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B2B appointment setting for estate and letting agents

Published October 29, 2026 · 9 min read · CyberNovaLabs.io

Agencies, property managers, managing agents: B2B appointment setting is allowed in all four countries, but the Belgian code of conduct follows your provider and Dutch law changes with the legal form of the firm you call. What to check before the first call.

The short answer

Yes, B2B appointment setting works with estate agencies, property managers and managing agents in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. But this sector adds two constraints you will not meet elsewhere, and both bite on your provider as much as on you.

The first is Belgian: the estate agents' code of conduct covers any promotional means the agent uses or calls upon^[1]. Outsourcing moves nothing outside its scope. The second is Dutch: article 11.7 of the Telecommunicatiewet treats a company and a natural person differently, and 5,910 of the 12,950 Dutch brokerage firms are registered as natural persons, not companies^[3][4].

The conclusion is practical. One list and one script cannot be handled the same way across the four countries, nor from one row to the next inside a single country.

Does this apply to you?

This guide is for you if you sell to real estate professionals, or if you are an agency trying to fill its own diary:

• you sell transaction, lettings or block management software;
• you sell services to agencies: photography, home staging, surveys, inventories, concierge, works;
• you are a managing agent or property manager looking for building or block mandates;
• you are an agency and you want meetings with investors, developers or institutional landlords;
• you outsource prospecting to an external provider in one of the four countries.

If you target private individuals, this guide does not apply: consumer canvassing falls under a separate regime in each of the four countries.

B2B appointment setting: what each country requires before the first call

Belgium: the code of conduct follows your provider

The code of conduct of the Professional Institute of Estate Agents has been binding since the Royal Decree of 29 June 2018^[2]. Six articles bear directly on an appointment setting campaign.

• Article 11: the estate agent may not harass anyone in order to obtain an instruction^[1]. A follow-up cadence therefore has to be written down and capped, not left to the provider's judgement.
• Article 17: the estate agent may take no step relating to the marketing or administration of a property unless an instruction has been given or an authorisation granted^[1]. A call that discusses a specific property before any mandate falls outside that.
• Article 19: information about status, professional activities, qualifications and services must be given honestly, without improperly claiming titles or competences^[1]. The provider's script is covered word for word.
• Article 20: documents and the website must carry the IPI approval number, the trading name and legal form, the name of the professional indemnity insurer and the policy number^[1].
• Article 21: advertisements, signage, information boards and any other promotional means the estate agent uses or calls upon must clearly show that they come from an estate agent^[1].
• Article 22: the estate agent may not carry out a regulated estate agency activity in collaboration with a person practising such an activity illegally^[1].

Read together, articles 21 and 22 produce the least obvious point in this guide. A call centre prospecting for a Belgian agency falls within article 21 as a promotional means the agent calls upon, so the call has to state from the outset which approved agency it is made for. An anonymous call on behalf of an unnamed client does not meet that requirement as drafted. And the agency keeps a direct interest in checking its provider's status, which article 22 addresses explicitly.

On the same sector, we have set out separately what the NIS2 directive changes for estate and letting agents in the Netherlands.

Netherlands: the prospect's legal form decides

Article 11.7 of the Telecommunicatiewet does not say that B2B is free. It stacks three regimes^[3].

• Paragraph 1: automated calling and communication systems without human intervention, faxes and electronic messages may not carry unsolicited commercial communication without prior consent that the sender must be able to demonstrate. This paragraph does not distinguish companies from individuals.
• Paragraph 2: paragraph 1 applies in the same way to other means, so to a human phone call, but only towards natural persons.
• Paragraph 3: by way of derogation, no prior consent is required towards a legal person, or a natural person acting in the exercise of their profession or business, where the sender uses electronic contact details that the end user has designated and made public for receiving such communication, and uses them in line with that purpose.

Two consequences that scripts imported from France routinely miss. First, cold email to a BV is not free: it falls under paragraph 1, so under consent, unless the address was published for that specific purpose. A number or address merely filed with the KvK register does not by itself amount to that designation. Second, a human call to a legal person is caught neither by paragraph 1, which is about automated systems, nor by paragraph 2, which only concerns natural persons.

Two formal duties come on top: paragraph 7 requires the message to state the actual identity of the person on whose behalf the communication is sent, together with a valid postal address or number to ask for it to stop; paragraph 8 prohibits the sender from using number blocking^[3]. The Dutch data protection authority publishes its position on telemarketing^[10], and the GDPR applies alongside this text.

The volume at stake is not marginal. In the fourth quarter of 2026, CBS counts 12,950 businesses in real estate brokerage (SBI 6831) and 10,910 in property management (SBI 6832), out of 41,985 for branch 68 as a whole^[4]. In brokerage, 5,910 are natural persons and 7,040 legal persons: close to one row in two, 45.6%, therefore falls under the stricter regime. In management the ratio reverses, with 2,430 natural persons against 8,480 legal persons, or 22.3%^[4].

