Stop the "Any Update?" Texts: A Client Communication Plan Built on Contract Deadlines

A client texted an agent I know eleven times in one week. Every message was some version of "any update?"

She answered every one of them inside ten minutes. She was proud of that. By Friday the client was more anxious than he had been on Monday.

Every article written about this problem gives the same advice. Be more responsive. Update more often. Stay in front of it. That advice makes the problem worse, because the more reliably you answer the text, the more you teach the client that texting you is how information arrives.

The "any update?" text is a symptom. It means the client has no scheduled, predictable place to get information, so the only retrieval mechanism available to them is poking you.

The goal is to make the text unnecessary before it gets typed. Here is how.

The two different texts that look identical

"Did the appraisal come back?" and "any update?" arrive on the same screen and feel like the same message. They are two different requests and they need two different answers.

An information ask names a specific thing. Did the appraisal come back. Did the seller respond on the repairs. Has the lender ordered anything yet. The client wants a fact, they can tell you which fact, and a text with that fact ends the conversation.

A reassurance ask is open ended. Any update. How is it going. Are we still on track. The client is not asking for data. They are asking to be told that we are still okay.

This is where most agents lose. A reassurance ask gets answered with information, and more information does not satisfy a reassurance need. It usually makes it worse, because now the client has more variables to worry about.

Three practical rules that come out of the distinction:

Information asks can be a text. Reassurance asks need your voice. A sixty second phone call resolves what four paragraphs of typing will not.
Reassurance needs the next date, not the current status. "Nothing has changed. The next thing that happens is the appraisal report, and I expect it Thursday. I will call you Thursday either way."
A repeat reassurance ask is a cadence signal. If the same client asks three times in a week, the answer is to change how often you reach out, not to answer faster.

Hand them the calendar on day zero

This is the single highest leverage thing in the whole transaction, and almost nobody does it.

The moment the contract is executed, every deadline in it has a date. Not a vague sequence of events. Actual dates. Write them down and give them to the client that day.

Inspection period ends the 24th. Repair request goes in by the 24th. Seller responds by the 29th. Your decision is due the 31st. Appraisal ordered this week, report expected the week of the 6th. Loan approval deadline is the 12th. Closing disclosure has to be in your hands three business days before we sit down.

Most of the "any update?" texts never get typed after this, because the client already knows what happens next and when. They stop asking you to be their calendar.

The version of this that works is dated, written, and delivered once. The version that does not work is explaining the process verbally at the kitchen table and assuming it stuck. It did not stick. NAR's 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers found that 38 percent of first time buyers said understanding the steps and the process was the hardest part of buying. That is a process transparency problem, not an information volume problem.

If you are running more than two or three deals, generating that schedule by hand for every file is where this breaks down. That is the specific job automatic task and deadline tracking exists to do, and the client portal is where the client goes to look at it without texting you first.

Name the dead air before it starts

Here is the thing nobody in this conversation says out loud. On a thirty to forty five day contract, there are stretches of a week or more where genuinely nothing happens. The file is sitting in underwriting. A third party has it and has not come back. There is no news because there is no news.

The standard advice handles this in one of two dishonest ways. Either it pretends the dead air does not exist and prescribes weekly updates as though there is always something to report, or it tells you to manufacture content. Send a market report. Send a neighborhood update. Both are worse than the truth, because the client can tell it is filler and filler reads as avoidance.

"Nothing changed" is a complete and legitimate update. It only works if you pre-sold it.

Say this at contract signing, in these words or close to them:

"There is going to be a stretch somewhere around day ten to day twenty five where I have nothing new to tell you. That is normal, and it usually means the file is healthy. You are still going to hear from me on schedule during that window, and some of those updates are going to say nothing changed."

Naming the silence before it arrives costs you thirty seconds. Naming it during the silence sounds like an excuse.

The three part no news update

Never send "no update yet" by itself. It occupies the channel without resolving anything, and it reads as a brush off.

A no news update has three parts.

