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Looking to buy real estate leads? Well, you’re in luck because there are plenty of companies that want to sell them to you. However, it can be challenging to find the lead generation company with the perfect strategy for your business. Real estate isn’t a one-size-fits-all industry, and your paid lead generation plan shouldn’t be either. That’s why I’m not just recommending one top pick, but rather eight of our favorite places to buy real estate leads.
For this buyer’s guide, I used my experience as an agent, coach, and tech expert to review dozens of paid real estate lead generation companies. I analyzed them based on lead gen strategy, price, usability, scalability, and customer support. If you want to fill your customer funnel by buying real estate leads, we’ve got the right provider for you. Let’s dive in.
The 8 Best Sources for Buying Real Estate Leads in 2023
| Provider | Best For |
|---|---|
| Market Leader | Agents with a fixed budget looking for a guaranteed number of leads every month |
| Offrs | Those who don’t want to be trapped in a contract |
| REDX | Agents who want a budget-friendly option and control of their own lead volume |
| Zurple | Those needing advanced analytics and automatic follow-up tools |
| Parkbench | Storytellers and social butterflies |
| Zillow Premier Agent | Agents primarily seeking buyer leads |
| zBuyer | Agents who value stellar customer service |
| BoldLeads | Those looking for an agency-managed approach |
Of course, 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 Guaranteed Leads Every Month: Market Leader
Market Leader uses strategically placed ads on Google and social media to drive traffic to one of two places: a home valuation page for seller leads or a personally branded, IDX search-enabled landing page for buyers. In order to use the tools on these pages, visitors are required to input their contact information, which then gets passed directly to you.
This strategy probably sounds familiar because a lot of competitors (such as BoldLeads and Real Geeks) use the same approach. But Market Leader has a crucial differentiator: guaranteed lead volume. If you make the payment, you’ll have at least the number of leads they projected for you—it’s just that simple.
Market Leader Cost: $139 per month + $25 per lead (depending on market)
Contract Required? Six- or 12-month term
The Close Deep-Dive Review: Market Leader Review
Market Leader Pros & Cons
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My Take on Buying Leads From Market Leader:
Market Leader has been around a long time and has a proven track record. It’s ideal for those who have done the math on their conversion rates and have a healthy budget. These agents know exactly how many leads they need on a monthly basis to ensure paid lead generation is profitable for them. Market Leader makes that possible with its guarantee.
Best for Agents Who Don’t Want to Be Trapped in a Contract: Offrs
Using vast amounts of consumer, demographic, and market data, Offrs identifies the top 30% of your target market that is most likely to buy or sell a home in the next 18 months. They are so successful, in fact, that Offrs says they successfully predicted 72% of sellers nationwide last year.
Armed with this information, you can market to these likely clients, driving your conversion rates and the quality of your interactions through the roof. On top of the quality of their leads, they are the only predictive analytics company that guarantees a certain number of leads: 30 leads per month in your targeted ZIP code and 90 leads within five ZIP codes if you upgrade to the premium package.
These are all recent changes to the Offrs platform; they spent months listening to customer feedback, simplifying some offerings, and enhancing others. We’re excited about this new chapter for Offrs and are hopeful that it’s not too good to be true. Trust that we’ll be following along and updating this guide in the near future!
Offrs Pros & Cons
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My Take on Buying Leads From Offrs:
Offrs’ approach to generating leads puts you in charge of reaching potential buyers and sellers. Remember, many of the real estate leads you buy will have a long tail, requiring nurturing for longer than average. However, since the likelihood of these leads converting is so much higher, this strategy adjustment is worth it. Add in the guaranteed number of leads and lack of an annual contract and it’s hard to come up with reasons not to give Offrs a try.
Best for Agents Who Are Great at Prospecting: REDX
REDX is an outbound real estate lead marketing system that collects and disseminates data, such as property details, FSBO and expired listings data, and contact information for buyers and sellers in your community. They categorize and prioritize this data in VORTEX, their proprietary customer relationship manager (CRM), for agents to use in their outbound prospecting efforts. I also like their Power Dialer, which keeps your phone calling so that you can be up to four times as efficient with your cold calls.
REDX Cost: Starts at $39.99 per month; expired, FSBO and location-based leads are priced at $59.99 per month; PLUS plans are about $60 more and include email addresses in addition to phone numbers. Power Dialer starts at an additional $59.99 per month.
Contract Required? No
The Close Deep-Dive Review: Why Smart Realtors Use REDX & Power Dialer
REDX Pros & Cons
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My Take on Buying Leads From REDX:
REDX is great for agents who are budget-conscious and not 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—especially with colder prospects—REDX might just be perfect for you.
Best for Analytics & Automation: Zurple
Somewhat similar to Market Leader, Zurple generates real estate leads with community-specific buyer and seller landing pages designed to capture lead information. These landing pages offer something of value (a home valuation or an IDX search) in exchange for contact information. Zurple takes it a step further by advertising on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Google to drive traffic to these pages.
Zurple differs from others using this strategy because its analytics and automation are so strong. Zurple provides advanced behavior reports about your visitors’ activity on your lead magnet pages. This might include lists of the properties they’re looking at and alerts for behavior that might indicate they are ready to make a purchase. Zurple also offers automated communication tools, such as email drip campaigns, to make sure your clients are hearing from you at the most effective moments.
