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Let’s face it — a healthy pipeline of leads is the lifeblood of any successful real estate business. Buying real estate leads is one of the fastest, most cost-effective ways to build a new business or breathe life into a long-established one. If you’re looking to expand your client list quickly, buying real estate leads is the fast track you need. Some providers on our list even offer a guaranteed monthly volume of exclusive leads.
In this article, we’ll show you how and where to buy real estate leads based on our in-depth evaluation of dozens of providers. As experienced agents, we’ve spent money on high-quality, exclusive leads — and we’ve wasted money on cold leads that didn’t pan out. We want you to learn from our experience, costly mistakes and extensive research. We considered lead quality and exclusivity, affordability, ROI, practicality and ease of use. Let’s get started!
Best places to buy real estate leads in 2024
There’s not a single solution for every agent, but rather, a lead source that’s best suited to you and your unique needs. We compiled our findings to give you insight into how to buy leads for real estate in a way that works best for you, your business and your personal strengths.
Market Leader: Exclusive leads for solo agents
Market Leader has a reputation for being an OG tool suite for real estate marketing. It dishes everything from email and SMS marketing to effective lead capture forms and an integrated CRM system. Market Leader’s in-house ad experts help generate exclusive real estate leads through social media and pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns.
Market Leader’s all-in-one system offers a comprehensive real estate lead generation solution, including a lead-generating website, CRM, and marketing automation. Market Leader focuses on nurturing leads for long-term client relationships, so it’s great for a solo agent just starting to build their email list.
- Solo agents: $189 per month + approx. $15-$40 per lead each month based on your location. You’ll get the Market Leader software suite, which includes a CRM, marketing automation, email, text, and the mobile app.
- Teams: Call for pricing
- Lead exclusivity
- Built-in lead management CRM
- Email and SMS marketing services
- Lead capture forms
- Guaranteed number of leads per month
- Minimum six-month contract
- No trial period
- Limited analytics
- Limited features compared to competitors
- No built-in dialer
- Limited customization
The best thing about Market Leader is that they guarantee exclusive leads are delivered to you each month. Market Leader takes the reins, generating the leads and delivering them directly to your CRM each month without you lifting a finger. And they do it at a price even a relatively new agent can afford. You can even opt-in for Market Leader’s social media ad program to generate top-of-the-funnel leads and let the automation keep you top-of-mind until those leads are ready.
Zurple: Lead nurturing and conversion
Have you ever wanted an assistant to help you keep track of your email workflow and leads? Zurple is the assistant you’ve been looking for. It’sn a real estate lead generation and nurturing software that focuses on personalized communication and behavioral analytics.
While Zurple’s expensive setup fee and contract terms may not be ideal for all agents, Zurple’s emphasis on lead quality, lead prioritization, and automated nurturing campaigns make it suitable for real estate professionals aiming to streamline the efficacy of their email marketing efforts. Customer reviews highlight the platform’s unique engagement and analytics features, which facilitate more effective lead nurturing and conversions. However, limited customer support and the absence of SMS marketing capabilities may not meet the needs of larger teams or agents looking for extensive customization options.
- $799 setup fee + $149 / month + $10-$50/lead
- Advanced behavior-driven tool for personalized and targeted email and SMS follow-up
- Hot Behaviors feature notifies you when leads are ready for follow-up
- Highly-qualified exclusive leads
- Done-for-you PPC ads
- Excellent analytics
- Easy-to-use platform
- Minimum six-month contract + steep setup fee required
- No trial period
- Limited integrations with other systems
- Customer service limited to email only
Zurple has one of the most impressive lead gen and nurturing systems out there. You get the benefit of having marketing pros place ads for you, generate and capture leads from those ads, and then have a powerful behavior-based lead nurturing system warm those leads until they’re ready to take action. Sure, these leads can be on the expensive side once you factor in the steep setup fee, but the quality of the leads is so high that the investment easily pays for itself each month.
Offrs: Exclusive seller leads + no contract
If you’re looking to get more listings, Offrs is a great lead source. Offrs has honed its AI-powered predictive analytics tool for over a decade. Algorithms improve their accuracy with each successful property sale. Offrs can help you find the most promising sellers based on hundreds of data points. You can purchase exclusive leads with no contract.
- From $399 per month; buyer leads around $12, seller leads range from $13 to $17 (varies by zip code)
- High degree of accuracy in predicting sellers
- No contract required
- Excellent customer service
- Exclusive leads
- Automated email marketing
- Free marketing plan
- RAIA A.I. lead nurturing system
- No free trial
- Lack of CRM integration tools
- Leads are not exclusive at lower tiers
- Long nurture period
- Lacks long-term nurturing tools for leads
Their latest AI feature, RAIA, is an automated chatbot that can help qualify and nurture your inbound leads, letting you deal with only the most qualified ones who are ready to sell and who have answered a series of relevant questions like “When are you thinking of listing your home?” and “What’s your expected listing price?” Licensed real estate agents trained RAIA to interact with your leads so the conversations come across as natural and organic. It’s like having your own personal inside sales assistant 24/7.
