Real estate AI receptionist for estate and letting agents

Saturday, 4.15pm. Your branch closed at four, the negotiators are out on the last viewings, and a couple who saw your three-bed on the portal this morning want to see it tomorrow before they lose it. They ring the office, get the answerphone, and book a viewing on a similar house with the agent up the road who answered. At 9pm a tenant in one of your managed flats rings because water is coming through the kitchen ceiling. A real estate AI receptionist answers both calls. It books the viewing into the slots you've set, takes the buyers' position, logs the leak with the details your property manager needs and flags it as an emergency. What it doesn't do is negotiate, promise anything about a property you haven't told it, or send a plumber.

This page is for independent sales and letting agents, from a single-branch agency with four negotiators to a lettings-only business managing a few hundred units. It covers the calls an agency gets, what an AI receptionist can handle, what goes to a negotiator or property manager, the rules you work under, from Propertymark membership to the redress schemes and the material information guidance, and what it costs.

The calls an estate agency gets

Agency phones are busy, and the calls that matter most often arrive when the office is shut.

Buyers and applicants

• Viewing requests, usually from a portal listing. "Is the house on Mayfield Road still available? Can I see it Saturday?"
• Property questions about the council tax band, the tenure, the service charge, the parking, the broadband, or whether the chain is complete.
• Registration calls from buyers who want to hear about new listings before they hit the portals.
• Offers. "We'd like to offer £310,000." These need a negotiator, fast, and the section on handovers covers why.

Sellers and landlords

• Valuation and market appraisal requests. Someone thinking of selling, or a landlord looking to switch agents. Each of these is a potential instruction worth thousands in fees.
• Progress calls from sellers asking about feedback, offers and the chain.
• Landlord questions about fees, the tenant-find service against full management, and what the new rental rules mean for them.

Tenants and prospective tenants

• Letting enquiries. Is the flat still available, does the landlord accept pets, when can I view, what's the deposit?
• Maintenance and repair calls. A dripping tap, a broken boiler, a door that won't lock, a leak through the ceiling. Some are routine and some are emergencies.
• Tenancy questions about rent, renewals, notices and deposits.

Third parties

Solicitors and conveyancers chasing searches, mortgage brokers, surveyors arranging access, contractors confirming jobs, and other agents in the chain. They want a named person and leave precise messages.

When the calls come

Property is a weekend and evening business. People browse the portals on their phones after work and on Sunday mornings, and that's when they decide to ring. Most branches open on Saturday but close early, and Sunday is when enquiries pile up for Monday. Lettings has its own pattern: tenant repair calls come when people get home and discover the problem, so they cluster in the evening and at the weekend, exactly when your property managers are off.

Seasonality in the property market

Sales activity has a familiar rhythm. The market picks up after New Year, as buyers who decided over Christmas start searching, and spring is traditionally the busiest time for new listings and viewings. It slows in the summer holidays and picks up again in September. Many buyers and sellers push to complete before Christmas, which brings a rush of progression calls in November and early December. Lettings peaks in late summer, as students and graduates look for homes before term and new jobs start. Heating failures and burst pipes make winter the heaviest season for emergency repair calls.

What a real estate AI receptionist handles

The work splits into three streams: applicants, vendors and landlords, and tenants.

Booking viewings

Klugon books into its own built-in calendar, using the hours and appointment lengths you set and the staff who offer each type of appointment. For an agency, the most practical way to set it up is around the viewing windows you've already agreed with your vendors and landlords:

• set up "Viewing" as a service, with a 20- or 30-minute length and a buffer for travel between properties;
• give each negotiator the hours they do viewings;
• set closed dates for bank holidays and branch events;
• add the properties, their viewing arrangements and any restrictions to the assistant's knowledge, such as "vendor works from home on Tuesdays, no viewings before 11".

The assistant books the slot and records the property address, the applicant's details and their position. It gives a booking reference in the conversation. It doesn't send a confirmation email or a text, and it doesn't send reminders, so if you confirm viewings with the vendor or the applicant, that stays with your team. On WhatsApp and in chat it can move a viewing. On the phone it can book and cancel but not reschedule, so a buyer who rings to move a viewing is flagged.

Klugon's diary isn't linked to your property CRM, and it doesn't know which properties are under offer unless you tell it. Keep the knowledge base current, or tell the assistant to describe a viewing as "requested, and the team will confirm" when you'd rather check every booking first.