Zurple Pros & Cons
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My Take on Buying Leads From Zurple:
Zurple is an excellent tool for anyone who wants more than just a name and contact information when they buy real estate leads. If you want to dig deep into what your leads’ behavior indicates about what they need, you should check out Zurple.
Best for ‘Not’ Buying Leads: Parkbench
Parkbench is a real estate lead generation company that provides agents with a highly personalized community website. Using this custom website, Parkbench’s team of marketing experts coach agents to create valuable content with an emphasis on video.
Your site will feature the best and brightest of your local community. The neighbors and local business owners you profile on your Parkbench site will likely share your content, and your clients will visit to stay up to date on what’s happening in your market. These relationships in the community turn into excellent referral sources. So you’re not actually “buying” leads, but using Parkbench to build a referral network that can be a lead-generating machine.
Parkbench Pros & Cons
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My Take on Buying Leads From Parkbench:
Parkbench is a great choice for agents who are natural storytellers and have a well-developed (or quickly developing) brand reputation in their local community. If you’re closing less than 30% of your transactions as a result of referral and repeat business, Parkbench may be the perfect tool to increase your referral generation.
Zillow places advertisements for participating agents next to listings on its platform. When a consumer selects you, they fill out a quick form with their contact information and Zillow sends you that information.
While Zillow likely gets the most homebuyer traffic on the internet, these placements aren’t always exclusive. Most of the time, Premier Agents appear along with other Premier Agents who are paying for the same ZIP codes. Potential leads generally select the agent with the best reviews, so making sure yours are glowing and numerous is crucial.
Zillow Premier Agent Cost: Market dependent; most agents spend between $300 and $1,000 per month
Contract Required? Yes, also varies by market, but usually six or 12 months
The Close Deep-Dive Review: Is Zillow Premier Agent Worth the Cost?
Zillow Premier Agent Pros & Cons
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My Take on Buying Leads From Zillow Premier Agent:
I firmly believe that everyone should at least have a free account on Zillow—it’s a great place to collect reviews and start getting active leads. If you want to take it a step further and buy real estate leads, Zillow Premier Agent is a good choice, but it’s competitive. You’ll need to be quick and effective in following up with new leads.
Best Customer Service: zBuyer
A family-owned company, zBuyer maintains a strong commitment to customer satisfaction that some of the larger software companies just can’t match. Plus, it has an excellent track record of supplying valuable, verified leads.
zBuyer uses cutting-edge analytics to uncover early indications of interest in selling or buying. Targeted potential sellers are offered a chance to discover their home’s worth and potentially a cash offer. Buyer leads are captured through the company’s site, HousingNow.com.
Potential leads must confirm their interest at several points along the way, verifying their intent, which results in higher conversion rates. zBuyer then provides the agent with the lead’s contact information in real time to the zBuyer app, email, and to your CRM of choice. While the leads aren’t exclusive, zBuyer says they work hard to “limit their exposure.”
zBuyer Cost: Market dependent, but seller leads run $13-$17 per lead; buyer leads are $12. Agents set their budgets based on the number of leads per month they want.
Contract Required? No
zBuyer Pros & Cons
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My Take on Buying Leads From zBuyer
Frankly, it’s hard to come up with reasons not to give zBuyer a try. It’s a budget-conscious option that sources verified buyer and seller leads. And if it’s not working out, you can cancel at any time. I bet that if you employ some solid follow-up and lead nurturing, you’ll find zBuyer to be a powerful partner in the lead generation game.
Best for Agency-managed Leads: BoldLeads
BoldLeads is a lead generation tool that acts like a specialized marketing agency. Set your budget and their experts will create, place, and optimize your targeted Facebook and Google ads so that the right audience is seeing them, driving more traffic to your website and lead-capture pages. BoldLeads comes with additional lead-nurturing tools, and I especially like their easy-to-use, yet sophisticated CRM.
All this being said, I want to be honest with you. BoldLeads has been around a long time, which is why they originally earned a spot on this list, but they aren’t perfect. I have some concerns with the quality of leads and the level of customer support. I understand that they are in the process of revamping their offerings. I’ll be watching this carefully in the hopes that BoldLeads 2023 can be as robust and innovative a lead generation company as it has been in the past.
BoldLeads Pros & Cons
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My Take on Buying Leads From BoldLeads
BoldLeads has a great approach to acquiring leads, but they really stand out with customer relationship management. Automated SMS texting, emailing, and even voice messages make moving your leads closer to a sale easier. Stay tuned to The Close for updates as their new offerings roll out!
Buying Real Estate Leads: FAQs
A lot of agents have questions they need answered 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 below.
Is buying real estate leads worth it?
Yes! I always say, “There’s no such thing as a free lead.” You might pay with your time, your effort, your checkbook, or you can pay with a combination of all three. One way or another, you’re going to pay for the leads you get.
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 get 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?
The majority of 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. However, the very best agents see buying leads as only one part of their overall strategy.
Do brokerages ever buy real estate leads to give to agents?
Yes, there are brokerages that offer this. 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. 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 by charging you more in fees or a higher commission split.
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.
Bringing It All Together
Buying real estate leads is an important part of every successful real estate agent’s business development strategy. It’s not the only leg of the stool, but it’s a very crucial one. Not all lead providers are the same, so I hope this list has helped you narrow down the best lead generation lead source for your particular situation.
Have questions about these companies, ones we’ve missed, 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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