What we are waiting on. The underwriter's conditions. The appraisal report. The HOA questionnaire.
Who has it. Name the party. The lender, the title company, the association management company. This matters more than people think, because it tells the client the ball is not sitting on your desk.
When you expect it, and what you will do next. A date, and the commitment to call on that date whether or not anything has changed.

"Nothing has changed since Friday. Underwriting has the file and they are working through conditions. I am expecting their response Wednesday, and I will call you Wednesday afternoon either way." That message takes fifteen seconds to write and buys you four days of quiet.

Tie the cadence to the contract, not to the calendar

Every piece of published advice on this gives a calendar rhythm. Weekly. Twice a week. Multiple touchpoints per week.

Calendar cadence has two failure modes. It produces an empty Friday email during the dead air, and it misses the Tuesday when the seller's repair response deadline actually lands.

Milestone cadence puts the update where the news is. These are the points where a client legitimately needs to hear from you:

Binding acceptance. The full dated schedule, in writing, all at once.
Earnest money receipted. Their money moved. Confirm it.
Inspection scheduled, then completed. On completion, the schedule for the report, not the findings.
Repair request submitted. What was asked for, and the date the seller has to answer by.
Seller response received. The answer, their options, and their own deadline to decide.
Appraisal ordered. This is the start of the first quiet stretch. Say so.
Appraisal returned. Value against contract price. High anxiety moment, call them.
Loan conditions issued. The longest quiet stretch. This is where the three part update earns its keep.
Title, survey, and association documents cleared.
Clear to close. Call. Do not text this one.
Closing disclosure delivered. Explain the three business day rule and that certain changes restart the clock.
Final walkthrough, wire instructions, funding, keys.

The financing milestones are the ones agents have the least visibility into, which is exactly why they generate the most anxious texts. Watching loan progress as it moves instead of calling the lender to ask is the reason we built live loan milestone tracking.

What this looks like in Alabama

The Alabama REALTORS Residential Purchase Agreement gives you a hard, calculable end date for the inspection negotiation on day zero.

The initial inspection period defaults to 14 calendar days from the acceptance date if the blank is left unfilled. The buyer has to deliver the request for repairs inside that period. The seller then has three business days to respond in writing. The buyer then has two working days to accept, counter, or void and recover the earnest money. If either side misses their window, the other side's proposal is deemed accepted.

Two things follow from that.

First, you can tell an Alabama client on day one that the repair negotiation will be finished roughly nineteen to twenty one days out. That is a real date on a real calendar and it prevents a lot of texting.

Second, and this is where agents get burned, the buyer's deadline runs on calendar days and the seller's response runs on business days. An agent who promises "I will know by Friday" without doing the day count math is going to be wrong, in front of a client, on a deadline that matters. Alabama is a caveat emptor state, so a blown inspection deadline is not a small mistake.

What this looks like in Florida

Florida's AS IS contract changes what you can honestly promise at two specific points.

The inspection period is a walk for any reason window. The buyer can cancel for any reason at all and recover the full deposit. That is a different conversation from Alabama's repair request structure, and the client should understand which one they are in.

There is no standalone appraisal contingency in the standard contract. The appraisal sits inside the financing contingency and only protects the buyer if the lender determines the appraisal is insufficient to approve the loan. If Comprehensive Rider F is attached, the buyer can cancel penalty free when the appraisal comes in below a specified amount regardless of the lender's position, or proceed and cover the gap in cash. So the honest answer to "what happens if it appraises low" is completely different depending on whether Rider F is in that file. Check before you answer.

The loan approval deadline is not a courtesy update. Notice has to be in writing before the loan approval period expires. A phone call does not count. If the buyer fails to give timely written notice, the contract converts to a cash transaction with no financing contingency. Extending the closing date does not extend the loan approval period. That deadline needs a call on a specific day, and a calendar based cadence can easily land on the wrong side of it.

Florida deadlines run on calendar days and expire at 5 p.m. local time, and a deadline falling on a weekend or a national holiday rolls to 5 p.m. the next business day. Those roll forward rules are worth building into the schedule you hand the client rather than doing the math in your head on the day.