Qualifying buyers and tenants

A negotiator wants to know who they're meeting at a viewing. The assistant can ask the questions you'd ask on the phone:

• Is there a property to sell, and is it on the market or under offer?
• Are you buying with a mortgage, and do you have a mortgage agreement in principle?
• Are you a first-time buyer or a cash buyer?
• What's your timescale?

For lettings: the number of people moving in, the move-in date, whether there are pets, and whether they've rented before. For lettings, write these questions carefully. Since 1 May 2026 in England, the government's Renters' Rights Act guidance for tenants says landlords can't accept or encourage offers above the advertised rent, can't refuse tenants because they receive benefits or have children, and must consider a request to keep a pet. Your assistant's questions and answers must follow the same rules. It should never ask "are you on benefits?" as a screening question, and should never say "we don't take tenants with children" or "the landlord will take the best offer".

Booking valuations and market appraisals

A valuation enquiry is the call an agency least wants to lose. The assistant can take:

• the property address and type;
• the reason for the valuation: selling, letting, remortgaging, or simply curious;
• the timescale;
• whether it's currently on the market with another agent;
• for landlords, whether the property is let and when the tenancy started.

Then it books a market appraisal with the valuer for that area, or takes details for a call back. It never gives a figure, even a rough one. "What's my house worth?" is a question for a valuer who has seen the property.

Answering property questions from the listing

Material information, covered in more detail below, belongs on the listing. The assistant can answer from the same information. If your listing says "council tax band C, freehold, gas central heating, allocated parking for one car", the assistant can repeat it. If the listing is silent on something, the assistant says the negotiator will confirm. It must never guess about flood risk, the lease length, a restrictive covenant or the broadband speed.

The practical issue is keeping it current. Klugon can import a single web page, but it reads it once and doesn't re-crawl it, and it can scan your homepage and up to seven other key pages, but that isn't your full listings feed. Most agencies give the assistant a document or a page with their live stock and the key facts for each, and update it when listings change. If that sounds like too much work for your volume, keep the assistant to booking viewings and capturing applicants, and let negotiators handle property questions.

Logging tenant maintenance calls

Letting agent AI phone answering is where many agencies see the clearest gain, because repair calls arrive out of hours and need careful handling. For a routine repair, the assistant takes:

• the tenant's name, the property address and a contact number;
• what's wrong, where in the property, and when it started;
• whether it's getting worse;
• access arrangements and any pets;
• whether anyone in the household is vulnerable, such as elderly, very young or unwell, which changes the priority.

It logs this, gives the tenant a reference and tells them when the property manager will be in touch, from your own wording. It flags the conversation so the request appears in Slack or Zapier if you've connected them. From Zapier you can pass it on to your repair-reporting tool or job board, but the assistant doesn't book contractors itself.

Emergencies flagged, never handled alone

Some repair calls are emergencies, and the assistant has to recognise them every time. Write your list into the instructions, with what to say for each:

• A gas smell or suspected leak: tell the tenant to leave the property if they feel unsafe, not to use switches or naked flames, and to ring the gas emergency number, 0800 111 999 in Great Britain. Then flag it.
• Carbon monoxide alarm sounding: get out, ring the gas emergency number, and if anyone feels unwell, ring 999.
• Fire, or anyone in danger: ring 999 first.
• Water coming through a ceiling or near electrics: turn off the water at the stopcock if it's safe, and keep away from wet electrics. Give your out-of-hours number if you have one.
• No heating or hot water in cold weather, especially with a vulnerable tenant.
• The property can't be secured: a broken front door or window after a break-in.

For each, the assistant gives the safety line from your instructions, takes the details and flags the conversation as urgent. If you have an out-of-hours contractor or an on-call manager, the assistant reads out that number. Klugon can't put the tenant through to anyone, and it can't call your contractor, so the out-of-hours number is what gets help moving.

What goes to a negotiator or property manager

Some calls the assistant should never try to finish.

Offers and negotiations

An offer goes to a negotiator, always and quickly. The assistant records the amount, the buyer's name and position and anything they've said about conditions, and flags it as urgent. It never says whether an offer is likely to be accepted, what the vendor would take, what other offers there are, or how it compares. Agents have a legal duty to pass offers to the seller promptly, and that judgement stays with your team.

