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There are hundreds, if not thousands, of websites offering to sell real estate leads. Most of these real estate lead sites will charge anywhere from a few dollars per lead to 30% of your sales commission. Other real estate leads may be free, but you have to pay for the site’s membership.
Buying real estate leads has a few advantages, as well as a few disadvantages.
Here are a few things to consider before you buy real estate leads:
1. Your budget: Since real estate leads can be expensive, it helps to know ahead of time what your budget is. This will help you decide which sites to purchase real estate leads from.
2. Your ability to convert calls to clients: Not everyone is good at converting a phone call into an appointment with someone. When someone hands you a real estate lead, you better be able to get that person in front of you with an appointment, otherwise you just paid for nothing.
3. Would it be more affordable to create your own real estate leads generating website? For $5 a month and $6.99 for a domain name, you can host your own real estate website. I use 1and1.com , which is probably the cheapest you are going to find for reliability. $5 a month isn’t a lot – so if you can compete to get in the top searches on google for homes for sale in your area, it could be a less exensive, more effective way of real estate leads generation.
What’s your opinion on real estate leads? Have you had success with them or were they a nightmare? Share your real estate leads pros and cons in the comments below.
10 Comments
I am a mortgage broker in Colorado and I have tremendous success with real estate leads. Granted the majority of my marketing pieces are targeting a different audience than realtors. However I also have done well marketing 1st time home buyers. I have spent the past year and half refining my marketing pieces and can honestly say I am getting about a 5%+ on my mailers. With a little trial and error I think anybody can achieve the success I have had.
Lots controversy about paying for leads in real estate. I’m happy to pay a referral for a qualified lead. Watch out for the scam artists though.
We have never bought referrals. Not sure I like the idea.
Like every other offer in life, ask for references! We had a very convincing sales rep contact us from a lead distribution company. I listened to his pitch and really thought it all made sense. (I have a succesful website so I know you can produce leads online so I thought well, maybe this guy really has some good leads.) Anyway, at the end of the conversation I asked for references. He said he would email them to me but didn’t. When he called back a week later to see if we wanted to sign up, I asked for references again. He finally sent some references. One number was dead. Another said he had tried them but quit and another never returned our call. With those ringing endorsements we opted out of buying leads from this company.
Excellent point Michael – if they can’t give references, they aren’t going to give you good leads either. I hadn’t even thought of that while writing this, so thanks for the contribution!
You should also ask if the information has been verified – phone and email – and whether or not the lead is exclusive to you. There are sources who will sell junk to multiple agents and you really want to stay away from that.
I should state that I have never purchased real estate from any true lead company. I am a little suspect of those leads. I get my leads from my title company as well as just farming to areas that have a high number of renters.
I really do not like the lead buying model at all. I tend to think that the lead sellers are just getting in the way of the good REALTORS and then selling those leads to the not so good REALTORS. I do what I can to not support them in every way I can.
I do agree the “good agents” probably don’t even need them
That is why I think you can do better with your own site & marketing 
Thank you so much Michael! You gave a lot of contribution to us. I read your post and and I find it very useful and valuable.