Learn · For real estate agents & brokers
A real estate client intake form your buyers' finances can't leak from.
A real estate client intake form collects exactly the data you can’t afford to leak: a buyer’s pre-approval amount and lender, their down-payment cash, a seller’s lowest acceptable price. With Brun, every submission is encrypted in the visitor's browser before it leaves the page, so the vendor only ever stores ciphertext it cannot read.
Put simply: a prospect’s pre-approval amount stops being a line item any vendor can read and becomes a lead only your team can open. Keep your IDX site and the form you already have — this page shows why an ordinary intake form exposes every client, and how Brun gives you a real estate CRM for lead management that’s private by design.
What is a secure real estate client intake form?
A secure real estate client intake form is the buyer or seller form on your site with one addition: encryption that runs in the browser while the visitor is still on the page. Pre-approval, income, down payment, contact PII — all of it is ciphertext by the time it touches the network, and ciphertext is all any vendor ever stores.
For an agent, that means a buyer’s pre-approval amount and a seller’s price floor never sit anywhere as a plaintext record — not in an IDX integration’s log, not in a vendor’s support ticket. See the full definition of zero-knowledge intake.
Why do ordinary real estate intake forms put clients at risk?
Standard real estate intake forms and CRMs store every submission as plaintext the form vendor, host, and integrations can read, log, or breach.
The vendor can read every client's finances
Your lead-capture form’s vendor — the widget, the inbox relay, the database behind it — receives the inquiry exactly as typed:
- Buyer pre-approval amount and lender/mortgage broker name
- Down payment cash on hand and source of funds (gift, sale proceeds, savings)
- Buyer income, bank statements, and SSN on financing questions
- Seller's motivation and lowest acceptable price (price floor)
- Off-market and pocket-listing details shared in an inquiry
- Contact PII: name, home address, phone, email tied to a property search
A leaked inquiry is a compliance and ethics exposure
Because intake forms collect buyer financial data (pre-approval, income, down payment), agents and brokerages handling that data may fall under the FTC/GLBA Safeguards Rule duty to protect nonpublic personal financial information, and can be subject to state privacy laws (CCPA/CPRA) and the NAR Code of Ethics Article 1 fiduciary duty of confidentiality. Inquiries should never sit in readable form on a vendor's server.
How does Brun keep a buyer or seller inquiry unreadable?
Trace what happens between a buyer's screen and a lead on your board.
Sealed in their browser.
Nothing changes on their end: the same buyer-intake or contact form on your real estate site, the same fields for budget, pre-approval, and timeline, no Brun branding and no app to install. They describe what they're looking for and hit send. The moment they hit send, a script on their device encrypts the fields using your workspace's public key, one half of a pair built to lock data away and never let it back out. Pre-approval amount, lender, down payment, and contact PII leave the browser already as ciphertext.
Screened. Never opened.
Our intake service checks that the envelope is well-formed, accepts it, and writes only ciphertext to disk. Because the unlocking key never sits on our infrastructure, a breached server or a subpoena served on us returns a buyer's pre-approval and a seller's price floor as noise, not a readable file.
We store gibberish.
stored on our serversEncrypted end to end: every buyer and seller inquiry, lead, and agent note. Server-readable so we can run your account: your login email, billing status, and any support ticket you send us.
Unlocked on your board.
Open your inbox and the decrypt happens on your device, under a key your team alone controls. A buyer's finances or a seller's price floor become readable on the agent's screen — and only there. Decrypted, then re-sealed with your workspace key, the inquiry lands on a simple lead-management board you can note, assign to a buyer's or listing agent, and move from New to Won as the deal closes.
Nothing on your buyer-intake page can decrypt a submission — visitors' browsers only ever see a public intake handle, useless without your team's key. Full mechanics →
Ordinary real estate intake form vs. Brun zero-knowledge intake.
