Sales & CRM

How to set up your first crm as Real Estate Founders

Sales & CRMFor Real Estate Founders2 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

Your deal pipeline lives in a spreadsheet you stopped trusting six months ago. Investor contacts are split between your phone, a Gmail label you made in 2023, and a HubSpot trial you set up but never configured correctly because you don't have a sales ops person. Every time a broker sends you an off-market opportunity, you're manually cross-referencing who you've talked to, what they told you, and whether you already underwrote that asset class last quarter. You're also doing your own LP outreach, which means you need to know who hasn't heard from you in 30 days — and right now that answer lives in your head.

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Sales & CRMFor Real Estate Founders2 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

A CRM built around how real estate deals actually move — property address, asset class, acquisition stage, LP interest level, broker relationship, and close probability — not a generic sales funnel designed for SaaS companies

Email thread history automatically pulled into each contact record so you know the last thing you said to every LP and broker without hunting through Gmail

LinkedIn enrichment on every contact so broker and LP profiles stay current, connected directly to your deal pipeline

The Starch recipe

Apps, data, and prompts

The combination of Starch apps, the data sources they pull from, and the prompts you use to drive them.

Apps used

CRM Email Agent

Data sources & config

Starch syncs your Gmail data on a schedule and attaches message history to CRM contact records automatically. LinkedIn enrichment runs through browser automation — no LinkedIn API needed — keeping broker and LP profiles current. If you have existing contact data in HubSpot or a spreadsheet, Starch can import and clean it on setup.

Prompts to copy

Build me a CRM for a real estate acquisition firm. Each deal should have fields for property address, asset class (multifamily, industrial, retail), acquisition stage (sourcing, underwriting, LOI, due diligence, closed, passed), seller or broker contact, LP interest level (none, watching, committed), projected close date, and close probability percentage. I want to be able to filter by asset class and stage and see which deals have had no activity in the last 14 days.

Pull in my Gmail threads and attach them to the matching contact records in my CRM. Flag any LP or broker I haven't responded to in more than 21 days and put them in a follow-up queue at the top of my day.

Run these in Starch → or paste them into your favorite agent

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Start from the CRM app in the Starch App Store — it's a live template built for operator founders. You'll customize it in the next step rather than configuring it from scratch.

2 Describe your deal schema to Starch in plain language: asset classes you buy, the stages a deal moves through from sourcing to close, and what fields you track on each LP relationship (commitment size, preferred asset class, last contact date).

3 Import your existing contacts — from a CSV export out of HubSpot, a Google Sheet, or wherever your list currently lives. Starch maps the fields and flags duplicates for you to resolve.

4 Connect Gmail from the Starch integration setup. Starch syncs your email on a schedule and threads conversations into the matching contact and deal records so you're not switching tabs to find context.

5 Turn on LinkedIn enrichment. Starch automates LinkedIn through your browser — no API needed — and pulls current job titles, firm affiliations, and connection data into each broker and LP record.

6 Set up the Email Agent app alongside your CRM. Tell it to triage your inbox by actual priority: LP replies and broker deal submissions at the top, everything else below. It will summarize long threads and draft replies for you to review.

7 Ask your CRM a natural-language question to validate the setup: 'Which LPs have I not spoken to in the last 30 days who previously expressed interest in multifamily deals?' You should get a real list, not a canned report.

8 Create a deal pipeline view filtered by stage and asset class. Pin this as your default view so every morning you open Starch and see exactly where each active deal sits without building a pivot table.

9 Set a follow-up automation: any broker or LP contact with no Gmail activity in 21 days surfaces automatically in your follow-up queue in the Email Agent.

10 Add any broker or seller websites you want to monitor — competitor transaction histories, market listing pages, CoStar-equivalent portals — as browser automations. Starch checks them on a schedule and surfaces new listings that match your acquisition criteria.

11 After your first week, ask Starch to summarize deal activity: 'How many deals moved from underwriting to LOI this month, and which LPs are attached to each one?' Use this as your investor update starting point.

12 Publish nothing to the app marketplace yet — keep your CRM schema private. But note that you can fork the base CRM template and share a sanitized version with a co-GP or operating partner if you bring in a partner on a deal.

See this running on Starch

Connect your tools, describe what you want, and the agent builds it. Closed beta is free.

