Every form on your real estate site is built from a small set of field types. Each one is designed for a specific kind of input — names, phone numbers, addresses, choices from a list, free-text notes. Knowing which field type fits which job makes your forms shorter, your data cleaner, and your follow-up faster.

This form field types reference covers text, email, phone field types, dropdown, radio, checkbox field options, hidden field tracking, and every other field the form builder supports. Keep it open in another tab while you build forms — you'll come back to it whenever you add a new field.

Single-line text is the most common of all the form field types and the one you'll use most often. It accepts any short string of text on one line, with no line breaks. Use it whenever the answer is a few words — a name, a company name, a property nickname, or any short label. The platform stores whatever the lead types, unchanged.

The two variants that matter:

• Plain text fields work for names, company names, property nicknames, and anything else where the format doesn't matter.
• Number-only text fields work for square footage, year built, and asking price. The mobile keyboard switches to digits, which makes typing faster on phones.

Keep labels short and concrete. "Your name" beats "Please enter your name." Add placeholder text only when the format isn't obvious — for example, placeholder "Mike Johnson" inside a Name field.

Email is its own field type because the form builder validates it in real time. If someone types mike@gmial, the field flags it before they submit. This single change cuts your bounce rate dramatically and saves you from chasing leads at addresses that will never reply. Of every field on a real estate form, email is the one you cannot afford to lose.

Use email for every form. It's the one piece of contact information that lets you keep talking to a lead even if they don't pick up the phone.

A few rules:

• Make it required. Every form should require email.
• Use a single email field, not a confirm-email pair. Confirm fields hurt conversion and don't catch the most common errors anyway.
• Pair it with auto-respond. The moment they submit, an email goes out so they know the lead landed and they can reply if they want to.

Phone fields auto-format the number as the lead types — (214) 555-1234 instead of 2145551234. They also restrict input to digits, parens, dashes, and spaces, which keeps your data clean. That formatting matters more than it looks: clean phone numbers feed cleanly into your CRM, your dialer, and your SMS platform without needing a cleanup step before you can use them.

A few tips:

• For seller leads, phone is usually optional. People hand over their address before their phone number.
• For buyer leads in hot markets, phone is required. You need to call within minutes, not hours.
• Pair phone with SMS consent if you plan to text. (See the SMS consent field type below.)

Of all the form field types, address is the one with the most downstream impact on your lead workflow. It comes in two flavors. The right one depends on whether you need the parts of an address separately or just need to see the whole thing as a string.

Your two options:

• Simple address gives you one text field for "123 Main St, Dallas, TX 75201". Use this when you don't need the parts separately.
• Autocomplete address is backed by Google Places. The lead starts typing, picks from suggestions, and the field parses out street, city, state, and ZIP into separate hidden values you can use later.

For seller forms, always use autocomplete. The parsed components let your platform run automatic property lookups, find tax records, and pull in a Zestimate before you even reply. Without parsed components, you're left with a single string that nothing downstream can act on.

For "current address" or general mailing address, simple address is fine.

Dropdowns work when you need someone to pick one option from a fixed list. They keep the form short, because the choices hide behind a tap until the lead is ready to answer. That makes them ideal for non-critical questions where you want the lead to keep moving down the form.

The classic real-estate use cases:

• Property type (single-family, multi-family, condo, land)
• Reason for selling (relocation, downsizing, inherited, financial)
• Timeline (ASAP, 30 days, 90 days, just exploring)

Three rules that make dropdowns better:

• Keep the list short — five to seven options. Long dropdowns kill conversion.
• Put the most common answer first.
• Avoid "Other" if you can. It gives lazy answers and forces a follow-up.

If the list is fewer than four options, use radio buttons instead. They show all choices at once and feel faster.

Radio buttons let the lead pick one option from a small set, with every option visible. Together with the dropdown radio checkbox field group, they're the workhorse choice-fields of every real estate form. Use radios when:

• The list is two to four items.
• Seeing all choices at once helps the lead decide.
• The choice is important (you're segmenting your leads by it).

Common use cases: "Are you the owner?" yes/no, "Is the property occupied?" owner/tenant/vacant, "How did you hear about us?" four channels.

