AAJNEETI, Lead Generation, lead generation strategies, Real Estate

The “Fake Lead” Excuse Is Killing Indian Real Estate Growth

January 2, 2026

Written by - Alok Kumar Singh

As one of the biggest real estate lead generation agencies in India, one of the biggest peeves we have is when our real estate clients say that they are getting ‘fake leads’. The thing is that we know for sure that 90% of the time these leads are not fake.

We have been running real estate ad campaigns for more than a decade now and consistently generating good high-intent real estate leads for different projects in different cities – with different budget ranges. And many of our clients are using them successfully to close deals and sell their properties.

Hence, we are writing this post to discuss what is a fake lead and how to find out if the real estate lead you have received is ‘real’ or ‘fake.

What is a Fake Lead?

Despite our best efforts, some leads can’t be reached because they put in wrong contact details or mistype something. You make several calls, leave several messages – and either the phone number and email address doesn’t exist or they ignore your calls and messages…and if they do pick up, they deny filling up the lead form altogether.

Obviously, these leads are fake. And we replace them promptly.

But it is not always the campaign’s problem. Many times your competitors (such as brokers and channel partners) fill up our lead forms in an effort to extract more information from us (such as available inventory or latest market price). They pick up your calls only to extract information – and when it’s done, they disappear into thin air.

Calling them ‘fake’ is fair too – and if you bring such leads to our notice, we replace them too.

Here’s a Real Estate Lead Cycle for you to help you decide what a fake lead is:

A New Lead Comes In → Lead Shared with Client (through Google Sheet or in Real-Time through CRM) → Respond to Lead within 24 Hours → If Not Done, it’s ‘Not a Fake Lead’, it’s a lead nurturing process failure. Most leads go cold if not contacted quickly.

If you attempt the call within the first 24 hours, and the call gets connected, and the lead turns out to be interested in the project, location and budget range, it is ‘Not a Fake Lead’. It is a ‘Qualified Lead’, ready to go into the next stage of the Lead Nurturing Process.

If the call doesn’t get connected and multiple attempts have been made to contact the lead at different times and using different channels, there might be two options:

If it is always unreachable, it might be ‘Fake’.
If the lead responds to the call or message but says that he or she did not fill up the form, it is definitely ‘Fake’.
But if the Real Estate Lead responds to the call and matches our qualification criteria (aligns with our Location, Budget, and accepts that they are interested in the Project), it’s a ‘Qualified Lead’.

The following types of real estate leads are not fake:

Didn’t pick up first call,
Compared your project with others and then did not buy yours,
Asked for time or for you to call back,
Is only exploring for now,
Is waiting for approval by wife, mom, dad (or family).

These are normal buyer behaviours, especially in high-ticket decisions like a real estate transaction.

How the ‘Fake Lead’ Narrative is Hurting Your Real Estate Sales?

One big problem we face with our clients who really believe they are getting ‘fake leads’ is that they are not open to any analytical discussions. For them, the matter is over simply when they label a lead as ‘fake’. They are not interested in providing detailed contextual feedback for leads, look at the lead response time, monitor call recordings, and check if their team is nurturing the lead properly.

They blame the lead generation agency and get stuck in the denial mode when it comes to their own processes.

And this is what their real estate sales the most.

There is only so much we can do. At ACL, we work with dozens of real estate lead generation campaigns every day. Leads we generated are logged properly with all the related details. We expect feedback from our clients – because it becomes the basis of our learning. When they just blame the leads as ‘fake’ and refuse to discuss or analyse it anymore, it becomes a bottleneck for us.

We call ‘fake leads’ and if we find them genuine, we share our call recordings with our clients.

Some clients consider our ‘evidence’ to take a step back and fix their processes…and some don’t. And we don’t know how to help those who choose to keep repeating the same mistakes instead of identifying issues and fix them.

Online real estate lead generation systems are highly measurable. It is easy to find out the real estate campaigns’ weaknesses and work on them (and we take care of them). But it’s the ‘human’ factors (the tone of the caller, the skills of the salesperson, how quickly the lead was responded to) that can make all the difference to your real estate sales.

What We Found When We Called Leads Marked as Fake?

When our clients frequently mark leads as ‘fake’, ‘invalid’, ‘not interested’ or ‘junk’, we ask them for more context. We ask them to add the reasons so that we can optimise their campaigns.