Price, valuation and rent opinions

"What do you think it'll go for?", "Is the asking price negotiable?", "What could I get in rent?" These are professional opinions, and a confident wrong answer from an assistant can lose you an instruction or mislead a buyer. The assistant offers a call with a negotiator or a valuation appointment instead.

Deposits, client money and rent

The assistant takes no payments and says nothing about client money. It won't confirm a holding deposit has been received, whether a deposit is protected, or what a tenant owes. It takes the question and flags it.

Disputes, complaints and notices

Deposit disputes, complaints about an agent, a tenant saying they've been served notice, a landlord asking how to get a property back: all of these go to a person. Since the rules on possession changed in England in 2026, landlord questions about ending a tenancy are advice, and the assistant should hand them over rather than attempt an answer.

Conveyancing progress

The assistant can't see your sales progression system. A seller or buyer asking where things are gets a message taken and flagged for the progressor.

What "flagged" means with Klugon

Klugon has no live call transfer. When the assistant hands over, it marks the conversation "Needs a person" in your inbox and notifies Slack or Zapier if they're connected. For out-of-hours lettings, someone needs to be watching. The assistant isn't paused when it flags something, and it keeps helping the caller with anything else. You can reply to WhatsApp conversations from the inbox within Meta's 24-hour window. Calls and website chats can't be replied to from the inbox, so you ring the person back.

Sample conversations

These are samples written for this page. The agencies, properties and people are made up, and on a real line the AI's voice is AI-generated.

Sample phone call: a Saturday viewing request

A sample call. Fenwick Lane Property, a sales and lettings agency in Nottingham, is made up.

The assistant answered from the listing (price, council tax band, tenure, parking) and from the viewing windows the branch had set for that property. It qualified the buyers without making it feel like an interrogation. And it gave nothing away on price.

Sample WhatsApp: an out-of-hours leak

A sample WhatsApp conversation. Northgate Lettings, a lettings and management agency in York, is made up.

The safety lines and the out-of-hours number come from the agency's own instructions. The assistant didn't promise when a contractor would arrive, because it doesn't send contractors. What it did was put the tenant on the right route quickly, and leave a complete note for the property manager in the morning.

Sample website chat: a landlord asking for a valuation

A sample website chat. Ashby Row Estates in Leicester is made up.

The assistant quoted published fees and would not give a rent figure. It also didn't comment on the other agent, and it didn't advise on switching, which can depend on the landlord's existing contract.

Setting up an AI receptionist at an estate agency

Most of the work is writing down what your negotiators already know.

A setup checklist for estate and letting agents

1. List your services and fees, exactly as published: sales commission, lettings fees for each service level and any landlord charges.
2. Write your stock list with the material information for each property, from the listing, and decide who updates it and when.
3. Set viewing windows as services and staff hours, with travel buffers.
4. Write the qualifying questions for buyers and for tenants, checked against the current letting rules.
5. Write the valuation questions and who covers which postcodes.
6. Write the repair categories: what's routine, what's urgent and what's an emergency, with the exact safety line for each.
7. Add your out-of-hours numbers: contractor, on-call manager and the gas emergency number.
8. Write the never-say list: what the vendor will accept, other offers, price opinions, rental figures, deposits.
9. Write a greeting that says it's an AI assistant. Klugon's default doesn't say so.
10. Connect Slack or Zapier, with separate channels for sales leads and lettings emergencies if you can.
11. Test it by playing a pushy buyer, a landlord asking for a figure and a tenant with a gas smell.

Portal enquiries and your branch number

Most portal enquiries reach you as emails or as calls to your branch number. Klugon doesn't read emails. It answers phone calls, WhatsApp and the website chat. To have it answer your branch number, you forward the number to a dedicated Klugon number: everything, only unanswered calls, or only out of hours. The guide to call forwarding covers how. Many agencies forward the lettings line out of hours and the sales line only when unanswered. A voice plan on Business allows three numbers, so one each for sales, lettings and maintenance is possible. Numbers become available when the 7-day trial ends, and during the trial you test in the browser. Porting isn't supported.

Working with your property CRM

Klugon doesn't connect to Reapit, Alto, Jupix, Street or Dezrez, and it doesn't sync with your portal feeds. New applicants, valuation requests and repair logs arrive as leads and conversations in Klugon, and your team enters them in your CRM. If you use HubSpot, Zoho, Salesforce or Pipedrive, the assistant can send leads there, though not automatically every time. Many agencies use Zapier to post each new lead or emergency where the right person will see it.

