Real Estate Lead Metadata Specification

Version 1.0

Purpose

The Real Estate Lead Metadata Specification prescribes a way to transport lead information from lead generating websites (such as real-estate search portals) to downstream consumers (including but not limited to CRM systems) by transparently embedding it within human-readable email using HTML meta tags.

Version 1.0.0 of this specification focuses on the transmission of "new lead" events.

The source code of this website is on Github. Make suggestions by opening a Github Issue, or by forking and submitting a pull request.

Background

An increasing number of people search for their home online. At some point, the potential homebuyer will contact a real-estate agent through an online form on a website. This could be a real-estate search portal or the agent's website. (The potential homebuyer is now considered a "lead.")

The website sends an email to a real estate agent with the lead's information (e.g. name, email, phone, property address, a brief message, etc.) The receiving agent generally puts this contact information into a database of leads. Historically, this has been a manual process.

Recently, many real estate software tools have created functionality to "parse" lead emails and automatically extract the lead information. This is a difficult and error-prone process for a variety of reasons:

Every portal uses a different email format.
Some portals use several different formats. (Perhaps different formats for different areas of the website.)
Email formats change over time. (Example: seasonal marketing copy, A/B testing)
Email clients introduce changes when an email is formatted.

When a software tool cannot properly parse the lead information, everybody loses. The real estate portal appears to be handing out bad leads, the real estate agent loses a potential client, and the potential homebuyer does not get the service they need.

The Real Estate Lead Metadata Specification describes an industry standard approach for portals to communicate lead information with the goal of having 100% accurate transmission of lead details.

Embedding Lead Metadata

The key concept to this specification is the idea of transmitting lead information through HTML meta tags. A quick example serves best to illustrate this concept. An email that contains lead information should contain header fields as follows:


<!DOCTYPE html ... >
<html xmlns= ... >
    <head>
        ...
        <meta name="lead_information_version" content="1.0" />
        <meta name="lead_source" content="Realtor.com" />
        <meta name="lead_type"   content="Buyer" />
        <meta name="lead_name"   content="John Smith" />
        <meta name="lead_email"  content="[email protected]" />
        <meta name="lead_phone"  content="703-555-1212" />
        ...
    </head>
    <body>
        ...
    </body>
</html>

Valid Fields

Field Name	Notes	Required	Example Content
`lead_information_version`	Version number of the specification.	✓	"1.0"
`lead_source`	Primary source of the lead. Can be any value, but a search portal or lead vendor should choose a consistent value. If not provided, it is up to the consuming application to choose a sensible default value.		"Realtor.com" "AgentWebsite.com"
`lead_type`	The type of the lead. Consumer should assume a value of "Buyer" if not provided. Valid values are "Buyer", "Seller", and "Renter".		"Buyer" "Seller" "Renter"
`lead_name`	The name of the lead.		"John Smith"
`lead_email`	The email address of the lead.		"[email protected]"
`lead_phone`	The phone number of the lead.		"703-555-1212"
`lead_property_address`	The property address about which the lead is inquiring.		"123 Main Street, Alexandria, VA 22314"
`lead_mls`	The MLS number of the property address.		"A5712345"
`lead_message`	A message from the lead to the agent.		"Hello, I am interested in... I have the following question..."
`lead_property_city`	The city of the property on the original lead inquiry.		"Alexandria"
`lead_property_state`	The state of the property on the original lead inquiry.		"VA"
`lead_property_zip`	The zip code of the property on the original lead inquiry.		"22314"
`lead_max_price`	The max budget as identified by the client.		"500000"
`lead_primary_zip`	The primary zip code of the client’s home search as identified by the client. [This can be different from the zip code of the property of the original inquiry if the client gives our representative a different primary area that they are looking in.]		"06278"
`lead_time_frame`	The buying/selling time frame as identified by the client.		"3-6 months" "<90 days" "As Soon As Possible"
`lead_financing`	How the client plans to finance their purchase.		"financing-pre-approval" "already-pre-qualified"
`lead_assigned_agent`	The name of the agent the lead has been assigned to.		"Gintare O'Shea"
`lead_assigned_agent_email`	The email of the agent that the lead has been assigned to.		"[email protected]"
`lead_assigned_agent_phone`	The phone number of the agent that the lead has been assigned to.		"701-444-1313"
`lead_loan_officer`	The name of the loan officer that the lead has been assigned to.		"Dana Malia"
`lead_loan_officer_company`	The company of the loan officer that the lead has been assigned to.		"Cardinal Financial"
`lead_loan_officer_email`	The email of the loan officer that the lead has been assigned to.		"[email protected]"
`lead_loan_officer_phone`	The phone of the loan officer that the lead has been assigned to.		"850-222-8686"
`lead_title_officer`	The name of the title officer that the lead has been assigned to.		"Monica Arredondo"
`lead_title_officer_company`	The company of the title officer that the lead has been assigned to.		"south land title" "fnf"
`lead_title_officer_email`	The email of the title officer that the lead has been assigned to.		"[email protected]"
`lead_title_officer_phone`	The phone of the title officer that the lead has been assigned to.		"702-888-8080"
*The specification also allows for up to 100 custom fields as follows:*
`lead_$FIELDNAME$`	A custom field, such as `lead_min_bedrooms` or `lead_max_price`. Use of a custom field requires coordination between the producer and the consumer of the field in question.		Any content.

Consuming Lead Metadata

Below is the recommended approach to consume lead information from emails that conform to the Real Estate Lead Metadata Specification.

Note that in practice, some vendors erroneously put meta tags in the body tag rather than the head tag. While this is not strictly valid HTML, the consuming application should still account for this case and search for meta tags anywhere within the HTML document.

To consume:

Parse the HTML body into a searchable document object model.
Search the document object model for meta tags.
Locate a meta tag named lead_information_version.
Verify that the value of lead_information_version is equal to 1.0.
If successful, look for any other meta tags beginning with lead_. This is the lead information.

Industry Adoption

Move, Inc. and other companies' products are rapidly adopting the specification:

FiveStreet (Move, Inc.), TopProducer (Move, Inc.), BoomTown, Brivity, SmartTargeting (SmartZip Analytics, Inc.), Dakno Marketing, Follow Up Boss, GuerillaRealty.com, Opcity, RealOffice360, Hire Aiva, and Wise Agent can consume emails with lead metadata.
Most outbound Realtor.com (Move, Inc.) lead emails include lead metadata.
All SmartTargeting, GuerillaRealty.com, RealtyNinja, Dakno Marketing, Opcity, and zBuyer lead emails include lead metadata.
Some outbound Apartment List lead emails include lead metadata.

Acknowledgements

The Real Estate Lead Metadata Specification is supported by FiveStreet.com, Move, Inc., Realtor.com, and News Corp. The original specification was drafted by Eric Bashkoff in June 2014, with contributions from Rusty Klophaus.

This document is designed using the Skeleton CSS framework. This website is hosted on Github Pages.