Starting an n8n automation service targeting real estate agencies (no code, no funding, just me)

I've spent the last few weeks learning n8n properly instead of just watching tutorials, and I think I found a niche worth going after.

Real estate agencies get leads from five different places (Zameen, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, referrals) and almost none of them respond fast enough. Every agent I've talked to admits leads slip through simply because nobody replied in time. That's not a tooling problem, it's a workflow problem, and it seemed like a perfect fit for automation.

So I'm building small n8n workflows that do the boring part for them: catch the lead the second it comes in, send an instant WhatsApp reply, tag it, and route it to the right agent automatically. Nothing fancy, no AI magic, just removing the 20 minute gap where deals actually die.

Right now I'm at the "talking to agencies before building anything custom" stage. No paying customers yet. My plan is to build one free workflow for a local agency, see if it actually saves them time, then turn that into a paid offer.

Things I'm unsure about:

Whether to charge a flat setup fee or a monthly retainer for maintaining the workflows
Whether real estate is the right first niche or if I should test e-commerce sellers too, since they have a similar "manual WhatsApp everything" problem
How to find agencies that are actually willing to try something new instead of sticking with pen and paper

If anyone here has sold automation or workflow tools to local service businesses before, I'd genuinely like to hear what worked and what didn't. Still very early, just trying to build something people actually want instead of guessing.