But we also do one more process.

We have some dedicated telecallers to verify these leads. And we often find that many of them:

confirmed that they filled up the lead form to know more about the project,
were genuinely looking for a property in that area, and
had the given budget range.

We have shared these call recordings with our clients as proof that these leads were genuine. They were either contacted too late or at an inconvenient time, or the first call put them off for some reason.

Hence, we have come up with a framework to help you identify the real issue why real estate leads you are receiving are not converting.

Real Estate Lead Audit Framework We Suggest To Our Clients

Here’s a framework you can use to identify where your leads are dying.

Level 1: Lead Response Time Audit

Weekly Review:

No. of Real Estate Leads Received
Average Lead Response Time (for the first call)
No. of Leads Contacted with 24 hours
No. of Leads Contacted within 5 minutes
No. of Leads Contacted after 30 minutes

Remember, if you do not contact the lead within 24 hours, they can’t be labelled as ‘fake leads’. We consider them as qualified automatically.

Questions to Ask:

Did you receive the lead in real-time?
Was it assigned to the available salesperson immediately?
If the assigned person didn’t respond to the lead, was it passed to the backup and how long did it take to do so?

Level 2: First Call Quality Audit

Weekly Review at least 10 Random Calls Per Salesperson. Check:

Did the salesperson introduce themselves clearly?
Did they confirm the inquiry politely?
Did they ask the intent of the customer before pitching the project?
Did they listen more than they spoke?
Did they sound calm and confident throughout the conversation?
Did they know about the project and answered their questions well?

You should also check:

If the caller sounded like they were reading a script?
Did they sound like a call centre person?
Did they keep interrupting the buyer?
Were they too aggressive in their pitching?

The first call is often the point where most leads drop. If the callers are not trained well, we cannot blame the leads. The sales callers need to be trained.

We have seen that when the clients used this lead audit framework judiciously, the incidents of them marking our leads as ‘fake’ or even ‘invalid’ dropped by 87%!

Real Estate Buyers Have Changed. And So Do The Sales Processes.

Real estate buyers in India and abroad have become more cautious now. They do not trust brokers or developers alone and instead, research heavily, compare various projects in locations they prefer and their respective budget ranges, and take their time in making a final decision. Hence, expecting an online real estate lead to walk in and book a plot or a flat straightaway is not realistic or practical anymore.

In fact, many times the lead inquiries we receive fall in the middle of buyers’ research journeys. Such leads may already have checked various portals, asked their friends and family members, watched YouTube videos of different projects, checked the neighbourhood and the connectivity to the shortlisted projects, and compared their prices.

Some of the things most real estate buyers these days often look at are:

5-10 projects in micro-locations they are targeting,
Developer or builder’s credibility and delivery history,
Floor plans, pricing, and payment plans, and
Rental income and appreciation potential of the property.

They get worried about delayed possessions, regulatory compliances, EMIs, their job or income stability, resale options, and a lot more.

Brochures alone can’t win them over. Rushing tactics don’t work on them easily. Big brand names alone are not enough. They cross-check everything, Google everything on the project, developer and the neighbourhood, ask questions, and try to read between the lines. Aggressive sales tactics or vague answers to their concrete queries can cost you a genuine buyer.

Online real estate leads merely signal interest of a genuine buyer – a probability that he or she might buy from you. It’s up to you to lead them to close deals.

Here’s what we, at ACL, have observed how real estate leads and buyer behaviours have changed over the past decade:

Past Behaviours of Real Estate Leads	Current Behaviours of Real Estate Leads
Filling up lead form indicated buying intent	Filling up lead form indicated research intent
First call was the most important	People take time in deciding whom to talk with
People trusted brokers more easily	People look for clarity and documentation
Leads were easier to convert and took decisions quickly	People are more cautious in making decisions
Persuasive sales tactics still worked	People are looking for advisors, not sellers
Fewer follow-ups worked	More and in-depth follow-ups are required
If the leads went silent, it almost always meant rejection.	If the leads go silent, it might mean that they want to think more about it. Retargeting ads work well in such cases.

CRM Lead Feedback That Helps Us Help You Better!

We request our clients to give us lead feedback promptly and in detail. Some of the lead feedback tags that can really helps us optimize your real estate ad campaigns better and offer you better leads are: