- 87% of real estate agents anticipate continued strong buyer demand in 2025.
- Aligning work tasks to personal energy cycles boosts focus and task efficiency.
- Constant availability leads to burnout and reduced real estate productivity.
- Automation tools save agents hours each week by minimizing repetitive tasks.
- Weekly schedule audits help agents adapt faster and sell more homes.
Time Management for Realtors: Are You Doing It Wrong?
2025 will be a busy year for real estate agents. 87% of agents expect strong buyer demand, and 85% feel good about the market’s future. This means you need to work smarter, not just harder. Learning to manage your time well will help you be more productive and focus better on clients.
Don’t Be Ruled by the Clock: Work with Your Natural Rhythms
Many agents make a mistake by setting their schedule like a regular office job. But real estate isn’t a 9-to-5 job. And there’s a good reason for that. For example, buyers tour homes in the evening, sellers make decisions on weekends, and deals happen outside business hours. This is why the best agents build their workday around their chronotype. That’s your body’s natural rhythm for when you feel awake and when you need rest.
Think about when you feel most alert during the day. If you get tired after lunch, do important tasks like cold calls and negotiations in the morning. But if you get going in the evening, use that time to write offers or follow up with leads.
Steve Hawks, a top agent in Las Vegas who has sold over 4,000 homes, uses his night owl habits. “Some of my best deals in Las Vegas happened after 8 PM,” he says. He sets up his day to have the most energy when it matters. This is a practical way to work, based on how people perform best and his own sales numbers.
Real Estate Tip: Keep track of your work for a week. Write down when tasks feel easy and when you feel slow. Use this information to set your work time for when you have the most energy.
Make a Schedule — and Stick to It
Real estate days can be messy. Something can easily take over your time. Just one unexpected client call or a showing at the last minute can mess up everything you planned. So, you must make a plan and really stick to it. There’s no way around this.
Start by blocking out time. Set aside specific hours for important tasks
- Lead generation (phone, text, social reach-outs)
- Listing presentation prep
- Client follow-up
- Admin/paperwork
- Learning and upskilling
- Downtime to reset
Try the “eat the frog” method. Do your hardest or most uncomfortable tasks first thing in the day. Experts who study how people work say this helps you focus better and feel less tired from making decisions later in the day.
Also, don’t forget about putting tasks in order. Ask yourself: What on your list will help you make money? What helps you sell more homes or find future listings? Mark those important tasks and schedule them early. Leave things like emails and confirming appointments for later.
Real Estate Tip: Set aside two 15-minute times each day only for emails, calls, and texts. This helps you handle incoming messages without letting them control your whole day.
Ruthlessly Delegate to Free Up Your Revenue-Generating Time
Many agents try to do everything themselves. They take their own listing photos, write property descriptions, make flyers, handle CRMs, chase signatures, and other things. But the agents who sell the most homes know their real value isn’t doing more tasks. It’s doing less of the tasks that don’t make money.
Giving tasks to others effectively can double or even five times your real estate productivity. For example
- Hate paperwork? Hire a transaction coordinator.
- Bad at graphic design? Use a real estate marketing assistant.
- Busy with follow-ups? Train an inside sales agent (ISA).
- Not good at social media? Hire a content strategist.
But delegation only works if you let go. Micromanagement kills productivity and morale. Tell people clearly what you expect. Train them well. And use tech like task trackers or CRMs to make sure things get done.
It’s also important to build a balanced team. When people have different strengths, you’ll get more done. Agents often hire people who are just like them. Don’t do that. Instead, bring in people whose skills are different from yours but work well with yours.
Real Estate Tip: Every three months, list the 5 tasks you don’t like doing. See which ones you can give to someone else. Paying someone else to do them often costs much less than the money you lose by doing them yourself.
Set Aside Time for Communication to Keep Your Focus
Being available is important in real estate. But being available all the time quickly leads to burnout and not doing your best work. Agents who feel they must answer their phone every time it buzzes soon find they have no time for deep work where they can really focus.
What’s the answer? Make specific times in your day just for communication.
For instance:
- 10:30–11:30 AM → Client check-in responses
- 3:00–4:00 PM → Follow-up emails and call-backs
When it’s not these times, put your phone away. Use auto-replies for emails and texts. Let clients know when they can expect a reply. Clients will respect your limits if you tell them clearly. And you’ll give better answers when you aren’t trying to do too many things at once.
Steve Hawks talks about using this method when working with late-night buyers and quick deals. “Automated alerts help me make offers minutes faster than others,” he says. This is possible because he knows when to focus on messages and when to focus on other things.
Real Estate Tip: Try grouping communication into 2 or 3 times each day. Doing just this can get you back 2–3 hours for focused work. And your clients will still get quick answers.
