How long do real estate agents take to reply to a lead?

The average response figure is bad enough to be useful as an opener, but on its own it misdiagnoses the problem. An agent who replies in nine hours and then follows up six times will out-convert one who replies in nine minutes and then stops. The persistence pattern is where the contracts actually go.

That combination — most sales requiring five or more contacts, most agents making one — is arithmetic rather than opinion. It describes a market in which a modest, unglamorous follow-up sequence is worth more than any additional spend on leads, because it works on inventory the business has already paid for.

It also explains why buying more leads so rarely moves the number. Adding volume to a funnel that abandons contacts after the first attempt increases the count of abandoned contacts. The constraint is not supply, and treating it as a supply problem is the most expensive available mistake.