Each row below comes down to one question: after a breach or a subpoena, is there a plaintext copy of your client's finances anywhere but your team's browsers? An ordinary form leaves one on the vendor and your IDX host; zero-knowledge intake leaves none.
| Ordinary real estate intake form | Brun zero-knowledge intake | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it's encrypted | In transit only (TLS), then decrypted on arrival | In the buyer or seller's browser, before it sends |
| Can the form or CRM vendor read it | Yes — buyer finances land in their plaintext database | No — they store ciphertext only |
| Can your IDX host or integrations read it | Yes — every relay and integration sees plaintext | Only your team's browsers, after decrypt |
| What a vendor breach exposes | Readable buyer finances and seller price floors | Ciphertext only |
| What a subpoena to the vendor returns | Readable inquiries with client PII | Ciphertext only |
| GLBA / NAR confidentiality posture | Plaintext copies you cannot prove are protected | No readable copy on a server to breach |
| Setup | Often a new IDX site or hosted form | Two changes to the form you already have |
Do I have to rebuild my real estate site to use it?
No. You keep the IDX site and the buyer-intake form you already have. Connecting it to secure lead capture is exactly two changes — no rebuild, no hosted page, no backend work, and nothing your buyers or sellers can see.
- <form action="/your-old-endpoint">
+ <form action="…/public/intake/your-handle">
+ <script src="…/intake.js">Real estate client intake questions, answered.
What is a real estate client intake form and what should it capture?
It is the form on your site where buyers and sellers submit their needs: budget, pre-approval status and lender, down payment, timeline, and property preferences. Because that includes financial details, where it gets stored matters. With Brun you keep your existing website form, but every submission is encrypted in the visitor's browser before it sends, so the captured inquiry lands in a simple lead board only your team can decrypt and read.
Do I need to replace my current website or CRM to use this?
No. Brun is not another IDX site or all-in-one platform you migrate to. You keep your existing real estate website and contact or buyer-intake form exactly as it is. Brun wraps that form so each lead is encrypted client-side, then drops the decrypted inquiry onto a lightweight CRM board for follow-up. You can still re-enter a lead in Follow Up Boss, Wise Agent, or your existing CRM once your team has decrypted it.
How does Brun protect a buyer's pre-approval and financial information?
The encryption happens in the buyer's browser before anything is transmitted. Brun's servers only ever receive ciphertext we cannot read, so pre-approval amounts, lender names, down-payment cash, and income are never stored in a form Brun, your host, or an integration could log or leak. Only your team holds the keys to decrypt the inquiry, which directly supports your GLBA Safeguards and NAR confidentiality obligations.
Is a normal contact or lead-capture form a compliance risk for agents?
It can be. Standard forms store submissions as plaintext, and once they include buyer finances they can pull you under the FTC/GLBA Safeguards Rule and state privacy laws like CCPA/CPRA, plus the NAR Code of Ethics duty of confidentiality. A breach of a readable lead database exposes you on all three fronts. Brun reduces that surface because there is no readable copy of the inquiry sitting on a server for anyone to breach.
Can I protect off-market or pocket-listing inquiries the same way?
Yes. Seller motivation, lowest acceptable price, and off-market listing details submitted through your form are encrypted in the browser just like buyer data. Brun stores only ciphertext, so a pocket-listing inquiry can't be read by the vendor, scraped, or leaked from the backend — only your team can open it on the lead board.
How much does secure real estate lead intake cost?
Plan options and pricing are shown when you choose a plan at signup, sized for an individual agent up through a full brokerage. Every plan keeps your existing website form and the same encrypt-in-the-browser model — there is no cheaper option that lets a vendor read your clients' finances.
Go deeper on private lead intake.
- What zero-knowledge secure intake isThe category defined in plain language — how a submission gets encrypted in the browser and why a vendor only ever stores ciphertext.
- Why your intake must be encryptedWhy a readable lead is a liability — breach, subpoena, model training — and how sealing it in the browser takes each risk off the table.
- Secure intake and regulated dataSensitive financial inquiries under confidentiality and safeguards rules — how sealed intake fits in.
- Brun overviewWhat the complete product looks like: encrypted intake wired to a lead-management board for small teams.
- Intake by industrySee how zero-knowledge intake reads for your specific business — law, therapy, recruiting, financial advice, and more.
Not legal advice
This page describes Brun's architecture and how it relates to safeguarding client data; it is general information, not legal advice. Your obligations under GLBA and applicable state privacy law depend on your specific business — confirm your compliance posture with qualified counsel.
Leads only you can read
Start securing your buyer and seller leads.
Brun is zero-knowledge intake for real estate teams: a buyer's inquiry is encrypted before it leaves their device, stored by us as ciphertext, and opened on a board only your agents can unlock. Keep your IDX site and form, connect it with two edits, and go live with a clear GLBA and NAR confidentiality posture from day one.