The general Dutch regime, outside this sector's specifics, is covered in our guide to B2B appointment setting rules in the Netherlands.

France and Luxembourg: check the licence before you call

In France, the Act of 2 January 1970, known as the Hoguet Act, governs persons who habitually engage in, or lend their assistance to, even incidentally, transactions involving the property of others: purchase, sale, search, exchange, letting, property management, among eight listed categories, and it also covers professionals acting as managing agents of co-ownerships^[8]. Practising requires a professional card carrying the relevant endorsement, T, G or S, issued by the chamber of commerce and industry^[8]. The code of conduct for real estate professionals was laid down by Decree no. 2015-1090 of 28 August 2015^[9].

For anyone prospecting, the endorsement on the card is a free and sharply discriminating qualification criterion: an agency holding only the T endorsement will not buy a block management module, and the information is public.

In Luxembourg, two separate business permits exist. The estate agent acts as an intermediary between two persons with a view to the sale, exchange, letting or transfer of a property or a business^[5]. The property manager and managing agent manages, on the basis of a mandate, one or more buildings on behalf of one or more owners^[6]. Each requires a pass certificate from the final examination of the corresponding House of Training course, plus specific professional indemnity insurance^[5][6]. An exception applies to persons acting as managing agent in co-ownerships of at most nine residential lots, one of which belongs to the proposed managing agent^[6].

The commercial consequence is direct: in Luxembourg a firm may hold one of the two permits and not the other. Asking which one, in the first seconds of the call, qualifies the need in one sentence. The same regulated-profession logic applies to B2B appointment setting for accounting firms and fiduciaries.

Who decides in an agency, and when to call

The CBS figures also say something about the decision path. In Dutch brokerage, 9,700 of the 12,950 businesses employ a single person, or 74.9%; in property management, 9,245 out of 10,910, or 84.7%^[4]. In those structures there is no reception screen and no buying committee: the person you reach is the decision maker, and they are out on site for much of the day. At the other end, 10 brokerage businesses and 5 management businesses exceed one hundred persons employed^[4]: there the cycle looks like any corporate purchase, with an IT lead and a buyer.

Three calendar markers, to be checked against your own list rather than taken as read:

• a managing agent rarely decides alone: a supplier's budget often goes through the general meeting of the co-ownership, whose season is known in advance;
• lettings management peaks around inventories, concentrated on tenancy changes;
• transactions follow the flow of mandates, which is measured in weeks, not quarters.

One trait is specific to this sector: agencies prospect themselves, every day. Your contacts recognise a call framework by the third sentence. State the purpose and the length up front, as the Belgian and Dutch texts quoted above in fact require, rather than running an opener.

The first five actions

1. Split your list by country, then by legal form. On Dutch rows, the natural person or legal person column drives the article 11.7 regime^[3]. Without that column you cannot show on what basis the call was made.
2. Write the identity statement into the script. Who is calling, for which agency, with the IPI approval number in Belgium^[1], and the actual identity of the principal in the Netherlands^[3]. Two sentences, at the top of the call.
3. Cap the follow-up cadence in writing. Number of attempts, interval between two, permanent removal from the list on refusal. Belgian article 11 forbids harassing anyone in order to obtain an instruction^[1]: a written cap is what you will be able to show.
4. Add the prospect's licence to the qualification grid. T, G or S endorsement in France^[8]; which of the two permits in Luxembourg^[5][6]; IPI approval in Belgium^[1]. It costs nothing and it removes pointless meetings.
5. Check that your outbound number is displayed. Paragraph 8 of article 11.7 prohibits the sender from using number blocking^[3]. One test call per country, before launch.

At CyberNovaLabs.io

We set B2B appointments for companies selling to estate agencies, property managers and managing agents in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Qualification criteria are written and agreed before launch, there is no minimum term, and billing is per appointment or on a fixed fee, quoted on request. See our B2B appointment setting service and, for the Dutch market, our Amsterdam page.

Ask for a prospecting plan for the real estate sector.

Sources

1. IPI/BIV - Code de deontologie des agents immobiliers (annexe de l'AR du 29 juin 2018), PDF
2. Moniteur belge - Arrete royal du 29 juin 2018 portant approbation du code de deontologie de l'IPI (numac 2018040256)
3. Telecommunicatiewet, artikel 11.7 - wetten.overheid.nl
4. CBS - Bedrijven; bedrijfstak (tabel 81589NED), 4e trimestre 2026, SBI 68 / 6831 / 6832
5. Guichet.lu - Agent immobilier : autorisation d'etablissement
6. Guichet.lu - Administrateur de biens / syndic de copropriete : autorisation d'etablissement
7. Legilux - Loi du 2 septembre 2011 reglementant l'acces aux professions, version consolidee
8. Legifrance - Loi n° 70-9 du 2 janvier 1970 (loi Hoguet)
9. Legifrance - Decret n° 2015-1090 du 28 aout 2015, code de deontologie des professionnels de l'immobilier
10. Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens - Telemarketing

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