Scarcer inventory makes the process worth understanding
In its release dated 22 October 2026, idealista reports a 9% annual fall in homes offered for sale during the third quarter, with differences between cities. This describes the market observed by the portal, not a forecast for your agency. In this context, distinguish how many owners enquire, how many reach a valuation and how many confirm an instruction. A CRM can make this workflow visible if its stages represent verifiable events.
Separate the owner, property and opportunity
One person may enquire about several properties, and one property may have several contacts. Maintain linked records with a commercial owner and the enquiry source. Create a seller acquisition opportunity for the specific process rather than treating it as a buyer search. Record the reason for contact, area, information status and agreed next action. Avoid creating a new record every time the conversation changes channel.
Give each stage an exit condition
An initial workflow might be: enquiry received, conversation completed, valuation prepared, proposal presented and instruction confirmed. Define the evidence needed to progress: a call that actually happened, a reviewed valuation or the relevant instruction document. Add paused and closed states with reasons. An overdue task should not automatically turn an opportunity into a lost one, and a sent proposal should not count as a secured instruction.
Fictional example: an owner is not ready to decide
An owner requests a valuation and explains that she will decide after refurbishment. The agent records the property, conversation and an agreed follow-up date. The opportunity is paused with a reason and an owner. If the team later receives an enquiry through another channel, it retrieves the same relationship and checks the existing commitment. It neither inflates opportunity counts nor sends a sequence of messages ignoring the conversation.
Measure the pipeline by cohorts and reasons
Compare enquiries started in the same period and track their progress; dividing this week’s instructions by this week’s enquiries may mix different processes. Review time in stage, pending valuations, proposals without a next action and closure reasons. Distinguish instructions from contacts and from properties ready to publish. These indicators help identify outstanding work; they do not justify attributing an unmeasured commercial improvement to a tool.
Prepare the handover to marketing
Once an instruction is confirmed, assign the review of property details, photographs, documentation and terms before activating the relevant channels. The acquisition owner should know who receives the property and what remains outstanding. CADT can help configure CRM stages, link contacts and properties and connect acquisition to your inventory. Start with a typical workflow and another that has become blocked.