Who uses this form
Real estate agents and brokerages taking on a new buyer client.
How to use the buyer intake form form
Buyer intake is a qualification exercise as much as a data-collection one. The financing fields come before the search criteria in this template deliberately: an agent who knows the buyer’s lending position knows which properties are worth showing, and an agent who does not is guessing at the top of the range.
The field most often missing from buyer intake forms is deal-breakers. Must-haves get recorded routinely because buyers volunteer them; the things that would rule a property out are just as decisive and rarely written down. A busy road, a shared driveway, a particular school catchment - knowing these prevents showings that were never going to work.
Timeline asks what is driving the date as well as the date. "Three months" and "three months because a lease ends and there is no extension" are different constraints, and the second one changes how an agent advises on offer strategy.
The sale contingency field is separated from timeline because it is the single largest structural constraint on a purchase. A buyer who must sell first is running two transactions with a dependency between them, and that needs to be known at intake rather than discovered at offer.
Recording all parties to the purchase rather than one contact name matters more than it appears to. Two buyers frequently have different priorities, and an agent who has only met one of them is optimising for half the decision. It is also a practical necessity: both names go on the offer, both need to be reachable for signatures, and discovering a second decision-maker late in a transaction is a common cause of a deal stalling at the worst moment.
Down payment asks for the source of funds where it is relevant to the loan, because gifted funds, funds from a pending sale, and funds already on deposit are treated differently by lenders and have different documentation requirements. An agent who knows this at intake can flag it to the lender early rather than having it surface during underwriting.
Target areas is deliberately a free-text field rather than a list of neighbourhoods. Buyers describe where they want to live in terms of constraints - a commute, a school catchment, proximity to family - and forcing that into a dropdown of area names loses the reasoning. The reasoning is what lets an agent suggest somewhere the buyer had not thought of, which is most of the value they add.
Every field, explained
15 fields. Required fields are marked; the rest are optional.
Buyer
- Buyer NameTextRequired
- All parties who will be on the purchase
- PhonePhoneRequired
- Primary contact number
- EmailEmailRequired
- Email for listings and correspondence
- Current AddressLong text
- Where the buyer lives now
Financing
- Financing StatusChoiceRequired
- How far along the buyer is with lending
- LenderText
- Lender and loan officer, where one is engaged
- Budget RangeTextRequired
- Price range the buyer is working to
- Down Payment AvailableText
- Funds available, and their source if relevant to the loan
Criteria
- Target AreasLong textRequired
- Neighbourhoods, school districts, or commute constraints
- Property TypeChoice
- What the buyer is looking for
- Bedrooms and BathroomsText
- Minimum required
- Must-HavesLong text
- Non-negotiable requirements
- Deal-BreakersLong text
- What would rule a property out - as useful as the must-haves and more often unrecorded
Timeline
- TimelineTextRequired
- When the buyer needs to move, and what is driving that date
- Sale ContingencyChoice
- Whether the purchase depends on selling a current property
What a completed form is used for
- Qualifying a new buyer client at first meeting
- Setting up an accurate listing search and alerts
- Recording financing position before showings begin
- Briefing a colleague covering a showing
- Documenting the brief so expectations are explicit
- Flagging funding source to the lender before underwriting
- Identifying every decision-maker before an offer is prepared
- Capturing the reasoning behind criteria, not just the criteria
Buyer Intake Form questions
What should a buyer intake form ask?
All parties to the purchase and their contact details, financing status and lender, budget and down payment available, target areas, property type and minimum requirements, must-haves, deal-breakers, timeline with the reason behind it, and whether the purchase depends on selling an existing property.
Why ask about deal-breakers as well as must-haves?
Because buyers volunteer must-haves and rarely volunteer deal-breakers, and deal-breakers eliminate properties faster. An agent who knows a buyer will not consider a shared driveway or a busy road saves both parties several wasted showings.
Should financing be established before showing properties?
It determines what is worth showing, so in practice yes. A buyer who is pre-approved, pre-qualified, or has not started is in three materially different positions, and showing at the top of a range that lending will not support wastes the buyer’s time and the agent’s.
How often should a buyer intake be revisited?
Whenever the criteria shift, which for most buyers is after the first few showings - seeing properties changes what people want, and a brief recorded at first meeting is frequently obsolete within a fortnight. An intake form treated as a one-time document quietly becomes a record of what the buyer wanted before they knew the market.
Can a buyer consultation be recorded and transcribed into this?
Yes, and it means the buyer is not asked for the same information twice. A recorded consultation also captures the reasoning behind their criteria, which is often more useful than the criteria themselves when a compromise has to be weighed later.