Use Tech to Avoid Repeated Tasks
Tech isn’t just nice to have anymore. It helps you get a lot more done. If you type in data by hand, print papers, or forget to follow up with leads because your inbox is full, you’re losing money.
Agents who work smart use these
- Dotloop, PandaDoc, or DocuSign – for contracts and signatures
- Trello, Asana, or ClickUp – to manage listings and marketing workflows
- CRMs like Follow Up Boss or KVCore – to automate pipeline management
- Pomodoro-style apps (Focus Keeper, Forest) – to stay very focused for short times
- Extensions like StayFocusd or RescueTime – to stop digital distractions
The goal isn’t to use every tool there is. It’s to find out what takes up the most time and fix it with the right tech. For example, if you spend an hour every day trying to get updates from clients, your CRM should do that automatically.
Real Estate Tip: Look at the five tasks you do most often. If you can automate them or use templates, do it. Saving ten minutes on each task adds up to weeks every year.
Don’t Let Meetings Eat Productive Hours
Meetings can guide the business, or they can completely stop it. In real estate, many team talks, vendor meetings, and coffee chats can just waste time. To stay productive, be very strict about meetings
- Ask: can this be an email?
- Set a strict start and stop time (stick to it!)
- Share a written agenda beforehand
- Only invite those critical to decision-making
Even better, try updating each other at different times. Tools like Slack, Loom, or shared Google Docs let team members give updates when it works for them. You don’t need to change schedules or find time to meet at the same time.
Also, clients like things to be done quickly and well. Making meetings shorter and better means you’ll have more energy for selling and helping clients.
Real Estate Tip: Cap meetings to 20 minutes using a timer. Invite only those who are making decisions, not those who just need to stay informed.
Check Your Schedule Every Week and Make Changes
The best schedules change over time. What worked when you had three active listings might not work when you have fourteen. So, checking your schedule every week (even just for 15 minutes) can change how you use your time.
In your weekly check:
- Check where you scheduled too much or didn’t use time well
- See which tasks took longer than you thought
- See when you had lots of energy and when you didn’t
Then adjust. Move important tasks to the times when you have the most energy. Give less important office tasks to someone else. Try a shorter time for finding leads if you’re getting more clients from them.
Also, be happy about any time you saved. Did tech save you an hour this week? Use that extra hour for working with clients or just resting your mind.
Real Estate Tip: Use colors on your calendar to show tasks that take a lot of energy versus office tasks. Schedule hard work when you have the most energy, and easier tasks when you have less energy.
The Local Perspective: Time Management in the Las Vegas Market
Many ways to save time work everywhere. But each market is a bit different. Las Vegas is a good example. Weekends are full of shows and events, which changes how buyers act. Many buyers are tourists or investors from other states. They come for quick trips and often decide late in the day.
Steve Hawks built his system to do well in this fast market with lots of events:
- Tools for flexible schedules let him quickly change showing times
- CRM alerts and maps help him manage client activity
- Talking mainly by text works for people making decisions while they are busy
In a city that never sleeps, your systems shouldn’t either. Being productive here isn’t about forcing yourself into a strict 9-5. It’s about getting the most out of every hour you work.
Real Estate Tip: In markets like Vegas, keep weekends partly open but planned well. Use map apps to plan showings well in different areas. This cuts down on driving and makes the most of the time with buyers.
Case Study: A Day in the Life of Steve Hawks
Want to see how someone works very productively in real estate? Here’s how Steve Hawks, an agent who has worked a long time in one of the hardest markets in America, works
- 8:00 AM: Review MLS alerts, smart CRM dashboards, assign new tasks
- 9:00–11:00 AM: Phone-based lead generation, high-touch prospecting
- 11:00–1:00 PM: Meetings about plans with team leaders, updates from lenders
- 1:00–3:00 PM: Attend showings, negotiate contract revisions
- 3:00–5:00 PM: Return calls, document reviews, prep for new listings
- Evening (Post 7 PM): Respond to late-night buyer interest, execute contracts
By having others handle marketing, paperwork, and support tasks, he has time free for what really makes money—closing deals and keeping clients.
His approach isn’t magical. It’s based on clear priorities, improved over many years, and managed like something valuable to his business.
Time Management as a Competitive Advantage
Want to sell more homes in 2025? Then it’s time to take your calendar seriously. The top agents aren’t doing more—they’re doing what matters, better and faster. Managing your time in real estate isn’t about fitting 5 more tasks into your day. It’s about figuring out what actions get results and doing them.
Whether it’s automating follow-ups, cutting meetings you don’t need, or setting up your day based on your natural rhythm, each change gives you time back each week. This time helps you grow, earn more, and feel better.
Ready to control your time and get better at what you do?
Start with one change. Stick with it. Then build another. That’s how agents who sell a lot are made. It’s not just about working hard. It’s about having good systems.
Because, as Steve Hawks says, “Time is your inventory. Manage it like listings.”