Catalyze AI: Inherited property leads
Catalyze AI is an innovative platform that leverages big data, predictive analytics and real-time insights to identify and target inheritance leads with a high probability of selling their property. Catalyze AI’s competitive edge lies in its lead quality and accuracy.
- 30 Property Leads (less than $1MM) $180/month
- 30 Property Leads (over $1MM) $240/month
- Straightforward pricing model
- No contract or commitment required
- Highly motivated seller leads
- Easy-to-use dashboard
- Lacks marketing tools
- Requires good follow-up and conversion skills
- Large 50-mile radius may be more than a solo agent can handle
Catalyze AI’s ability to predict property sales with 40% precision within a 50-mile radius makes it a compelling choice for agents looking to optimize their listing lead generation efforts. By leveraging data for intelligent lead targeting, it can help you identify and target the highest-converting real estate leads, saving you time and marketing dollars and increasing conversion rates. The platform provides exclusive leads, although its availability may be limited in some markets.
Zillow: Buyer leads
Whether you love or hate Zillow, they’re still the biggest game in town when it comes to buyers. Zillow continues to dominate as the most searched real estate platform. Zillow Premier Agent can help you get in front of the millions of potential buyers and sellers who use it daily.
The program is designed to help agents connect with buyers, improve their brand recognition, and convert leads into clients. As a Zillow Premier Agent, your display ads appear next to listings in your chosen ZIP codes. Many Zillow users are actively seeking both a property to purchase AND an agent to represent them. Unlike generic Facebook or Google ads, the leads you’ll get from Zillow are further along in their buying journey.
Note that costs vary, and leads are shared among agents who share your zip code. This makes Zillow Premier Agent a better fit for brokerages with a substantial marketing budget (and even better follow-up skills) looking to earn some good reviews.
- Price per lead: Zillow Premier Agent costs can range from $20–$60 per lead
- Average cost: $300–$500 per month in non-metro areas, $1,000+ per month in metro areas
- Ready-to-buy leads — users actively search Zillow for real estate when they are most likely to convert into clients
- Lots of tools for agents
- Built-in CRM
- Easily integrates with other platforms
- Targeted advertising to your leads
- Not exclusive leads
- Leads are expensive, more than many other platforms per lead
- CRM is very basic and lacks functionality
- Customer service is limited
- Six-month minimum contract required
Zillow Premier Agent is a powerful tool for real estate professionals looking to boost their online presence — as long as you know how to use it to your advantage. Beyond lead generation, Zillow Premier Agent offers a suite of tools, including a CRM with a mobile app, analytics to measure your results an ROI calculator and more. It’s an excellent way to increase exposure and steadily grow your lead volume, connecting you with Zillow’s partners like Trulia, Streeteasy and RealEstate.com.
SmartZip: Targeted geo-farming leads
SmartZip uses predictive analytics, big data, and a scoring system to predict potential sellers likely to move within the next 18 months. It aggregates data from more than 25 sources and uses its predictive analytics to determine the homeowners most likely to move, maintaining a 72% accuracy in its predictions.
Pricing for SmartZip can be customized to fit your budget. Whether you’re a solo agent or a growing team, you can choose the number of leads that will work best from 350 to more than 7,000 per month. The average cost per lead (CPL) is $0.35, plus a one-time setup fee of $396 and a monthly platform fee of $99. Add-ons include social media ads, print mailers and handwritten notes. Many agents report an average monthly spend of over $1,000 on qualified leads.
- Designed to be hands-off for agents
- SmartTargeting product provides targeted automated marketing
- High degree of accuracy in predicting sellers
- Customizable plans to fit your budget
- Easy-to-use CRM platform built-in
- Long nurturing time
- Not exclusive leads
- No free trial
- Long nurture period
- Annual contract required
SmartZip is a platform designed to make lead generation easy for agents. When combined with its SmartTargeting product, SmartZip can potentially elevate any agent’s game within their specific geographic area. You can choose as few as 350 leads per month to get started and easily scale over time as your business flourishes.
Sold.com: Pre-qualified seller leads
Sold.com is a pay-at-closing referral lead generation system. It entices would-be sellers by promising a cash offer on their home. When a prospect enters their information into the capture form, they’re matched up with a real estate agent to help them through the home selling process.
For agents, they’re connected with hot seller leads they can work with without any upfront cost. They only pay for the referrals when the deals close.