The metric nobody uses

Agents measure communication by response time. Response time is the wrong number, because a fast response to a question that should never have been asked is still a failure.

The number that matters is how many times your client had to ask.

Count it on your next three files. If a client asked for an update six times on a thirty day contract, the schedule you gave them was either missing or not believed. If they asked once, the system worked.

NAR's 2025 data shows 91 percent of buyers and 87 percent of sellers would use their agent again or recommend them. The gap between an agent at the top of that group and one scraping into it is almost never market knowledge. It is whether the client felt informed during the three weeks when nothing was happening.

Where the lender fits

A large share of "any update?" texts exist because the agent is also waiting, usually on the lender, and has nothing to pass along.

The fix on that side is picking lending partners who push status instead of waiting to be asked. Mountain Mortgage is one of the lenders participating in our loan milestone pilot, which is how those updates reach the agent without a phone call. Using them is not required for anything, and agents can use whichever lender their client chooses.

The short version

Give the client a dated deadline schedule the day the contract is executed.
Tell them the quiet stretch is coming before it arrives.
Answer reassurance asks with your voice and the next date. Answer information asks with the fact.
Never send "no update" alone. What we are waiting on, who has it, when I expect it.
Set your cadence off the contract deadlines, not off the calendar.
Measure how many times they had to ask.

RealTour Flow builds the dated schedule off the executed contract automatically, tracks every deadline against the form defaults in your state, and gives the client a place to look without texting you. Founding agent spots are open now. Join the waitlist.

Frequently asked questions

How often should a realtor update clients when they are under contract?

Tie the updates to the contract deadlines rather than to a weekly calendar. There are roughly twelve points in a contract to close timeline where the client legitimately needs to hear something, including earnest money receipt, inspection completion, seller response to repairs, appraisal return, loan conditions, clear to close, and the closing disclosure. Between those points, a scheduled update that says nothing has changed is appropriate and should include what you are waiting on, who has it, and when you expect it.

What do you say to a client when there is no update?

Use a three part message. What we are waiting on, who currently has it, and when you expect a response along with what you will do next. For example, underwriting has the file and is working through conditions, you expect their response Wednesday, and you will call Wednesday afternoon either way. Never send "no update yet" by itself, because it occupies the channel without resolving the client's actual concern.

How do I stop clients from texting me constantly for updates?

Give them a dated schedule of every contract deadline on the day the contract is executed, and name the quiet period before it starts. Most repeat update requests come from clients who have no predictable place to get information, so they poke the only source they have. Once the client knows what happens next and on what date, the volume drops sharply without any conversation about boundaries.

Is it normal not to hear from your agent for a week during escrow?

A week of no activity is common, particularly while a file sits in underwriting or while a third party is holding something. A week of no contact is different from a week of no activity. A good agent still reaches out on schedule during a quiet stretch and tells the client plainly that nothing has changed, rather than going silent and letting the client fill the gap with worst case assumptions.

Should I text or call my real estate clients?

It depends on what they are asking. A specific factual question can be answered by text. An open ended question such as "any update?" or "are we still on track?" is usually a request for reassurance rather than information, and reassurance is better handled by a short phone call that ends with the next date. Milestone moments with emotional weight, such as an appraisal result or a clear to close, should be a call.

How do I set communication expectations at the listing appointment or buyer consult?

Cover three things. The channel they prefer and the hours you are reachable, the schedule of updates tied to contract deadlines rather than a vague promise to stay in touch, and an explicit warning that a stretch with no news is coming and is normal. Setting the third one is the piece almost everyone skips, and it is the one that prevents the most anxiety later.

Does the update schedule change between Alabama and Florida?

Yes, because the deadlines are different. Alabama's AAR purchase agreement defaults to a 14 calendar day inspection period, followed by three business days for the seller to respond to a repair request and two working days for the buyer to decide, so the inspection negotiation has a calculable end date about three weeks out. Florida's AS IS contract gives the buyer a walk for any reason inspection window, has no standalone appraisal contingency unless Rider F is attached, and requires written notice before the loan approval period expires or the contract converts to cash. Those differences change what an agent can honestly promise and on which day.