Half of Canadian Homebuyers Say an Easy-to-Reach Agent Matters More Now, and Millennials Lead the Shift

Our last few research articles looked at how fast real estate agents actually respond to leads and whether millennial buyers pick up the phone. This one comes at the same question from the buyer's side: when Canadians choose an agent, how much does being easy to reach actually matter to them? A Canadian survey that rarely gets quoted answers that directly.

The Survey

RE/MAX Canada's Future of Real Estate report, published in July 2023 with the agency Camp + King and research partner Canvas8, is built on a survey of 2,030 Canadians who had been involved in the housing market in the previous 12 months or planned to be in the next 24. The report runs 52 pages and mostly covers housing trends. The findings on what buyers want from an agent sit in a short section near the front, which is likely why they rarely get cited.

What Canadians Said Matters More Now

Respondents were asked which factors had become more important to them when choosing a real estate agent over the previous 12 months. The top five:

1. Trust and familiarity
2. Quick to respond and easy to get hold of
3. Good reviews online
4. Ethical credentials
5. Personal connection

Responsiveness came in ahead of online reviews, ethical credentials, and personal connection. Half of all respondents (50%) said that having an agent who is easy to get hold of had increased in importance, and 48% said the same about fast service in general. The report puts it plainly: with the difference between closing and losing out on a property often a matter of days, if not hours, agents who can move fast are in high demand.

Millennials Lead the Shift

The overall 50% hides a sharp difference by age and experience. Among millennials, 65% said an easy-to-reach agent had become more important; among first-time buyers, 61%. These two groups overlap heavily, and together they make up the core of today's buyer market. In our earlier article we covered Canadian data showing millennials are the age group most likely to answer an unknown number. Put the two findings together and the picture is consistent: the buyers who most want a reachable agent are also the ones most likely to pick up when that agent calls back.

The same survey found a related gap. Only 53% of first-time buyers agreed that "communication with the real estate agent was great" in their most recent purchase or sale, compared with 78% of repeat buyers. The group that values responsiveness most is also the group most likely to feel they didn't get enough of it.

The First-Contact Advantage

Responsiveness matters partly because buyers often don't shop around for long. Newer data from the United States makes the point directly: Zillow's 2025 Consumer Housing Trends Report for Agents, released in December 2025, found that 47% of buyers hired the first agent they spoke with. That's American data from a U.S. marketplace, not a Canadian figure, but it shows what's at stake in being reachable on first contact: for nearly half of buyers, the first agent they actually talk to is the one they hire.

Reachable Doesn't Mean Replaced

There's an obvious tension here worth naming. The top factor in the survey is trust and familiarity, and personal connection also made the top five. When buyers say they want an agent who is easy to get hold of, they mean the agent, not a bot. An AI system that sits between buyers and their agent, or traps them in a loop when they wanted a real conversation, would work against exactly what this data says buyers value.

That's why how it's set up matters more than the technology itself. For realtors, we typically set it up so the agent's own phone rings first. The AI voice agent only picks up when the agent can't, during a showing, a listing appointment, or after hours. In those moments, the realistic alternative isn't the agent answering. It's voicemail, and a buyer moving on to the next name on their list. With nearly half of buyers hiring the first agent they actually speak with, that's the moment that matters most.

When the AI does answer, its job is to get the buyer to the agent, not to replace them. It answers the buyer's immediate questions about a listing, then books a call or showing directly into the agent's calendar, so the buyer leaves the conversation with a confirmed time to speak with a person. New leads who opt in through your website, a Facebook lead ad, or an Instagram DM get the same treatment through an automated callback in as little as 30 seconds, with the aim of getting a call with the agent on the calendar while their interest is highest. And because those calls only go to people who just reached out, they're the calls most likely to be answered.

Done this way, AI supports the trust buyers are looking for: a fast, helpful first response, followed by the agent calling at a time that's already been agreed. Done badly, with no clear path to a person, it erodes that trust, which is why we've written separately about what actually goes wrong with AI voice agents and how to avoid it.

A Note on Timing

To be upfront about the data: the RE/MAX survey was conducted in 2022 and published in 2023, during and just after an unusually fast-moving market. Some of that urgency has likely eased. But the direction of the finding (responsiveness rising in importance, led by millennials and first-time buyers) lines up with newer data, including Zillow's 2025 first-agent figure, and with the generation that now makes up most of Canada's buyers.

Sources

• RE/MAX Canada, with Camp + King and Canvas8, The Future of Real Estate 2023: Canada (July 2023). Survey of 2,030 Canadian homebuyers and sellers, conducted in 2022. Source for the 50%, 65%, 61%, and 48% figures, the top-five ranking, and the 53% vs. 78% communication finding.
• Zillow Group, 2025 Consumer Housing Trends Report for Agents press release (December 30, 2025). U.S. data; source for the 47% first-agent figure.