Real estate teams have spent years building databases filled with prospective buyers, past clients and personal connections.
As acquisition costs rise and transaction volume remains constrained, teams are increasingly focused on a different question: how much business is already sitting inside those databases, waiting to be activated?
For many real estate teams, the answer represents a significant opportunity to improve profitability without continually spending more to find new prospects.
Holly Mabery — chief brokerage officer at eXp Realty — said teams are becoming more disciplined about how they allocate their marketing dollars, with some redirecting resources toward existing contacts rather than purchasing leads.
“What I’m really proud of is they are getting very efficient with their businesses,” she said of eXp teams under her watch. “So, rather than paying for leads, they’re looking at [their] databases and how they are reactivating that nurture process, and I think that’s significant. So, it’s really watching people get away from paying, and focusing on what is [already there] now.”
Nurturing your database
The share of a team’s database that is actively being worked depends on how the team defines activity. Roughly 80% to 90% of a typical database may be in some form of ongoing nurture, but that does not mean those contacts are ready to buy or sell, Mabery said.
“You can be so relevant right now in reaching out to people — in following up to say, ‘Hey, you’ve owned your house. You bought your house in in 2019. Let’s look at how much equity you have,’” Mabery said. “Let them know there’s an opportunity to leverage that for improvements or repairs that the market is demanding.”
Technology adds another layer to database management
Instead of treating every contact equally, teams are beginning to use artificial intelligence (AI) and behavioral signals to help identify which relationships warrant attention first.
Mabery said tools can connect information from agent notes with activity across social media and other touch points — helping agents identify potential selling signals and organize follow-up priorities.
However, AI and other technology does not eliminate the need to keep adding contacts. Mabery warned that teams that stop replenishing databases risk eventually running out of new opportunities as existing relationships age.
Most leads go untouched as teams look to unlock existing databases
For Brett Siegal, founder and CEO of Ruuster — a Chicago-based real estate database engagement and transaction management platform — the gap between the size of a team’s database and the business it generates represents a significant opportunity.
The company just announced Ruuster 2.0, which combines buyer nurture, homeowner engagement and seller nurture in one platform.
Ruuster recently analyzed 10 million leads across its clients’ databases and found that 91% had not been contacted by a human in the previous 90 days.
Siegal estimated that a team with 20,000 leads may have spent approximately $750,000 over a decade on pay-per-click advertising and other acquisition costs.
“It’s a massive problem, especially as sort of gross margins are decreasing as portal lead cost is ever more expensive, and PPC loss PPC costs have gone up a lot,” he said. “So the message is definitely resonating. In a mature database, about 7% of it is going to move in a year, and so in a 20,000 lead database, which is you know a very medium sized database for for a team, there’s 1400 or so leads that are going to transact that year.”
At the same time, according to Ruuster research, 87% of meetings booked by large teams came from leads purchased within that period — showing how often agents continue to rely on new prospects while older contacts go untouched.
Siegal said the most effective nurture strategies provide information tailored to consumers’ interests, rather than relying on generic marketing messages or repeated requests for business.
For prospective buyers, that can mean property alerts featuring homes that match their searches. For existing homeowners, it may involve recently sold properties in their neighborhoods, comparable sales or home value updates that help them understand their equity.
Siegal said Ruuster’s data showed that buyers who engaged with a property alert were 3.3 times more likely to become a meeting within seven days than cold leads. They were also 36% more likely to answer the phone.
Agents focus on database health as market opportunities shrink
James Blackwell — founder and owner of Blackwell Real Estate — said the difference between maintaining a large database and having business ready to transact has become increasingly apparent. The boutique brokerage, which operates across Maryland, Washington, D.C., Virginia and Delaware, has approximately 8,000 leads in its database.
About 5,700 receive some form of active outreach, but only about 150 represent an actionable transaction opportunity, Blackwell said. For his firm, that amounts to roughly 2% of the database — down from an estimated 4% to 5% in a healthier market.
“I know that the game plan should absolutely be to make sure that you maximize any opportunity that you currently have, and get your follow up on your existing leads straight before you start spending more to generate more leads,” said Blackwell.
His brokerage is investing in new systems and campaigns to strengthen follow-up before committing additional money to lead acquisition. They currently send a weekly calendar of local events, neighborhood sales updates, home anniversary cards and birthday and marriage anniversary greetings.
Blackwell is also using AI to monitor engagement with emails and the brokerage’s website.
“We have the AI monitoring it, but we always pass it off to the agent to verify and confirm,” he said. “Then, we make sure that the touch that follows that is a human interaction, a real email from the agent, a real call from the agent.”
Blackwell has also introduced monthly database health reports to help agents measure progress beyond closed transactions. Data tracks new leads, contact information, property alerts and enrollment in nurture campaigns — giving agents credit for building stronger pipelines even when fewer transactions are available.
Retention and acquisition must work together
Tom Toole — founder of Tom Toole Sales Group, affiliated with REMAX Main Line in the greater Philadelphia area — said teams should view database nurture as a complement to new lead generation, not a replacement.
He also cautioned that agents can miss opportunities by giving up on online leads too quickly.
“There’s a lot of money inside the CRM and the database,” Toole said. “They don’t realize that the average lead converts anywhere from three to 12 months. It also takes at least six-plus attempts to get somebody on the phone.”
Tom Toole Sales Group recorded $249.4 million in volume across 501 transactions last year, according to RealTrends Verified. That was good enough for No. 4 rankings among mega teams within Pennsylvania for both categories.
His team combines home equity reviews and neighborhood sales updates with client events, birthday calls, home purchase anniversary outreach and contractor referrals.
Technology also helps Toole’s team identify prospects showing signs of activity — including consumers searching online or engaging with real estate websites.
“If you’re relying on email to convert transactions for you, emails create reactions, phone calls create conversations,” he says.
The CRM, he said, should be central to an agent’s daily workflow, not a repository revisited only when new business slows.
For brokers and team leaders, the opportunity isn’t simply building a bigger database. It’s getting more business from the contacts they already have by identifying potential buyers and sellers, prioritizing follow-up and turning those relationships into transactions.
