How to build a WhatsApp chatbot for a real estate agency (2026, free to start)
You need your current listings and the neighbourhoods you cover, a WhatsApp number on a phone you control, and about ten minutes.
Building and testing the bot is free with a 30 message demo and no card; putting it on WhatsApp runs on the Starter plan at US$29 a month, which opens with a 7 day trial.
September 2026
What this bot does for a real estate agency
Five jobs it takes off your team, with the kind of exchange you will actually see in the transcript.
Qualifies budget and area before you spend a minute
It asks the three questions every agent asks anyway, budget, area and move-in date, and files the answers as a lead. You open the dashboard to enquiries that are already sorted.
Customerlooking for a 2 bedroom to rent, is 1200 realistic?
BotIn the centre, 1,200 gets you a one bedroom or a small two bedroom on a higher floor without a lift. Two streets out it is comfortable for a two bedroom. What is your move-in date, and do you need parking?
Answers listing questions from your own sheets
Square metres, floor, service charge, orientation, year built. All of it sits in the listing sheets you already write, and none of it needs an agent to read it out loud again.
Customerthe flat on Av. Libertador, does it have a lift and what are the expenses?
BotThat one is on the fourth floor with a lift, 78 square metres, and the monthly service charge is 145. It faces east, so it gets the morning sun.
Explains the paperwork nobody wants to explain twice
Deposits, guarantors, proof of income, agency fee, how long the contract runs. The questions that decide whether a tenant is workable, answered before you meet them.
Customerwhat do i need to rent, im self employed
BotSelf-employed is fine. We ask for the last six months of bank statements, your latest tax return, one month's deposit and a guarantor or a deposit insurance policy. The agency fee is one month plus tax.
Books viewings and collects the details
It takes the property, two possible times and a phone number, then hands the thread over. The agent arrives with a name, a budget and a shortlist instead of a cold call.
Customercan i see it saturday morning
BotSaturday morning works. Can I take your name and the best number for you? I will put you down for 10:30 or 12:00 and an agent will confirm which within the hour.
Keeps sellers and landlords informed
The other half of the job. It answers what your commission covers, how you price a property, how long listings take to move in this market, and when a valuation can happen.
Customerwhat do you charge to sell a flat?
BotThree percent plus tax on the sale price, and that covers photography, the floor plan, the portals, the viewings and the paperwork through to signing. The valuation itself is free and takes about forty minutes.
Build it in eight steps
Steps one to five are free and take about ten minutes. Step six is where WhatsApp, and the plan, come in.
Create the account
Open chatbotgen.com and sign up with an email address or a Google account. No card is asked for here, and none is needed for anything in steps one to five.
You should see: The onboarding wizard, open on the template picker.
Pick the Real Estate Agent template
Choose Real Estate Agent. It loads a starting prompt, three suggested questions and a widget colour written for this kind of business, so you are editing a draft instead of facing an empty box. Every line of it is yours to change.
You should see: A new chatbot in your dashboard with the prompt already filled in.
Train it on material you already have
Open Knowledge and paste your website address; the crawler reads your public pages and turns them into the bot's memory. Then upload the documents you hand people anyway: the listing sheets, the buyer and tenant requirements, and the fee schedule you send before a viewing.
You should see: Each source moves from processing to trained. A twenty page site is usually done in two or three minutes.
Write down the answers your website never did
Still in Knowledge, open Q&A and add the questions your staff answers on the phone all day. For an agency that is usually: what deposit and paperwork a rental needs, what your commission is, whether you accept pets, and how long a mortgage pre-approval takes locally. Two sentences per answer is enough; the model writes the rest in its own words.
You should see: Each pair listed as its own source, trained within seconds.
Test it before anyone else does
Use the preview chat on the chatbot page and ask what a real customer asks. Start with "Do you have a two bedroom under 1,200 a month near the centre?" Then ask the same thing badly, with a typo and no punctuation, because that is how it will arrive.
You should see: A correct answer with the source it came from. Wrong or vague? Fix the source, not the prompt. Your free demo covers 30 messages, which is enough for this.
Connect WhatsApp by scanning a QR code
Connect your existing WhatsApp number in about a minute by scanning a QR, with no Meta Business verification. Open the chatbot's WhatsApp tab, press Connect, and a QR code appears. On the phone that owns the number, open WhatsApp, go to Settings, Linked devices, Link a device, and scan it. No Meta Business account, no verification form, no approval queue. This step runs on the Starter plan, US$29 a month, opening with a 7 day trial.
