CRM for Real Estate Agents — Free, From Google Sheets

An agent's Saturday looks like this: two showings in the morning, an open house at noon, a buyer texting about a listing they found on Zillow, and a seller asking why there's no offer yet. Somewhere between the lockbox and the car, three of those conversations were supposed to get logged. One did.

The real estate CRM industry has an answer for this, and it runs $30 to $70 a month. What you get for that money is drip-campaign builders, IDX widgets, transaction checklists, and a dashboard designed for a 40-agent brokerage. What most solo agents actually use is the contacts list and a pipeline — the same two things a Google Sheet already does, minus the reminders and minus a version you can work from your phone.

There's also a quieter cost. Agents who let past clients go quiet lose the referral and the relisting. The buyer you closed in 2023 is a seller in 2027, but only if you're the agent who checked in every year. That's not a software problem; it's a follow-up problem. Here's how to fix it on top of the sheet you already have.

Step 1: Start With Your Client Sheet

One row per client, buyers and sellers in the same tab or separate ones — either works. A typical setup:

Sellers get the listing address in the property column and their stage runs through listing and offers instead of showings. Add a "closed date" column if you don't have one — it's the seed of your referral pipeline.

Step 2: Create a Free Account

Head to lovespreadsheets.com and sign up. The free tier covers building and running the CRM. Paid unlocks things like logins for a team and hosting it on your own domain — relevant if you run a small team, ignorable if you fly solo.

Step 3: Describe Your Pipeline Like You'd Brief an Assistant

Pick the CRM template and write out how your business actually flows:

• "Buyers come in from Zillow, my site, or referrals. They go New lead → Showing → Offer → Under contract → Closed."
• "Sellers start at listing appointment, then Active, then Under contract, then Closed. I want them on a separate board from buyers."
• "Every closed client should resurface once a year so I can check in — that's where my listings come from."

Three things worth requesting by name:

• Reminders on the next-touch column, so a buyer who went quiet after a showing pops back up instead of disappearing
• A pre-approval flag front and center on every buyer card — no more scrolling a text thread to remember who's actually ready to write an offer
• A phone-first layout, since you'll be updating stages from the driver's seat between appointments

Upload the sheet and run it. If your description is loose, the AI Optimize button tightens it, and the AI may ask a clarifying question or two. Expect the build to take 15–20 minutes — roughly one open house's worth of dead time.

Step 4: Your Pipeline, In Your Pocket

You get a URL that opens to your board: buyers by stage on one side, listings on the other, each card showing criteria, pre-approval, and the next touch date. Move Dana from Showing to Offer while you're still in the parking lot and the Google Sheet updates instantly. Type a closing date into the sheet from your laptop that night and the app reflects it.

Set it to private so it's yours alone, or share access if you have a transaction coordinator who keeps the paperwork moving.

Why Agents Keep the Sheet

$0 beats $600 a year for the same two features. Pipeline plus reminders is what most agents use in a paid CRM. Building it on your sheet returns that money to your marketing budget — or your commission.

Past clients never fall off the map. Your closed rows aren't archive data; they're next year's listings. An annual-check-in reminder on every closed client is the cheapest lead gen in real estate.

Nothing to migrate when you switch brokerages. Brokerage-provided CRMs hold your database hostage when you leave. A Google Sheet in your own account moves when you do.

Common Questions from Agents

Can I keep buyers and sellers in separate views? Yes. Describe them as two pipelines and you'll get two boards, with search across both when you can't remember which side a name was on.

Does it work from my phone between showings? Yes — ask for a mobile-friendly layout in your description and the app is built for a thumb, not a mouse.

Where do open house sign-ins go? Add rows to the sheet (or straight into the app) with the source set to the open house address. They enter the pipeline as New leads with a next-touch date already assigned.

Build Yours

Open the sheet where your buyers and sellers live, go to lovespreadsheets.com, and describe your pipeline from first Zillow inquiry to closing gift. Twenty minutes from now, the follow-ups start following themselves up.