Seven questions to ask before you put anyone else's number on your panel.
There is no ranked list on this page, because the right answer depends on facts about your book that a list cannot know. What follows is the set of questions that actually separate these products once you get past the marketing site.
1. What does it know about the property?
Ask specifically: can it tell a caller the square footage of the available suite, without transferring? If the answer is that it takes a message, you are buying voicemail with a human voice.
2. How fast does a change go live?
A rate drops. A suite comes off the market. A vape shop needs adding to the do not take list. If the turnaround on that is a support ticket and a week, the information the caller hears will be wrong for most of the listing's life.
3. What does it decide not to forward?
Screening is the whole product. A service that forwards everything has moved the sorting job to your phone, which is where it already was. Ask what happens to the merchant services call and get a specific answer.
4. What is in the notification?
Name and number is a message. Name, use, square footage, timing, callback number, and a transcript is a lead. The gap between those two is roughly four questions on the call and it is the difference in what you can do with it.
5. How fast does it reach you?
Inside a minute means you can call back while the caller is still in the parking lot. An end of day summary means you are calling tomorrow, behind whoever answered live.
6. How is it priced, and against what?
Per minute, per call, or per month. Per business or per property. This decides whether adding a listing is a decision or a phone call to sales, and whether a busy month produces an overage bill on calls that were mostly vendors.
7. What happens when the space leases?
A leasing assignment ends. If cancelling means a term, a notice period, or a conversation, the product was built for a business that will still exist next year, not for a vacancy that will not.
The honest summary
If your inbound is mostly people trying to reach you personally, buy a receptionist service and stop reading. If your inbound is mostly people asking about a specific vacant space, you want something that belongs to that space, knows it, and goes away with it.
That is what this is. One number per listing, configured around the property, screening on the call, texting you the ones worth calling back.
| Option | Built for | Knows your property? | Priced against | Ends with the listing? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Live receptionist services | A small business with one main number | No. It takes a message. | Your business | No |
| Blended intake services | A firm running every caller through one funnel | No. One script per account. | Your business | No |
| National call centres | Round-the-clock coverage at volume | A binder covering everything you represent | Minutes or calls | No |
| AI receptionists, general | Any small business, any vertical | Whatever you configure, usually one profile | Your business | No |
| Call tracking numbers | Attribution across channels | No. It does not answer. | Numbers and minutes | No |
| Voicemail | Nothing. It is the default. | No | Free | Not applicable |
| A line scoped to one listing | One vacancy | Yes. Suites, sizes, uses, timing. | The vacancy | Yes |
Two columns carry the whole decision. Whether the thing answering knows the property well enough to answer a caller without a callback, and whether the price tracks a vacancy that will end. The rest is preference.
$99/mo per listing. Cancel when it leases.
Questions brokers ask
What is the best answering service for a commercial real estate broker?
It depends on what your inbound actually is. If most callers are trying to reach you personally, a live receptionist service is the right product. If most callers are asking about one specific vacant space, you want something scoped to that space: it can answer suite sizes and co-tenancy without a callback, and it goes away when the space leases.
Can an answering service quote my asking rate?
Only if you tell it to. Plenty of brokers instruct the line not to quote a rate at all and to say the broker will discuss it. That should be a setting, and it is. On a hot second-generation restaurant space most brokers keep the rate off the call entirely.
Will it stop the vendor calls?
That is the part worth paying for. Screening means deciding not to forward something, which a general receptionist has no basis to do on your behalf. A line that belongs to one listing knows an SEO pitch is not a tenant and files it without ringing you.
How fast should a lead reach me?
Inside a minute, so you can call back while the caller is still standing in the parking lot. An end-of-day summary means you are calling tomorrow, behind whoever answered live. See speed to lead on a leasing inquiry.
Do I have to put it on the sign?
No, and many brokers do not at first. Keeping your own number on the panel and putting the line on the flyer and the portals, where the vendors and tire kickers come from, tests the screening without giving anything up.
Is recording a leasing call legal in California?
California requires consent from all parties, which is why the line discloses that the call is recorded in its first sentence, before anything else is said. A caller who does not want to be recorded can hang up at that point.