What is different about real estate in the United Kingdom
Estate agency businesses in the UK are supervised by HMRC for anti-money-laundering purposes and must belong to a government-approved redress scheme, either the Property Ombudsman or the Property Redress Scheme, so a CRM should hold a client due-diligence status field before any offer is progressed. Most buyer and tenant enquiries now originate from Rightmove and Zoopla portal leads rather than phone calls, so lead source and portal reference number are worth capturing separately from referral or walk-in enquiries.
Sales pipelines should track stamp duty land tax status and whether an Energy Performance Certificate is in place, since both affect how quickly a sale can complete, while lettings pipelines need separate stages for referencing, deposit protection scheme registration and tenancy renewal reminders. Activity typically peaks in spring and early autumn as families move around the school year, so follow-up cadence and viewing-reminder timing should flex around those windows rather than running a flat weekly cycle year-round.
Set up your CRM for UK real estate teams
- Add an AML client due-diligence checkbox before any offer or tenancy application moves to the next stage.
- Tag every lead with its source portal, Rightmove or Zoopla, to separate paid portal leads from referrals.
- Add deposit-protection-scheme and tenancy-renewal reminder fields to lettings records, separate from the sales pipeline stages.
