If you’re like most real estate agents, all of your marketing efforts are unified around one singular goal: to generate more qualified leads that will help you close more deals. At some point in your career, you’ll consider how and where to buy real estate leads.
But how can you make sure you’re not just throwing money down the drain? Not all lead sources are created equal, which is why our experts have done the research to help you find the best and most credible lead generation sources.
So, What’s the Best Place to Buy Real Estate Leads?
There are plenty of sources and no lack of places to buy real estate leads. The best option for you will depend on what type of real estate agent leads you’re looking for, your budget, and how much time you are able to commit to nurturing leads.
To help you find the best option for you, we’ve reviewed the top options out there and chose six of the best real estate lead sources in 2022.
The 6 Best Real Estate Lead Sources of 2022
| Provider | ||
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| REDX | ||
| Market Leader | ||
| Offrs | ||
| The Faces Of | ||
| Zillow Premier Agent | ||
| BoldLeads |
Not sure which provider is right for you? Answer a few questions below to find out which lead source is right for your budget in 2022.
Answer a few questions about your business, and we'll give you a personalized product match.
Ready to go deeper? Let’s take a closer look at each of these lead sources. Don’t forget: buying leads shouldn’t be your only strategy for business development. Grab a copy of our Lead Generation Plan template to help organize and prioritize your efforts so that you’re taking a balanced, profitable approach.
Best for Agents Who Are Great at Prospecting: REDX
REDX is an outbound real estate lead marketing system that works by bringing together data like property details, FSBO and Expired listings, contact information for buyers and sellers in your community, and more. They then categorize and prioritize this data in VORTEX, their proprietary customer relationship manager (CRM), for agents to use in their outbound prospecting efforts.
This approach is perfect for HUSTLERS who happen to be real estate agents. If you can commit to regularly cold calling and emailing prospects and pitching your business, this is an affordable option that can have a huge impact on your bottom line.
Even better, REDX is offering The Close readers a waived setup fee when you get started—a $149 savings.
REDX Pros & Cons
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[Read more: REDX Review: Why Smart Realtors Use REDX and Power Dialer]
How Much Does REDX Cost?
REDX provides an a la carte pricing for their different features with discounts for paying in advance. There is also a setup fee to get started, which is waived for Close readers.
REDX Pricing (as of December 2021)
| Lead Service | |
|---|---|
| FSBO Leads | |
| Expired Leads | |
| Geoleads | |
| FRBO Leads | |
| Preforeclosure Leads |
REDX also offers upgrades to their lead packages, including additional data insights like Financial, Home and Building, and Lifestyle, all to help you learn more about your prospects before you ever make contact with them.
[Read more: The 7 Best FSBO Scripts of 2021 & Why They Work]
Who Should Use REDX?
REDX is the perfect place to buy real estate leads if you’re a realtor who isn’t afraid to pick up the phone or knock on a door. Your performance and return on this platform are entirely determined by you and how hard you work, so if you’re willing to put the time in and have a sharp pitch—especially for cold prospects—this is the perfect lead source.
Also, with a monthly cost starting at just $39.99, it is difficult to find a lead source with a better value proposition.
Best for Agents Looking for Guaranteed Leads Every Month: Market Leader
Market Leader is a real estate lead generation tool that uses strategically placed ads on Google and social media networks like Facebook to drive traffic to one of two places: a home valuation page for potential sellers and a personally branded IDX search-enabled landing page for potential buyers. In order to use the tools on these pages, visitors are required to input their lead information, which gets passed directly to you.
This strategy probably sounds familiar because a lot of competitors (e.g., BoldLeads and Real Geeks) use the same approach. But with Market Leader, there’s a difference: guaranteed lead volume. If you make the payment, you’ll have the number of leads (or more) they projected for you—just that simple.
Market Leader Pros & Cons
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How Much Does Market Leader Cost?
The cost of Market Leader includes a flat fee of $99 per month that allows you to use the Market Leader CRM, lead scoring, and follow-up tools, then a monthly cost for the leads themselves, starting at $25 each and going up from there, depending on how many leads you commit to every month.
Who Should Use Market Leader?
Market Leader is great for agents who have done the math on their conversion rates and know exactly how many leads they need on a monthly basis in order to make paid lead generation profitable. For many agents, that means having a potentially larger-than-average budget in order to create that critical mass of leads. Therefore, Market Leader agents should also have a healthy amount to invest in leads.
