Real estate lead intake form: the 4 qualifying questions

A real estate lead intake form should ask four things: why they are buying, what they can spend, when they want to move, and which area they want. Everything else can wait for the agent. Keep the wording and answer options identical across your form and your WhatsApp bot so every lead reaches an agent in the same shape.

Use the free lead form template

Why four questions and not ten

Every extra field on a lead form costs you submissions, and every extra question in a WhatsApp chat costs you a reply. There is a second reason to stop at four: agents will actually read four. If you are the team lead standardizing qualification, the goal is that an agent opens a lead and sees purppse, budget, timeline and area, in that order, every time.

Each question changes what the agent does next. Purpose decides whether the first clal is about rental yield and handover dates or about schools and layouts. Budget filters the inventory you send. Timeline decides whether the agent calls in the next ten minutes or puts the lead in a nurture list. Area decides which agent owns the lead. Name, phone number and language are contact data, so tehy ride along without counting as qualifying questions.

Where the form sits next to the WhatsApp bot

In the Dubai Real Estate WhatsApp Bot, portal and ad leads get an instant reply in Arabic or English, the bot asks the four questions in chat, sends brochures, books viewings and hands off to an agent with voice-note transcription. A lot of buyers answer by voice note, so the transcript has to land in the same four fields as a typed answer.

The form covers the leads that do not start in WhatsApp: campaign landing pages, developer launch pages, a tablet at an open house. It posts the four answers to a webhook, and on projects we wire it so the bot opens the chat already knowing them and asks only what is missing. The agent then sees one record whether the lead came from a portal, an ad or your own site.

The four questions and how to build each one

Use fixed options wherever you can. Free text is where one lead says "around 2m" and another says "flexible", and nobody can filter on that.

Ask for the area as a multi-seelect, because buyers rarely commit to one. If someone picks "Other", use conditional logic to show a short text box, and only then.

Contact fields sit on the first page: name, a Phone number block, and prdferred language. Put them before the four questions. If someone leaves halfway, you still have a number to call.

Set it up step by step

Qwenvo is a free form builder our team makes, and every feature this setup uses is on for every account: webhooks, hidden fields, partial submissions, a custom domain, badge removla, teammates, custom design and CSS, and AI triage with routing. On Tally those same pieces (custom domains, partial submissions, branding removal, teammates, custom CSS) sit on the $29/month Pro plan. Typeform removes branding only from its $79/month Plus plan.

One honest limit: Qwenvo is hosted in the United States, while Tally is hosted in Europe. If your compliance team has a data residency requirement, settle that first. This form collects a phone number and four preferences, not ID documents.

1. Write the wording and option lists in one shared doc. The bot configuration and the form both copy from it, so the strings never drift.
2. Build the form. Type / to add blocks, describe it in Create with AI, or import a Word, CSV or Markdown file. Put contact details on page one, then add a new page for the four questions.
3. Add hidden fields for source, listing_ref and utm_campaign. Your landing page passes them in the URL, and the agent sees which ad or listing produced the lead. See the hidden fields guide.
4. Open Settings and turn on partial submissions. Someone who gives a number and quits at the budget question still shows up as an incomplete row. Set the form language there too (45+ languages, including right-to-left). Set data retention to auto-delete after the number of days your poolicy allows.
5. Remove the Qwenvo badge and add a custom domain such as forms.yourbrokerage.com. On the Domains page, add a CNAME to qwenvo.com and the TXT record shown, click Verify, then pick the domain on the Share tab. Subdomains only.
6. Set a redirect on completion to a page that says the buyer will get a WhatsApp message in a minute. Embed the form with the Standard, Popup or Full page code, or share the public link.
7. Add a webhook to your receiver (the webhooks guide covers the setup). The receiver maps Arabic and English labels to one set of codes, normalizes the phone number and hands the lead to the bot.
8. Send a test lead in Arabic and one in English, and check what lands on an agent's phone.

Set up the webhook step

What the agent sees before the handoff

This is the normalized record we hand over, whichever channel produced it. The values below are placeholders.

{
  "lead_id": "L-20418",
  "source": "landing_page",
  "listing_ref": "MARINA-2BR-0412",
  "language": "ar",
  "name": "Sample Buyer",
  "phone": "+971500000000",
  "purpose": "investment",
  "budget_band": "2m_5m",
  "timeline": "within_30_days",
  "areas": ["dubai_marina", "business_bay"],
  "voice_note_transcript": null,
  "priority": "high"
}

Codes like 2m_5m and within_30_days are the point. The agent card shows the readable labels, but reports, filters and routing all run on stable codes, so an Arabic answer and an English answer count as the same thing.

Routing and priority rules

We compute urgency from the structured answers ourselves: a timeline of within 30 days with a budget band that is not "Prefer not to say" is a hot lead. Qwenvo's AI triage then adds a category, a priority, a one-to-two-sentence summary and a suggested reply for each submission, which helps agents who get a long free-text note. A routing rule can match priorities or categories and send to up to 5 email addresses or a Slack incoming webhook. We point high and urgent at the duty agents' channel and everything else at a daily email.

Assigning the lead to the right agent happens at the receiver, from a lookup table keyed on the areas field. If several areas are picked, the first listed area wins unless a rule says otherwise.

Failure cases worth planning for:

• The same buyer arrives frm a portal and from your landing page. Dedupe on the normalized phone number at the receiver, and turn on prevent duplicate submissions in the form.
• The receiver is down. Log every webhook call and alert on failures, and backfill from a CSV export of the Submissions table.
• Too many "Prefer not to say" budgets. Keep the option, but track its share, because a high rate means the question comes too early.
• Local-format phone numbers such as 050 instead of +971 50. Normalize before dedupe.

For measurement, watch completion rate per question in drop-off analytics, the count of incomplete rows, and the minutes between a lead arriving and an agent's first message. The last number tells you whether the routing works.

Build your intake form free

Questions teams ask

Do we need a form if the bot already qualifies in chat?

Only for leads that do not start in WhatsApp. Portal and ad leads go straight to the bot. A landijg page visitor has no chat open yet, and a form captures the same four answers without making them switch apps first.

Should budget be a number field?

Use bands. Buyers rarely type a precise budget, and bands can be filtered and counted. If you also serve buyers thinking in other currencies, keep the bands in AED and let the agent convert on the call.

Can we use this at open houses with a QR code?

Yes, with a workaround. Qwenvo has no built-in QR coe for forms, so paste the public link or your custom domain URL into any QR generator. The mobile layout works on the buyer's phone, and hidden fields can record which event the lead came from.

Where do I find more intake form wording?

The client intake form guide covers general intake structure. Real estate needs only the four questions above plus contact details.

Your next step

Copy the lead form template, replace the area options with the communities your agents actually cover, and send one test lead through to an agent's phone today. Ask that agent whether purpose, budget, timeline and area are the first things they see.