The situation
An eight-agent independent real estate agency in the Tamworth region was handling around 200 enquiries a month across REA Group and Domain. The enquiry notification emails landed in a shared inbox that agents checked between appointments. In a market where buyers and tenants often contact multiple agencies at the same time, being the second or third to respond was costing the agency bookings it should have been winning.
The average time between an enquiry arriving and an agent making contact was four to six hours. During busy periods, particularly weekend mornings when open home activity was high, some enquiries sat overnight. By the time an agent called, the prospective buyer had already booked an inspection with a competing agency or lost interest. The principal had a clear sense that response speed was the primary conversion variable, but with eight agents each managing their own pipeline, there was no systematic way to change it.
The flow we built
A Make.com automation now runs the moment an enquiry lands from REA or Domain:
- The enquiry is received via webhook and pushed to VaultRE, where it is matched to the relevant listing and enriched with suburb data, listing price range, and the enquirer's contact history if they have engaged before.
- Within 60 seconds, an SMS goes out to the prospective buyer with a direct link to book an inspection slot for the property.
- The assigned agent receives a notification with a qualified lead summary: property address, buyer's contact details, and whether they are a first-time or repeat enquirer.
- When the buyer books an inspection through the SMS link, a confirmation email goes out with the agent's name, photo, and direct mobile number.
- High-value enquiries (over a configured threshold based on listing price and buyer history) are flagged for a personal follow-up call from the agent.
The platforms
REA and Domain for lead sourcing via webhook integration. VaultRE as the CRM for contact and listing management. Twilio for SMS delivery. Make.com for the automation logic, enrichment, and routing rules. The agency is on a Professional Bot Care tier, which proved its value when Domain updated their webhook payload format and the connector was patched before any enquiries were missed.
The results
Response time fell from four to six hours to under two minutes for every inbound enquiry. Inspection conversion roughly doubled across the agency in the first quarter after deployment. The agents who previously spent time chasing enquiry emails now receive structured lead cards with everything they need to make a personal call when it matters most.
The principal's observation was direct: the agency started winning more vendor listings because vendors could see, in their own experience as buyers, how quickly the agency responded to enquiries on other properties. Speed of response had become a visible differentiator.
What this could look like for your real estate agency
If enquiries from REA or Domain are sitting in an inbox waiting for someone to find time to call, an automated response and booking flow will recover a meaningful share of those leads. We build versions for independent agencies across all major CRM platforms including VaultRE, Console Cloud, AgentBox, and Rockend REST.