What it costs

Klugon's prices are in US dollars. The voice product is $99 a month on Starter (1,000 minutes and one number), $299 on Business (3,600 minutes and up to three numbers) and $499 on Scale (6,000 minutes), with 20% off for yearly billing. Each phone number is $9 a month, and extra minutes cost $15 per started 100. Website chat starts at $49 a month, and the social product, which covers WhatsApp, starts at $79 a month plus $19 a month for the connected WhatsApp number. Everything is on the pricing page.

A worked example: a sales and lettings agency

Assumptions, which you should replace with your own:

• The assistant answers the sales line when nobody picks up and after 17:30, all day Sunday, and after 13:00 on Saturday.
• It answers the lettings line out of hours, including repair calls.
• About 14 calls a day reach it, averaging 3 minutes, over 30 days because weekends are busy: 14 × 3 × 30 = 1,260 minutes.
• Two numbers: one for sales, one for lettings.
• WhatsApp for tenants, with up to 300 conversations a month.

On voice Business: $299 + 2 × $9 = $317. WhatsApp on social Starter: $79 + $19 = $98. Total: $415 a month, or about $345 on yearly billing for the plans plus the same number fees. Business is the realistic tier because two numbers and Slack alerts both need it.

Against covering the hours with staff

At the National Living Wage of £12.71 an hour from April 2026, staffing the branch phone for the hours above (weekday evenings to 20:00, Saturday afternoons and Sunday, about 22 hours a week) would cost around £280 a week in pay before National Insurance, pension and holiday, or more than £1,200 a month. Most agencies don't, and the calls go to voicemail.

Against an out-of-hours answering or maintenance service

Many letting agents already pay for an out-of-hours maintenance line or a call answering service. A human service is better at calming a frightened tenant and can often dispatch contractors from an agreed list, which Klugon can't. The assistant is better at booking viewings and valuations into your diary and answering from your listings and fee pages. Some agencies use both: the maintenance service keeps the emergency line, and the assistant takes sales and lettings enquiries and logs routine repairs.

What one instruction is worth

Say the agency misses 3 valuation requests a month out of hours, and 1 in 3 becomes an instruction. With an average sale price of £280,000 and a commission of 1.2% plus VAT, one extra instruction is worth about £3,360 plus VAT when it completes. That's one instruction a month from enquiries you're not catching now. Our guide to missed calls and lost revenue shows how to estimate your own figure from your call logs.

The rules agents work under

None of this is legal advice. It's a checklist of what to review with whoever handles compliance at your agency before an assistant speaks for you.

Propertymark membership

Many agencies are members of Propertymark through NAEA Propertymark or ARLA Propertymark. Its professional standards cover the Conduct and Membership Rules, Client Money Protection, professional indemnity insurance and redress. For an AI receptionist, the practical points are that it must describe your services and fees accurately, never handle client money, and never make statements about a property that your listing doesn't support. If you mention your membership in the greeting or the knowledge base, be accurate about which body and scheme.

The property redress schemes

Estate agents dealing with residential property in the UK, and letting agents and property managers in England and Wales, must belong to a government-approved redress scheme. The government's page on approved redress schemes names The Property Ombudsman and the Property Redress Scheme. Give the assistant the name of your scheme and your complaints procedure, so that when a client asks how to complain, it gives the right answer, in your words, and flags the complaint to a manager.

Material information in property listings

National Trading Standards' Estate and Letting Agency Team (NTSELAT) published guidance on material information in property listings in stages, with Part A announced in 2022 and Parts B and C added in November 2023, according to its announcement that the full material information guidance was published. Part A covers information that's always material, such as the price or rent, council tax and, for sales, tenure. Part B covers information to establish for every property, such as the property type and construction, utilities, broadband, mobile signal and parking. Part C covers matters that need establishing only if they affect the property, such as building safety, restrictions and rights, flood risk, coastal erosion and planning permission. The guidance is designed to help agents meet their existing duties under consumer protection law.

This has two direct consequences for an assistant:

• It answers material information questions only from the listing. If the listing says band C, it says band C. If the listing doesn't mention flood risk, it doesn't say "no flood risk". It says the negotiator will confirm.
• It mustn't leave things out or contradict the listing. If a caller asks about something you've disclosed, such as a short lease or a shared driveway, the assistant gives the same information your listing does.

The simplest way to make that true is to load each listing's material information into the assistant's knowledge and keep it in step with the portals.