You should see: The status flips to Connected within a few seconds, and the next customer message is answered on your own number. Keep that phone charged and online, exactly as it already sits on your counter.
Decide when a person takes over
An agent should get the conversation as soon as somebody names a specific property and a date, because that is a viewing, not a question. You do not need a dashboard for this. If you answer a customer yourself from the linked phone, the bot records your message, steps back from that conversation for 30 minutes, and each further reply of yours pushes the pause forward. It resumes quietly, without announcing itself.
You should see: Your own replies appearing in the conversation history in the dashboard.
Go live, then read the first fifty conversations
Put the number on your website, your Google Business profile and your Instagram bio. Then read the transcripts. Every question the bot did not have an answer for yet is one Q&A pair away from being answered forever, and the first week is where the whole quality of the thing gets decided.
You should see: A Conversations tab filling up, and a growing share of messages answered end to end without you.
What to feed it
A bot is only as good as the material behind it. These are the sources that answer the most messages for a real estate agency, in the order worth doing them.
Every current listing sheet
Price, size, floor, service charge, orientation, what is included. Re-upload when the portfolio moves, and every answer moves with it.
The rental requirements
Deposit, guarantor rules, accepted proof of income, what you do for self-employed and foreign applicants.
Your fee schedule
Sale commission, rental fee, what each one covers, and who pays it. Write down what is not included as well.
Neighbourhood notes
Schools, transport, parking, noise, which streets go for what. This is the knowledge buyers actually call you for.
The buying and renting process
Step by step with realistic timelines: offer, deposit, mortgage, notary, keys. Local, not generic.
Your pet, smoking and sharing policies
Small, boring, and the reason a third of enquiries end. Answering them in the first minute saves the viewing that was never going to work.
Set it up so customers trust it
Three settings that separate a bot people keep writing to from one they stop trusting. Each is a line in the prompt, and each one is a minute of work.
Route these to your team
- Let an agent set the price. The bot quotes the asking price and passes any offer straight to the person who can act on it.
- Route mortgage, tax and legal questions to your specialist. The bot explains which documents are usually asked for, which is exactly what a buyer wants at that stage.
- Have it confirm availability with an agent. Listings move fast, and an immediate offer to check keeps the enquiry alive.
- Keep deposits and reservation fees in your own flow, off the chat.
It answers in your customer's language
It replies in the language the enquiry arrives in, across the thirteen the model handles well. For an agency working with foreign buyers or relocating tenants, that removes the delay of finding someone in the office who speaks the language.
Hand the conversation to a person when
- Somebody names a property and a date. That is a viewing, and it belongs to an agent.
- An offer, a counter-offer or any negotiation on price or terms.
- A seller or landlord asking for a valuation or wanting to list with you.
What people ask before they build one
How do I keep it from quoting properties that are already gone?
Re-upload the listing sheets when the portfolio changes, and keep the prompt telling it to confirm availability with an agent rather than assert it. If you run Wasi, the Wasi tool queries your live listings during the conversation instead of relying on training data at all.
Do I need a Meta Business account or the official WhatsApp API?
No. You connect by scanning a QR code from the phone that owns the number, the same way WhatsApp Web does. There is no Meta Business verification, no approval queue and no per-message fee.
Can it capture leads into my CRM?
Every qualified conversation lands in the dashboard with the name, number, budget and area the bot collected. From there you export it, or connect it to your CRM through the API. The bot's job is to arrive at a qualified lead, not to replace your pipeline.
What does it cost to run?
Building and training the chatbot is free, with a 30 message demo to test it and no card. Connecting WhatsApp is on the Starter plan: US$29 a month for 3 chatbots and 2,000 messages, opening with a 7 day trial that does ask for a card. Prices are flat, not per message.
What about buyers who message at midnight?
That is the reason to build it. Enquiries cluster in the evening, when a portal lead goes to whichever agency replies first. The bot answers immediately, qualifies, and books the viewing that your team confirms at nine the next morning.
What happens when I answer a customer myself?
The bot gets out of the way. Your reply, typed on the linked phone, is recorded in the conversation and the assistant stops answering that thread for 30 minutes; every further message from you pushes the pause forward. It starts answering again quietly once the conversation has gone cold, so it can never talk over you mid-sentence.
Build it now, decide later
The Real Estate Agent template, your own material and ten minutes. Nothing to install and no card for the free build.