If you’ve got your forecasting, conversion, and budget ducks all in a row, Market Leader is a great tool for you.
Best for Agents Who Haven’t Had Success With Traditional Lead Gen Methods: Offrs
Offrs is a real estate lead generation company that employs a predictive analytics strategy. Rather than creating ads that aim to reach entire segments of your community, Offrs uses sophisticated algorithms based on the vast amount of consumer, demographic, and market data we have at our disposal to identify the 20% of your target market that is most likely to buy or sell a home in the next 18 months.
Armed with this information, you can then market to only these likely clients, thus driving your conversion rates and the quality of your interactions through the roof. Similar to REDX, Offrs isn’t delivering you warm leads—they are delivering you information that you can use to make better prospecting decisions and sign more clients.
Offrs Pros & Cons
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[Read more: Offrs Review: Are AI & Predictive Analytics the Future of Real Estate?]
How Much Does Offrs Cost?
The cost of Offrs varies depending on market conditions (similar to the way that Zillow varies their pricing). However, unlike Zillow, the sky is not the limit as far as how much you can spend per geographic territory.
According to Offrs’ website, most geographic areas are available for between $200 and $500 per month, though to be fair, we had to really dig deep to find that information.
Who Should Use Offrs?
Agents who have tried other lead generation strategies and have been unsatisfied with the quality of their leads should give Offrs a try. Remember, many of these leads will have a long tail, requiring nurturing for a little bit longer than average, but since the likelihood of these leads converting is so much higher, this strategy adjustment is worth it.
Also, if you’re an active real estate farmer, Offrs would fit in very nicely with that approach, supercharging your farm efforts to ensure that you’re talking to the most important homebuyers and sellers in your target neighborhoods on a regular basis.
Best for Agents Looking to Generate Mostly Referrals: The Faces Of
The Faces Of Your Town is a real estate lead generation company that sets participating realtors up with a highly personalized community website called The Faces Of (fill in your town’s name here).
Using your custom website, users are coached by The Faces Of marketing experts to create valuable content. Your site will feature the best and brightest of your local community, from graduating seniors at the local high school to thoughtful and charismatic business owners to nonprofit leaders near you.
Using The Faces Of, you can create solid connections with the pillars of your community, often making them the number one source for referrals and new business, while also reaping the benefits of being the sponsoring realtor for positive community stories.
The Faces Of Pros & Cons
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[Read more: 6 Emails to Send to Clients to Drive Repeat & Referral Business]
How Much Does The Faces Of Cost?
The Faces Of costs $250 per month with a 12-month commitment, plus a one-time fee of $650.
Who Should Use The Faces Of?
The Faces Of is a great choice for agents who have a well-developed or developing brand reputation in their local community and are looking to take it to the next level. If you’re well-known in your area but are closing less than 30% of your transactions as a result of referral and repeat business, The Faces Of may be the perfect tool to increase your referral generation and create more business for you and your team. They only allow one real estate agent per area; check to see if your town is available.
Best for Agents Who Want Buyer Leads: Zillow Premier Agent
Zillow is, without argument, the largest real estate presence on the internet. Their incredible traffic and visitor statistics alone make them a perfect spot to pick up leads. Zillow sends buyer and seller leads (but mostly buyers) to members of the Zillow Premier Agent Program by advertising those agents on their platform. Zillow can put you in a lineup of options for consumers to choose from when they want more information about a property.
When a consumer chooses you, they fill out a quick form with their contact information and Zillow sends you (and only you) that information.
This approach only really works if you can be a champion of the reviews section. Most of the time, Premier Agents are advertised with other Premier Agents who are paying for the same ZIP codes. The agent with the best review track record usually wins the leads, so if you can get your review solicitation game down, Zillow is the place for you.
Zillow Premier Agent Pros & Cons
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[Read more: Is Zillow Premier Agent Worth the Cost?]
How Much Does Zillow Premier Agent Cost?
The Zillow approach to buying leads is a little amorphous in terms of price since the final number depends on a number of factors, including the average home price in an area and the number of other real estate agents who are competing for space. Zillow’s budget tools give good estimates on the number of leads you can expect for your money each month.