Radio buttons feel faster than dropdowns because there's no extra tap. On mobile they take more vertical space, so use them when the choice matters more than the space saved.

Checkboxes let the lead pick multiple options from a list, or confirm a single statement with one click. They're the only field type designed for multi-select, and they're also the standard pattern for any kind of yes/no agreement. Most real estate forms use checkboxes for one of two distinct purposes.

The two patterns:

• Multi-select — "Which features matter most?" with five options. Lead picks any number.
• Single confirmation — "I agree to the terms" or "Text me with updates." One checkbox, often required.

The single-confirmation pattern is the most common one in real estate forms. It's how you handle SMS consent, marketing opt-in, and privacy policy acknowledgment.

A few tips:

• Don't pre-check checkboxes. Make the lead actively opt in.
• For required confirmations, make the validation message clear ("Please agree to the terms").
• Group related checkboxes under one label, not as floating questions.

Textareas accept multi-line free-text. Use them sparingly. They take up screen real estate and most leads either type one sentence or skip them entirely. Every textarea you add is a question that costs you completion rate, so the bar for including one is high — only ask for free-form text when you genuinely need it.

The right time to use a textarea:

• "Tell us about the property" (after they've confirmed it's worth talking about)
• "Anything else we should know?" (optional, end of form)
• "Why are you selling?" (only if you really need the answer)

If you can replace a textarea with a dropdown, do it. "How soon are you looking to sell?" works better as four radio buttons than a free-text question.

Hidden fields are the only form field types that don't show up on the form. They store information you want to capture about the lead without asking. Hidden field tracking is how every campaign-attribution and lead-source detail gets onto the submission record without making the form longer. Common uses:

• Tracking data — UTM source, UTM campaign, UTM medium, referrer URL, landing page. So when the lead becomes a deal six months later, you know which ad brought them in.
• Lead source — which form they filled out, which page it was on.
• Tenant ID and site ID — automatic, so every submission is tied to the right account.

Hidden fields are populated automatically. You don't write the values; the platform fills them in when the form loads. Every form should have UTM and source tracking on by default.

Date fields collect a single date — for example, "When did you move in?" or "Preferred closing date." They use a calendar picker, so leads can't type something invalid. The calendar picker also handles the "what's today's date" problem on mobile, where typing a date manually is slow and error-prone.

Date ranges collect two dates — start and end. Common in scheduling and "available between" questions.

Two tips:

• Set sensible defaults. For "preferred closing", default to 30 days out.
• Limit the range. Don't let someone pick a date five years in the past.

File upload lets leads attach an image, PDF, or document. Of all the field types, this one has the biggest impact on conversion — making it required is a guaranteed way to lose leads — so the rule is to keep it optional and only ask for files when you genuinely need them. Useful for:

• Property photos (seller forms)
• ID or proof of funds (cash buyer applications)
• Mortgage statements (note seller forms)

A few rules:

• Always make file upload optional. Required attachments tank conversion.
• Limit the file size (10 MB is plenty for one photo).
• Limit file types to images and PDFs. Reject .exe, .zip, anything risky.
• Tell the lead what to upload right in the label, not in placeholder text.

SMS consent is a checkbox with specific compliance language attached. It's required by the TCPA before you can text a lead. The platform handles the consent text, the timestamp logging, and the audit trail — you just decide whether to include the field. Skip this step and you create real legal exposure the first time you send a marketing text without recorded consent.

If you plan to text any leads, every form needs this field. If you only call and email, you can leave it off.

(For full details on TCPA-compliant SMS consent, see the SMS consent fields guide.)

Most real estate forms use four or five of the field types above — email, phone, address, a dropdown or two, and a hidden tracking block. The rest are situational. When in doubt, fewer fields convert better. Start small, ship the form, and add fields only when the leads you're already getting don't have the data you need.

Bookmark this form field types reference and come back when you add new fields. It covers all form field options the builder offers, plus the rules of thumb that make each one work in real-world real estate forms.

For the full feature set behind the form builder — visual editor, presets, automations, and the rest — see SiteStakes Forms.