It’s free to set up a profile on SOLD.com. When you accept a referral from Sold.com, you pay a referral fee that will be a percentage of your gross commission.
- Only pay for leads that close
- No contract
- Easy to sign up
- Both motivated buyer and seller leads
- Lack of transparency on referral fees agents will pay
- Must be a producing agent to get the best leads
- Lacking in customer service
- Long nurture time
Sold.com is a pay-at-closing real estate lead generation company so agents can take advantage of all the leads, work them for however long it takes, and not have to worry about paying for the leads until they actually get to the closing table. For agents looking for a cost-effective way to get deals, you can’t get much easier than Sold.com.
CINC: End-to-end lead generation and nurturing
CINC is an all-in-one real estate lead generation and nurturing platform focusing on hyperlocal leads. If you want to be the go-to agent in your targeted local area, CINC might be an excellent option for buying real estate leads in your specific location.
Like Zurple and Market Leader, CINC offers agents an end-to-end solution, including optimized IDX websites, a robust CRM, automated follow-up, and lead generation for both buyers and sellers. CINC’s unique angle features agents as the go-to experts in their hyperlocal area with added content, Pay-per-click (PPC) ads, and social media advertising.
Unlike other platforms, CINC leads are included in the price. So you’ll always know how much you’re spending each month with no surprises.
- Solo agents: Starting at $899 per month
- Teams: Starting at $1299 per month
- All-in-one platform with IDX websites
- Dedicated ads account manager
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbot Alex instantly engages fresh leads
- Built-in lead capture
- Exclusive leads
- Automated lead nurturing
- Expensive–large investment for newer agents
- Chatbot is an add-on cost
- Steep learning curve
CINC stands out as a powerful all-in-one website, lead generation, and nurturing platform delivering high-quality, hyperlocal leads to agents using the service. When agents sign up for their designated geographic farm area, they instantly look like neighborhood experts thanks to the extensive marketing initiative and content provided on the CINC sites.
REDX: FSBO and expired leads
REDX is a lead platform that helps you take control of your business.. With REDX, you pay for the type of leads you’re interested in and they’re delivered to your lead management system every time you log in. REDX gives you complete control over your lead supply without a commitment so you can scale your business at a pace you’re comfortable with.
Everything is a la carte at REDX, making it easy to scale up your business as your skills grow.
- Expired leads: $70 per month
- FSBO leads: $50 per month
- Pre-foreclosure leads: $50 per month
- Power dialer: starting at $59 per month
- A la carte straightforward pricing
- Build lead list quickly and easily
- Built-in auto-dialer to speed up your cold-calling efforts
- Vortex built-in lead management system
- Scripts to help agents convert leads
- User-friendly interface
- Limited integrations with other platforms
- Some data may be incomplete or inaccurate
- Leads are cold and take more work to convert
- No integration with other CRMs
REDX is a straightforward, no B.S., pay-for-what-you-want lead source. And the leads are decent for any agent willing to put in the work to convert them. To be clear, these leads haven’t come through a pipeline or nurtured until they’re warm. These are the leads you need to pick up the phone, make contact, and then put into your pipeline to start the nurturing process. They will take more work to convert, but any agent who has developed those muscles will appreciate the inexpensive lead source and the pipeline they can quickly build.
Our methodology: How we chose the best places to buy real estate leads
HousingWire is the destination for industry professionals to stay informed and ahead of what’s happening in the constantly evolving U.S. housing market.
When determining which sources for buying real estate leads are best for real estate professionals, HousingWire evaluated dozens of platforms, weighing the pros and cons of each alongside both quantitative and qualitative data like price, special features, ease of use, return on investment, client support, and customer reviews.
We crawled the web so you don’t have to, analyzing a broad sampling of reviews across social media, the Better Business Bureau (BBB), and online discussion forums. Our goal is to arm you with the best place to buy real estate leads, no matter what type of leads you’re looking for.
FAQs: How & where to buy real estate leads
It really depends on the sales style of the real estate agent as to where they get most of their leads. An effective real estate lead generation strategy blends leads from several sources. For example, you can buy real estate leads from one or more platforms alongside traditional strategies like networking, tapping into your sphere of influence, and seeking out referrals. Don’t forget to consider some free lead-generation techniques like social media and YouTube videos.
The way to determine if buying real estate leads works for you and your business is to evaluate your monthly return on investment. If you spend $500 per month on lead generation but close a couple of transactions each month, chances are your lead generation is working for your business. But it’s also important to scrutinize each lead source to ensure you’re getting the best return from all of your lead generation efforts. For example, if you are getting leads from multiple paid sources, it’s important to keep track of how many leads from each paid source you close so you can decide if your budget could be maximized with a different lead source.
