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A Bayut or Property Finder Enquiry: The First Five Minutes

Anam Jalal

Founder & CEO, MAJ Leads

Updated 28 Oct 2026 · 6 min read

Quick answer

In its first five minutes, a Bayut or Property Finder enquiry should reach one named agent, become a call that is due now, and get a first try. If the buyer does not pick up, a second try is already booked for fifteen minutes later. Nobody should have to notice the email before any of this starts.

Why do the first five minutes matter for a portal enquiry?

A portal enquiry is sent by someone who is looking at your listing right now. They have the photos open. They may have sent the same enquiry to three other agents for three similar flats. Ten minutes later they are in a meeting, or driving, or talking to the agent who called first.

The research on this is old but clear. In a 2007 MIT / InsideSales study of 15,000+ leads and 100,000+ calls, a lead called within 5 minutes was 100 times more likely to be reached than one called after 30 minutes, and 21 times more likely to be qualified (MIT / InsideSales, 2007). The study was not about property, but the logic carries: the call that lands while the buyer still has your listing open is the call that gets answered.

Most enquiries do not get that call. A 2024 secret shop of US brokerages by Mike DelPrete found that 47% of online property enquiries were never answered, and the median reply took 39 minutes. That is a US figure, not a UAE one. We have not seen a public UAE study of the same kind, so treat it as a warning, not a local benchmark.

What do Bayut, Property Finder and DubiCars already measure?

The portals themselves now score how fast agents and dealers reply. Each one sets its own rules, and each one can change them, so check the current terms on the portal before you plan around them.

Notice the size of those windows. Two hours and four hours are the floor a portal is willing to reward, not the pace a buyer expects. And the buyer may well want WhatsApp: in a YouGov survey, 2024, commissioned by Zbooni, 85% of UAE residents said they prefer WhatsApp to interact with businesses. A fast call and a prompt WhatsApp reply are not rivals. The agent needs to know the enquiry exists before either can happen.

What should happen to the enquiry, minute by minute?

Here is the sequence we built MAJ Leads around. It assumes the enquiry arrives inside your working hours. If it arrives after you close, the same steps start when your hours open.

  1. Minute 0: the enquiry lands. Bayut, Property Finder and DubiCars send enquiries by email. Those emails are forwarded into MAJ Leads, and each one becomes a lead on the same board as your Google, Meta, website and WhatsApp leads.
  2. Straight away: one agent owns it. The lead becomes a call due now for the assigned agent. Not a row in a shared inbox, not a message in a team group. One person, one task, one due time.
  3. Minute 1 to 5: the first try. The agent calls. If the buyer answers, the agent records what happened. If not, the next try is already scheduled.
  4. If the agent is away: the call is rerouted to someone who is working, and the owner is alerted. A lead does not wait because one agent is at a viewing.
  5. Minute 15: the second try. If the first try got no answer, a second call is due fifteen minutes after the first.

Note

What we tested: in our own build, 10 of 10 test leads from each of 3 sources got a first task due within 30 seconds, inside working hours. These were test leads we sent ourselves, not customer results.

What happens after the first five minutes?

One try is not follow-up. A buyer who misses your call at 10:02 may be free at 11:00. MAJ Leads keeps up to five tries on the agent's list, each one due inside your working hours:

The five tries MAJ Leads schedules for each new lead
TryWhen it is due
1Now
215 minutes after the first
31 hour after the first
44 hours after the first
5The next working day at 12:00

The fourth try, at four hours, lines up with the longest portal reply window above. If a lead is still untouched by then, that is no longer a busy afternoon. It is a gap in the process. Our guide to the five-attempt cadence explains why the gaps are spaced the way they are.

What should a brokerage or dealer set up this week?

  1. List every portal you pay for, and where each one's enquiry emails go today.
  2. Name who owns a portal enquiry during each hour you are open. "The team" is not a name.
  3. Write down your real working hours, the hours someone can actually pick up the phone.
  4. Decide who covers when an agent is at a viewing or on leave.
  5. Check last week's enquiries: how many got a call in the first five minutes, and how many got none at all.

If that last number makes you wince, the fix is not more effort from the agents. It is a system that puts the enquiry on someone's phone the moment it arrives and keeps it there until there is an outcome. See how capture, chase and the owner's dashboard fit together on how it works, the real estate CRM page for Dubai brokerages, and our post on one board for every lead source. Plans are on the pricing page: MAJ Leads costs AED 249, AED 549 or AED 999 a month, with a 14-day free trial. A card is needed to start, and nothing is charged for 14 days.

Sources

Frequently asked questions

Does MAJ Leads reply to Bayut or Property Finder enquiries for me?
No. MAJ Leads does not talk to the buyer on your behalf. It makes sure the enquiry reaches one named agent as a call that is due, keeps up to five tries on that agent's list inside your working hours, reroutes the call when the agent is away and alerts the owner. Your agents make the calls and send the replies.
Will MAJ Leads get me the SuperAgent or TruBroker badge?
We make no claim about badges. Property Finder and Bayut set and score their own criteria, and they can change them. What MAJ Leads does is make sure every forwarded enquiry has an owner and a call due, so a slow reply is less likely to come from nobody knowing the enquiry existed.
What if a portal enquiry arrives at night?
Calls are due inside the working hours your business sets. A lead that arrives after you close waits on the board as a call due when your hours open, so the first try happens at the start of your next working hours. Our post on working hours, Fridays and public holidays covers how to set those hours.

Anam Jalal

Founder & CEO, MAJ Leads

Anam Jalal is the founder of MAJ Leads, a Dubai-based lead management system that puts every paid lead on a rep's phone within thirty seconds and chases it until it has an answer. He works hands-on with UAE clinics, brokerages and trading companies on lead follow-up, WhatsApp and CRM integrations, and ran voice AI deployments in the UAE before the company focused on lead management.

Read more about Anam →

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