Google Voice keeps your cell off the panel. It still sends the tenant to voicemail.
This is the first thing most brokers try, and the instinct behind it is right. Putting a second number on the panel keeps your cell out of the LoopNet scrapers and off a 4x8 sign that will be up for eighteen months. A free forwarding number does that part cleanly.
Then the number rings, you are on a tour, and it goes to voicemail. Which is where the plan was always going to end, because forwarding is not answering.
What a forwarding number is and is not
Google Voice gives you a number, rings your phone, transcribes voicemail, and blocks spam reasonably well. What it does not do is have a conversation. There is nobody on the other end who knows the suite sizes, and there is nothing deciding whether the caller was a tenant or a company selling you listing syndication.
So the sorting job comes back to you. You still see every missed call. You still listen to or read every voicemail. The only thing that changed is which number it came in on.
The drive-by does not leave a message
This is the part worth being blunt about. A person standing in the parking lot looking at your panel is the hottest inquiry the listing will produce, and they are the least likely caller to leave a voicemail. They are on their feet, they have a business to run, and there are two other centers within a mile with numbers on them.
Portal leads leave a trail. Sign calls do not. A missed sign call at 4:40pm on a Friday is usually just gone, and nothing in your call log tells you it was worth anything.
When the free option is genuinely the right call
If the listing is a quiet one, if you answer your phone most of the day, and if the assignment is not worth much, a forwarding number is fine and you should not pay for more. Nobody needs a system for a space that gets three calls a quarter.
The math changes on a vacancy that is costing the owner real money every month it sits, or on a panel facing a road with traffic. There, the question is not what the number costs. It is what one missed 2,000 square foot user costs, once.
There is also a middle path a lot of brokers take: keep the forwarding number on the sign where you want the calls, and put a line that answers on the flyer and the portals, where the vendors come from. You find out what the screening is worth without giving anything up.
$99/mo per listing. Cancel when it leases.
Questions brokers ask
Can I use Google Voice as the number on a leasing sign?
You can, and the instinct behind it is right — it keeps your cell off a 4x8 panel and out of the portal scrapers. What it does not do is have a conversation. Forwarding is not answering, so when you are on a tour the call still ends in voicemail.
Does Google Voice screen leasing calls?
It blocks obvious spam and transcribes voicemail, but the sorting job comes back to you. You still see every missed call and still read every message. The only thing that changed is which number it came in on.
When is Google Voice genuinely the right call?
When the only goal is keeping your personal number off the sign and you are actually available to pick up. It is free and it does that job.