Most agents we’ve talked to have said that a budget of at least $250 per month is the bare minimum needed to really get started, but depending on how competitive your area is, even that may not get you the results you want.
Who Should Use Zillow Premier Agent?
This might be a relatively unpopular opinion, but everyone should have at least a free account on Zillow. This is where our clients are spending their time, and we need to be there too.
If you want to move beyond just a great place to collect reviews and start getting active leads, Zillow Premier Agent is a good option, as long as you’re quick to follow up with new leads. Zillow leads convert at a much lower rate the longer you wait to follow up. For this to work, you must be willing put in the time to maintain and update your Zillow profile.
Best for Agents Who Want Hands-off, Agency-managed Leads: BoldLeads
BoldLeads is a lead generation tool that acts like a specialized marketing agency just for real estate agents. They create targeted Facebook and Google ads to attract prospects to high-performing landing pages that convert prospects into real estate leads.
With BoldLeads, all you need to do is set your budget and their marketing experts will create, place, and optimize your ads so that the right audience is seeing them at the right time, driving more traffic to your website and your lead capture pages.
BoldLeads Pros & Cons
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[Read more: BoldLeads Review: How Does It Work & Is It Worth It?]
How Much Does BoldLeads Cost?
The cost of BoldLeads is broken into two categories: the account fee, which is $399 per month, and the budget for your ads. The minimum BoldLeads ad spend is $250 per month, making the starting cost for BoldLeads $649 per month.
For that cost, BoldLeads will create, implement, and manage all your ads and lead forms, as well as help you manage your ad budget across the different platforms where your BoldLeads ads appear.
Who Should Use BoldLeads?
BoldLeads has a great approach to acquiring leads, but they really stand out in the field with their customer relationship manager (CRM) and nurturing after a lead is yours. Automated SMS texting, emailing, and even voice messages make moving your leads closer to a sale easier. If you’ve got the budget to spend and are looking for a more comprehensive solution for paid lead generation, BoldLeads is a good place for you to buy real estate leads.
Buying Real Estate Leads – FAQs
A lot of agents have questions they need answers to before making a commitment to buying leads. Here are some of the most frequently asked questions we hear about buying real estate leads. If there’s something we haven’t covered, feel free to drop your question in the comments section.
Is buying real estate leads worth it?
Yes! We know—that exclamation point seemed a little over-enthusiastic, but it’s the truth. Think about the money you’ll potentially spend on real estate leads as just another line item in your overall operating budget.
If this expenditure results in a net positive for your business—meaning you make more money than you spend—it is absolutely worth it. If you spent $500 a month on direct mail marketing and got a $2,500 commission from it each month, you would absolutely say that the postcards were worth it. The same is true for buying leads directly.
Do most real estate agents pay for leads?
We can’t speak for most agents, but we can speak for most successful agents. The majority of successful real estate businesses have some form of paid leads as a part of their marketing strategy. The most successful agents and teams actually scale up their lead buying once they identify a successful lead source.
For example, let’s say you commit to spending $500 a month with Zillow, and you wind up getting an average of $2,000 in commission income as a result. The most successful agents turn around and say, “What if I spend $1,000? Would that get me $4,000 in commissions?” and continue to scale their spending.
Do brokerages ever buy real estate leads to give to agents?
We have heard of some indie brokerages doing this, yes. If you’re looking for a brokerage that offers leads as a part of their package for agents, you can probably find some out there that do it.
However, we encourage you to try putting together a plan to do it yourself before going all-in on someone else doing it for you. The reason is that when you rely on your brokerage for leads, you end up sharing your opportunities with every other agent who is doing the same thing.
Also, make no mistake: You’re not getting those leads for free. Your brokerage is paying for them via a monthly agent fee, a higher commission split and/or cap, transaction fees, and so forth.
When you pay for leads yourself, you get to do it on your own terms, and the long-term opportunity for success is much higher.
How can I get free real estate leads?
If you’re looking for free real estate leads, we’d suggest starting with our article 37 Underrated Real Estate Lead Generation Ideas for 2021.
Over to You
Do you buy real estate leads? We’d love to hear about your successes, whether it was on these or other platforms. How has your business changed since adding this element to your marketing toolkit?
Have any epic failures, horror stories, or advice for other agents looking to buy real estate leads? Drop a comment below, and let’s keep the conversation going!
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