Anti-money-laundering checks are done by staff

Estate agency businesses are supervised by HMRC for anti-money-laundering purposes, as HMRC's guidance on who needs to register for money laundering supervision sets out. That covers the identity checks on sellers and, increasingly, on buyers. The assistant has no part in them. It can tell a seller to have ID ready for the valuation meeting, from your wording, and nothing more. It doesn't collect documents or discuss where a buyer's funds come from.

Data protection and Klugon

Agencies handle a lot of personal data: buyer finances, tenant references, landlord bank details. The assistant should collect only what first contact needs: names, contact details, the property, the position and the repair. Here's what to note in your assessment:

• Klugon is operated by Softaar Technologies UG, a German company, under the GDPR.
• Its sub-processors include Google Firebase, OpenAI and Telnyx. The privacy policy lists them as US-based, with Standard Contractual Clauses covering transfers. We don't claim data stays in the UK or EU.
• Klugon is not certified for SOC 2 or ISO 27001.
• Calls aren't recorded. Each call appears in your inbox with its duration and a message log, which may include only the assistant's side.
• Your agency's data is kept separate from other businesses, and knowledge search is filtered to your agency.
• You can export records as CSV and delete them one by one. Full erasure is by email request.

How it compares with tools agents already use

Measuring whether it's working

After a month, look at:

Viewings and valuations booked out of hours. The bookings list shows what the assistant booked, and the analytics page shows the busiest hours and weekdays. Sunday and evening bookings are the ones you weren't getting before.

Instructions from assistant-booked valuations. Mark leads as contacted, converted or lost. It takes a few months for instructions to show, so give it a full quarter.

Repair calls and how they were flagged. Read every conversation flagged as an emergency in the first month. Check that it caught all of them and didn't flag a dripping tap as an emergency.

Questions without a good answer. The insights page lists these with the most asked questions of the last 30 days. If buyers keep asking about broadband or the chain for a property, that information belongs in the listing as well as in the assistant.

Frequently asked questions

Can it book viewings for specific properties?

Yes. Set up viewing slots with your negotiators' hours and add each property's viewing arrangements to the assistant's knowledge. It books the slot and records the address. It doesn't link to your CRM or know a property has gone under offer unless you update its knowledge.

Will it pass offers to the vendor?

No. It records the offer and the buyer's position and flags the conversation as urgent for a negotiator, who puts it to the vendor. It never comments on whether an offer will be accepted.

Can letting agent AI phone answering handle emergencies?

It can recognise them and respond with your safety instructions, such as the gas emergency number, read out your out-of-hours contractor's number and flag the conversation as urgent. It can't send a contractor, call anyone or transfer the call. Someone on your side must watch for emergency flags.

Does it know the material information for our listings?

Only what you give it. Load each listing's key information into its knowledge and keep it current. Instruct it to say the negotiator will confirm anything the listing doesn't cover, rather than guessing.

Can it give valuations or rental figures?

No. It books a market appraisal or a rental valuation with your valuer. Price opinions without seeing the property mislead clients and can lose you instructions.

Does it handle portal email enquiries?

No. Klugon answers phone calls, website chat, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger. It doesn't read or reply to emails from Rightmove, Zoopla or OnTheMarket.

Does it send viewing confirmations or reminders?

No. The booking reference is given in the conversation. Klugon doesn't send texts, emails or reminders, so any confirmation to the vendor or applicant comes from your team.

Can we have separate numbers for sales and lettings?

Yes. The voice Business plan allows up to three numbers at $9 a month each, so sales, lettings and maintenance can each have their own. All of them land in one inbox.

Is it compliant with the Renters' Rights Act?

The assistant says what you instruct it to say, so the responsibility for compliant wording is yours. Write your lettings questions and answers against the current rules, such as not inviting offers above the advertised rent and not refusing tenants on benefits or with children, and test them.

Does it record calls?

No. Calls aren't recorded. Each call shows in the inbox with its duration and a message log, which may include only the assistant's side.

Next steps

For an overview of how the advice line works across professional firms, start with the professional services hub. Agencies working closely with other professionals may also find the pages for financial advisers and insurance brokers useful, and the photographers page covers a business that books shoots the same way you book viewings. The AI appointment booking page explains how slots, staff and buffers work in more detail. When you're ready, set up your AI receptionist with your viewing windows and your repair list, and test it in the browser with the calls you dread most.