How much real estate professionals spend on buying real estate leads depends on their business level. If you’re just starting out, you don’t want to overspend and get into a financial hole.
It makes a lot of sense to diversify your lead generation to include some free and low-cost options until you get a couple of transactions under your belt. There’s nothing wrong with starting out by sitting open houses, cold-calling FSBOs and expireds, or networking in your community.
Couple that with a solid and consistent social media campaign to get the ball rolling. Once you build enough cash reserves for a bigger marketing budget, you can consider scaling your business with higher-level paid leads.
But you might consider hiring an assistant to help you function at that level. You can scale your business once you get some processes in place to handle the influx of paid leads without letting too many slip through the cracks.
Believe it or not, many Realtors never pay for leads. They rely on referrals and repeat business from their past clients. That will come once you’ve been in the industry for a few years. In the meantime, you’ll most likely start with the people in your orbit you already know. That’s the fastest and easiest way to drum up your first couple of deals.
Think of places you go, things you do, etc. Do you attend church? Do you participate in volunteer work, hobby groups, or social networks? Are you involved in sports or your children’s school. Get in the habit of telling everyone about your career path and encourage questions about the industry to show off your local expertise.
Honestly, yes. Zillow is the single greatest source of hot buyer leads. It’s the most searched database for homes in the U.S. and beyond. If you want to get in front of all those buyers, Zillow is where you need to be. You will get a lot of leads that are not quite ready to buy, but they’re looking ahead and anticipating (and maybe dreaming about) their next move.
Many of the prospecting from Zillow could have a lead time of six to twelve months, so you’ll want to set up an effective (and ideally automated) system to stay in close contact with them. Check out our favorite lead nurturing and marketing tools here.
The secret is not to lose touch with your network of leads. To stay top of mind, it’s a great idea to reach out with a friendly phone call every so often.
According to NAR, real estate agents convert at a rate of 0.4% to 1.2%, which isn’t a heartening statistic. But this goes back to what I mentioned earlier about honing your skill set. Get comfortable talking to people about real estate and converting them from someone you know into a potential client. The better you are at having these conversations and converting leads into clients, the higher your conversion rate will be.
Having said that, not all leads are created equal. Some leads will be better qualified from the start, while others, like social media leads, will need a lot more time and effort to convert. Some leads will be easy to turn into clients, ready to make a home-buying decision this week. While others may be looking 12 months out.
You won’t convert all your leads, but aim for one to two out of ten listing appointments and one to two out of 100 top-of-funnel leads (like those from social media) who may need a longer nurturing period. There are immediate pay-offs, and there’s also a long game. Get good at your long game!
Buying leads can complement traditional lead generation strategies like hosting open houses or first-time homebuyer seminars.
There are so many ways to generate leads — including many free ways. Start by telling your friends, family and former colleagues that you’re embarking on a new career in the real estate industry. Then, make an announcement on all your socials about your new career.
If you’re an experienced agent, remind your friends and followers on social media and in person that you’re open to referrals and looking to help people reach their financial goals.
Raise the topic of real estate in conversations, go to networking events and talk about your market, answer homebuyers’ and sellers’ questions with posts on social media, ask for referrals from people you know or meet.
If you need more great ideas, don’t forget to check out our article on how to generate leads here.
The Full Picture: Where To Buy Real Estate Leads in 2024
Real estate is evolving and if you want to stay ahead of your competition, you need a source for high-quality leads. Relying on a paid real estate leads source can be crucial for your success for the rest of this year and into 2025.
Market Leader, a comprehensive real estate lead generation system, is suitable for solo agents, offering features like email and SMS marketing, lead capture forms and an integrated CRM to manage your leads. It focuses on nurturing leads for long-term client relationships.
For those who want to focus their energy on buyers, Zillow Premier Agent provides major brand recognition and exposure on the Zillow platform while offering tools and resources to connect with buyers and convert leads. Offrs and SmartZip focus on potential home sellers interested in cash offers, and Catalyze AI uses predictive analytics to help agents identify high-probability inherited property leads.
And for personalized email follow-up and task reminders, Zurple is your inside sales assistant with insights into lead behavior analytics. This makes it suitable for agents looking to streamline email marketing efforts. Meanwhile, REDX is an option for individual agents who prefer phone-based outreach and a provider that offers subscription plans, script templates and pre-verified leads.
No matter which source you buy real estate leads from, weighing the pros and cons of paid leads is a must. When it comes to real estate lead generation, make sure to diversify your lead generation methods, and don’t overlook organic methods like referrals and traditional networking. Get out there and meet new potential clients and build relationships, too. The investment in conversations with new people will prove invaluable down the road.
