Short answer
AI buyer enquiry handling reads enquiries from portals, the agency website, email and text, matches each to a listing, and replies from facts the agent has approved: open home times, the information pack and the agreed price wording. Questions about a property’s condition, boundaries or consents, and anything about offers, go to the licensee, in line with REA guidance that unlicensed assistants should not answer enquiries about a property.
- Routine replies can be automatic if they draw only on facts the agent approved.
- Condition, boundary, consent and negotiation questions go to the licensee the same day.
- Keep the vendor’s price limits out of the system so they cannot leak.
- Property alerts and newsletters need consent under the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act.
What buyer enquiry handling covers
Buyer enquiry handling is everything between a buyer pressing “contact agent” and a licensee speaking to them. Most enquiries ask the same things: open home times, whether the LIM is available, the price, whether a private viewing is possible. A slow answer loses the buyer to the next listing. A fast wrong answer is worse, because REA’s top complaint themes include disclosure and misleading advertising.
The workflow sorts each enquiry into a lane. What the system may send by itself depends on the lane, not on how confident the model is.
| Enquiry | Lane | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Open home times, address, method of sale | Automatic reply from the listing record | Approved fields only |
| Information pack request | Automatic if the vendor approved the pack; otherwise drafted | Log what was sent and when |
| Price question | Agreed price wording only | No figure beyond the agency agreement |
| Condition, boundaries, consents, neighbours | Licensee, same day | Acknowledge; never answered by the model |
| Private viewing | Offer slots from the agent’s calendar | Tenanted homes need the tenant’s agreement |
| Offer, or “what will the vendor take?” | Licensee immediately | Written offers go to the vendor |
| Complaint | Manager | Acknowledgement only |
How the workflow runs
- Inputs
- Enquiry emails from realestate.co.nz, Trade Me Property and OneRoof, website forms, texts and social messages; the listing record; an approved facts sheet and question bank for each listing; the information pack and its approval status; agent calendars; consent records.
- Systems
- The sales CRM, the shared enquiry inbox, an SMS gateway, calendars, and a model API with no access to vendor-confidential fields.
- Steps
- Match the enquiry to a listing and contact; check the listing is still available; classify the lane; draft or send the reply from approved facts; offer viewing slots; ask for marketing consent; log everything against the contact.
- Human review
- The listing agent answers property questions and offers, approves drafted replies, and reviews a daily sample of automatic ones. The branch manager reviews lane rules when a listing’s facts change.
- Outputs
- Sent and drafted replies, booked viewings, a queue of questions for the agent, and a CRM record of what each buyer was told.
- Measures
- Median time to first reply, share answered automatically, questions wrongly sent down the automatic lane (target zero), viewings booked, and unsubscribe requests actioned within five working days.
- Risks
- Answers to condition questions, price wording drift, stale availability, and buyer messages crafted to extract confidential information.
Illustrative example: a Tauranga agency with 45 listings
Illustrative example, synthetic numbers: an agency with 45 active listings receives about 900 buyer enquiries a month, many on Saturday and Sunday. Reading, looking up, replying and logging takes about 6 minutes each.
| Measure | By hand | With the workflow |
|---|---|---|
| Enquiries a month | 900 | 900 |
| Sent automatically from approved facts | None | about 450 (an assumption) |
| Agent time | 6 minutes each | 2 minutes per drafted reply, plus daily spot checks |
| Hours a month | 90 | about 16 |
| Model fees a month | None | about US$11 |
The fee line assumes 4,000 input tokens (enquiry, listing facts and question bank) and 400 output tokens per enquiry on Claude Sonnet 5.5 at US$2 and US$10 per million tokens, as listed on 19 October 2026: about US$0.012 an enquiry. Measure median first-reply time before you start; it is the number buyers notice.
New Zealand rules the replies must respect
- Who may answer. REA’s guidance on non-licensed assistants lets them send information packs, schedule appointments and gather feedback, but not answer enquiries about the property on the seller’s behalf. Applying this to AI is our reading; REA has not addressed it.
- Price. Rule 9.4 of the Code of Conduct bars misleading customers about the vendor’s price expectations. REA’s marketing guidance cites a complaints committee decision about a $295,000 “buyer enquiry over” figure when the vendor’s stated minimum was $300,000.
- Disclosure. Rule 10.7 requires known defects to be disclosed. REA’s disclosure guidance says buyers should get information that could affect their decision before an offer is drawn up, and recommends confirming disclosure conversations in writing.
- Offers. Rule 10.10 requires every written offer to be submitted to the vendor, so offers bypass all automation.
- Marketing consent. The Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007 covers messages that promote land: consent, sender details and an unsubscribe that takes effect within five working days.
- Privacy. Under IPP 3 of the Privacy Act 2020, tell buyers what you collect and why. Collect what the enquiry needs, not a full profile.
- Tenanted homes. Tenancy Services says landlords must ask tenants’ permission before buyers enter, so viewing offers for tenanted listings route through the property manager.
Where enquiry handling goes wrong
- Helpful guesses. Asked “is the roof original?”, a model answers from the photos. Classify condition questions conservatively, and make the automatic lane an allow-list, not a block-list.
- Sold or under contract. Replies keep inviting buyers to open homes for a listing that went unconditional yesterday. Check status at send time.
- Prompt injection. Enquiry text is untrusted input; see our lesson on recognising prompt injection.
- Duplicate contacts. The same buyer enquires through three portals and gets three replies. Match on email and phone before sending.
Enquiry replies draw on the same fact sheet as listing description drafting, and the price answers trace back to the evidence assembled in appraisal preparation. The real estate sector guide covers the wider rules, and our AI customer support and chatbot development services cover the build.
Sources
- Non-licensed assistants, Real Estate Authority, accessed 20 October 2026
- Principles of disclosure, Real Estate Authority, accessed 20 October 2026
- Marketing and advertising, Real Estate Authority, accessed 20 October 2026
- Real Estate Agents Act (Professional Conduct and Client Care) Rules 2012, New Zealand Legislation, reprint as at 1 December 2020
- Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007, New Zealand Legislation, version as at 28 October 2021
- Privacy Act 2020, New Zealand Legislation, version as at 1 October 2026
- Access to the property, Tenancy Services (MBIE), accessed 20 October 2026
- Claude API pricing, Anthropic, accessed 19 October 2026
Written by the Levy Street team in Wellington. Last updated 19 October 2026.