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Worked example

April 2026 LP re-engagement push before a 72-unit multifamily close

Sample numbers from a real run

LP contacts imported from spreadsheet	47
Contacts with no Gmail thread in last 30 days (flagged by Email Agent)	19
LPs with prior multifamily interest (CRM filter)	11
Broker contacts enriched via LinkedIn automation	23
Draft LP update emails generated by Email Agent	11

You're three weeks out from an LOI deadline on a 72-unit multifamily in Phoenix. You need to know which of your 47 LP contacts have expressed interest in multifamily, haven't heard from you recently, and are realistically able to move on a 45-day close timeline. You run a CRM filter: asset class = multifamily, LP interest = 'watching' or 'committed', last Gmail activity = more than 30 days ago. Eleven names come back. The Email Agent has already drafted outreach for each one based on your prior thread history — it summarizes where the conversation left off and suggests a re-engagement line specific to the Phoenix deal. You review and send 11 emails in about 20 minutes instead of spending an afternoon reconstructing context from your inbox. On the broker side, Starch has been running LinkedIn enrichment on your 23 broker contacts in the Southwest. Three of them changed firms in the last 60 days — information you would have missed if you were still checking LinkedIn manually. You update their records and send a check-in note through the Email Agent before the close, which keeps those relationships warm for the next deal.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

Number of active deals by acquisition stage (sourcing → underwriting → LOI → due diligence → closed)

LP contacts with no outreach in the last 30 days, segmented by expressed interest level

Days from first broker contact to signed LOI, tracked per deal

Broker pipeline coverage by asset class and market (how many relationships do you have per market you're actively sourcing in)

LP commitment rate — number of LPs who moved from 'watching' to 'committed' per deal

Comparison

What this replaces

The other ways teams handle this today, and how the Starch version compares.

HubSpot CRM

HubSpot's schema is designed for SaaS sales pipelines — you'll spend real time configuring properties for real estate deal fields, and you'll still need a separate tool for LP relationship tracking and another for email triage; the data never flows between them automatically.

Juniper Square

Juniper Square is purpose-built for LP capital tracking and investor reporting, which it does well, but it doesn't touch your deal sourcing pipeline, broker relationships, or inbox — you're still stitching it to other tools.

Airtable + Zapier

You can build a flexible deal tracker in Airtable and connect it to Gmail via Zapier, but you're the one maintaining the schema, writing the automations, and debugging when a zap breaks — it's a part-time job to keep it running.

Salesforce

Salesforce can be configured for real estate deal flow, but the configuration requires a consultant or a dedicated admin; at an operator-founder stage you'll pay for capabilities you can't use and spend months on setup before you see value.

Google Sheets + Gmail labels

Free and flexible, but you already know the problem: the sheet drifts, the labels pile up, and there's no way to ask 'who haven't I called in 30 days' and get a reliable answer.

On Starch RECOMMENDED

One platform — crm, email agent all running on connected data. Setup in plain English; numbers stay current via scheduled syncs and live agent queries.

Try it on Starch →

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Can I import my existing HubSpot contacts and deal records into Starch?

Yes. Export your HubSpot contacts and deals as a CSV and import them into Starch. The CRM app will map fields and flag duplicates for you to resolve. If your HubSpot data is messy — inconsistent deal stages, missing fields, duplicated contacts — Starch cleans it during import rather than carrying the mess forward.

Does Starch actually understand real estate deal fields, or do I have to teach it everything from scratch?

You describe your schema in plain language and Starch builds it. Say 'I need fields for property address, asset class, acquisition stage, LP interest level, and close probability' and those fields exist in your CRM within a few minutes. The base CRM template in the App Store is a starting point — it's not pre-configured for real estate, so you'll customize it, but that customization takes a description, not a configuration session.

Will my LP and broker data be stored securely? Is Starch SOC 2 certified?

Starch is not SOC 2 Type II certified today — that's worth knowing before you make a decision. There's no on-premises or self-hosted option either. If your LPs have strict data residency requirements or your firm has a compliance policy that requires SOC 2, you'll want to check with your counsel before connecting sensitive LP data.

Does LinkedIn enrichment actually work, or does LinkedIn block it?

Starch automates LinkedIn through your browser — it navigates LinkedIn the same way you would when you're logged in. This works reliably for enriching contact profiles and pulling current firm and title data. It's not a bulk scrape; it runs on your contacts one at a time, which keeps it within normal usage patterns.

I track deals across multiple asset classes and markets. Can one CRM handle all of it, or do I need separate databases?

One CRM with filters is almost always better than multiple separate trackers for an operator founder — you want to ask cross-portfolio questions like 'which LPs have committed to both multifamily and industrial deals' and that only works if everything is in one place. Describe your asset classes and markets when you set up the schema and Starch builds the filters in from the start.

Can the CRM connect to CoStar or LoopNet for property data?

CoStar and LoopNet don't have public APIs that Starch integrates with today. However, Starch can automate either site through your browser — if you're logged into CoStar, Starch can navigate it and pull property data into your deal records. Describe what you want to track and Starch builds the browser automation around your workflow.

What happens to my Gmail data — does Starch read all my emails?

Starch syncs your Gmail on a schedule and reads messages to attach threads to the matching contact records in your CRM. The Gmail OAuth consent screen will show the name of the underlying email connector rather than 'Starch' during setup — that's a known limitation the team is working to fix. The data stays in your Starch account and is used only to power your apps.