What should you ask a real estate lead on the first call?
Five things, and they are different for a buyer and a seller. For a buyer: their move-in date, whether they are pre-qualified, their three must-haves, whether they have a home to sell first, and whether they are already working with an agent.
For a seller: why they are selling and when they need to be out, what they still owe, whether they are meeting other agents, whether they intend to list at the appointment, and what they expect from an agent.
Everything else on a lead sheet is useful. These ten are the ones that decide whether the appointment is worth the drive.
Why five, when the sheet has forty fields
Because a first call is short and you are not going to get through forty.
A lead sheet is really a script that happens to look like a form. Its job is to stop you improvising, since the questions you forget on a Tuesday afternoon are the ones that cost you the following month. But treating it as a form to be completed front to back turns a conversation into an intake interview, and people can hear the difference.
Ask the five that qualify. Fill in the rest at the appointment, where you have time and they have already decided they like you.
The buyer five
When do you need to be moved in by? Everything else prices against this. A buyer whose lease ends in six weeks and a buyer who is idly looking need different calendars, not different scripts.
Are you pre-qualified, and with whom? The most useful answer on the sheet. If it is no, the next step is a lender introduction rather than a showing — and saying so early is a service, not a brush-off. Showing houses to someone who cannot buy one wastes their Saturday as much as yours.
What are the three things the house must have? Three, not ten. A list of ten is a wish; three is a search. Write them in their words and read them back, because the summary you give at the appointment is what makes you sound like you were listening.
Is there a home you need to sell first? This quietly turns one transaction into two with a dependency between them. Finding out at offer stage is how deals fall over.
What do you expect from me? The one everybody skips because it feels soft. It is where you find out whether they want walking through every step or leaving alone until there is something to see — and that is most of what they will remember about working with you.
The seller five
Why are you selling, and when do you need to be out? The reason sets both the urgency and the price tolerance. Relocating for work in eight weeks is a different listing from testing the market.
What do you still owe? Ask before the appointment, not at the kitchen table. A seller who is underwater needs a different conversation, and you both want to know that in advance rather than in front of a CMA.
Have you met with other agents, or do you plan to? You are either the only appointment or one of three, and those are different presentations. The answer is rarely volunteered and almost always given when asked.
Do you plan to list at the appointment? A direct question that costs nothing and tells you whether to bring paperwork or a pre-listing pack. Sellers answer it more honestly than most agents expect.
What do you expect from your agent? The soft one everybody skips. It is where you learn whether they want a weekly update or to be left alone, and that is most of what client satisfaction turns out to be.
Our buyer and seller lead sheets have all ten built in, with the rest of the intake underneath, and both are printable.
Fill it in during the call, not after
Reconstructing a call from memory ten minutes later loses the details worth having: the exact words they used about why they are moving, the number they said before they corrected themselves, the hesitation on the timeline.
Write it down live, badly, in their words. A messy sheet written during the call beats a tidy one written after it.
This is also the argument for paper over a screen. Typing during a call sounds like typing during a call; a pen does not. The trade is that paper does not sync, which is why what happens next matters more than the sheet.
The ten minutes after you hang up
- Put the contact in the CRM with a source tag. Before anything else. A lead sheet in a folder is not a database, and source is the field nobody ever goes back and fills in — which is exactly why most CRMs cannot say where the business came from.
- Set the next action with a date on it. Not "follow up." A specific thing on a specific day.
- Copy their own words across. The three must-haves, or the reason for selling, verbatim into the contact record.
- Photograph the sheet into the record and keep the paper until the file closes.
Does a lead sheet slow the call down?
It speeds it up, once you have used the same one a dozen times.
The risk is not the sheet, it is reading it aloud like a form. The five questions above are meant to be asked in whatever order the conversation offers them, and a good call often answers three of them before you ask anything.
What a lead sheet actually protects against is the call where someone is pleasant, you talk for twenty minutes, and you hang up without knowing when they need to move.
How fast does this need to happen?
The sheet assumes you are already on the call. Getting there is the other half of the problem, and it has a sharper answer — respond to a new lead within five minutes, an hour at the outside.
A perfect lead sheet filled in two days late is worth less than a scrappy one filled in while they still remember enquiring.
If the sheets are filling up but nothing is reaching the CRM, that gap is a systems problem rather than a discipline one. Get in touch.
Common questions about lead sheet questions
What is a real estate lead sheet?
A one-page intake form you fill in during the first call with a buyer or seller. It captures who they are, what they want, their timing, their money and anything that would stop the deal, so the next step is based on facts rather than memory.
What questions should you ask a buyer on the first call?
The five that decide whether the appointment is worth the drive: when they need to be moved in by, whether they are pre-qualified and with whom, their three must-haves, whether they have a home to sell first, and what they expect from you. The rest can wait for the consultation.
What questions should you ask a seller on the first call?
Why they are selling and when they need to be out, what they still owe, whether they are meeting other agents, whether they plan to list at the appointment, and what they expect from an agent. Those five tell you whether there is a listing to win and what it will take.
Is it rude to ask about money on the first call?
Not if you explain why. Asking whether a buyer is pre-qualified or what a seller still owes is how you avoid wasting their time; most people are relieved to be asked directly rather than find out later that the plan does not work.
Should you use the same sheet for buyers and sellers?
No. The questions overlap on motivation and timing but differ on money and decision-making, so a separate sheet for each keeps the call focused. The free Lead Sheets guide has both.
Sources
No third-party statistics are cited in this article. The question sets come from Power House TC's own buyer and seller lead sheets, sent as newsletter resources in September 2024 and July 2025, rewritten here into the order a first call actually takes.
