By Ben Caballero
It is 11:45 a.m. on a Tuesday morning. A buyer sees one of your new homes online, wants more information and reaches out. The builder’s Internet leads team may be staffed and ready, but before that team can do anything, the inquiry first has to reach the builder.
If that first handoff depends on a person noticing the inquiry and forwarding it, there can be a delay even in the middle of the business day. The listing agent may be showing a home, writing a contract, attending a closing or simply having lunch. None of that means anyone did anything wrong, but the buyer is still waiting and just might move on.
Business hours do not guarantee an immediate handoff
Recent research shows just how serious the lead response problem is in real estate. According to a 2026 Pied Piper study, as reported by Lillian Dickerson in Real Estate News, 68% of website inquiries to major real estate brokerages received no response with 24 hours.
The study highlights the risk of relying on real estate agent follow-up. When a builder’s lead must first pass through an agent, the builder may face the same delays as agents listing new homes may not be forwarding the leads to builders within 24 hours more than two-thirds of the time.
By comparison, SpecDeck automatically forwards buyer inquiries directly to builders in just one or two seconds, without waiting for an agent to act.
Production builders already understand lead management. Most have established Internet lead operations, online sales counselors, CRMs and procedures for assigning inquiries and following up. The issue is not whether builders know what to do with a lead once they have it. The issue is making sure the lead gets into that process promptly and without depending on someone outside the builder’s organization to move it along.
That distinction matters. A builder’s Internet leads team may be handling several prospects at once, while on-site sales counselors are focused on walk-in traffic and buyers are already exploring the community. Those are normal business demands, which is exactly why the first handoff should be as automatic as possible rather than adding another person or manual step before the builder’s own process can begin.
SpecDeck removes the middleman
This is one of the reasons we built automated lead routing into SpecDeck. When an inquiry is generated from a listing managed through our system, SpecDeck electronically captures and forwards the inquiry directly to the builder. It does not need to wait for someone at HomesUSA.com to finish showing a property, leave a closing, return from lunch or check an inbox before passing it along.
SpecDeck also does not filter those leads or hold any back for an agent to handle. Every inquiry is passed through to the builder so its own lead process can take over. That is the point: HomesUSA.com is not trying to insert itself between the prospect and the builder’s sales operation. We are trying to remove friction from that connection.
Capture is only part of the value
Getting the inquiry to the builder quickly is important, but visibility matters too. SpecDeck’s Lead Manager records both email and phone leads in a dashboard that the builder’s online sales team can use to see incoming opportunities and make sure nothing is overlooked. Management also has visibility to confirm that inquiries are being followed up through the builder’s own process.
That visibility supports the builder’s existing operation rather than asking the builder to change it. Online sales counselors can continue using the procedures and systems their company has established, while management has a record of the inquiries SpecDeck delivered. If a question arises about whether a lead was received, the team has a place to verify it instead of relying on a chain of emails or assumptions.
For builders that want an even tighter connection, SpecDeck can feed leads directly into the builder’s CRM. That saves the sales team from manually entering the information and removes another step between the original inquiry and the systems the builder already uses to manage prospects.
That becomes more valuable as volume grows. Read the rest of the blog here
