sign with us because we never receive the data, and the source is AGPL-3.0, so you can check that rather than take our word for it.
Can an agency run this in the United States?
There is no single federal AI statute to comply with, but a phone line carries older rules. Fair housing rules make automated screening a real risk, which is why the agent does none of it. Consent to record is set state by state, and California and Illinois among others want every party to agree. Running the software yourself makes you the caller of record, so the disclosure and the recording switch are yours to set.
Not usable yet. The day it answers a real call will be a release, not a newsletter.
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