Real estate lead generation companies give agents, teams, and brokers a shortcut to the closing table by doing the lead capture work for them. As someone who’s had to convert real estate leads myself, I know it’s vital to find the right company to fulfill the specific needs of your real estate business. Below, you’ll see my favorites, the runners-up, and the lead gen providers I believe you should avoid at all costs. In all, you’ll find valuable information on more than a dozen lead gen companies in this one article.
A note on methodology: As a part of this buyer’s guide, I reviewed dozens of paid real estate lead generation companies and judged them based on lead gen strategy, price, usability, scalability, and customer support. We’ll continue to update our guide regularly as new companies and features become available to shine a light on the best available options for agents.
Best Real Estate Lead Generation Companies for 2023
| Company | Best For | Our Favorite Feature |
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| Market Leader | A guaranteed number of leads each month | The ability to customize how many leads you get and where they come from |
| REDX | New real estate agents looking for budget-friendly, effective lead gen | Various leads types available for all business needs |
| Revaluate | Agents with a large sphere of influence | One of the highest conversion rates of any provider on our list |
| BoomTown | Realtors looking for a CRM/lead gen combo | Fantastic lead-sharing and assignment options |
| Zillow Premier Agent | A high volume of mostly buyer leads | Presence on the highest-trafficked real estate website on the internet |
| StreetText | Agents looking for advanced social media ad options | Ability to sort genuine leads from fake ones with industry-leading accuracy |
| BoldLeads | Exclusive, unique leads you won’t have to share with other real estate agents | Easily customizable automated nurturing campaigns |
Best Overall Real Estate Lead Generation Company: Market Leader
Price: $139/month + $25 per lead
Why We Like Market Leader
Unlike any other provider on our list, Market Leader guarantees a certain number of leads every month. Market Leader is also unique in that once you’ve collected enough data to accurately predict your conversion rates, you can forecast your return on investment.
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How Market Leader Generates Real Estate Leads
To generate real estate leads, Market Leader takes the ad agency approach, placing advertising that targets your prospects on Facebook, Google, and so on. These ads direct seller prospects to Market Leader’s landing page HouseValues.com and sends buyer leads to your own personally branded, IDX search-enabled site.
Once a lead submits their information, it automatically populates in the Market Leader customer relationship management system (or appears in whatever CRM you’re using), and then you take over the nurturing and conversion.
The name is not a misnomer. Market Leader is truly a leader in lead generation. I like their strategy and proven track record. And while it’s pricey, there is serious potential for great return on investment. You can read more in our deep-dive review of Market Leader.
Best Real Estate Lead Generation Company for Outbound Leads: REDX
Price: Starting at $40/month
Why We Like REDX
With inbound real estate lead generation companies, you’re waiting for your phone to ring. But REDX is different; agents are picking up the phone and making it ring for prospects. While this means more work for you, you’re also completely in control of your own progress and success, which makes it perfect for motivated go-getters. You can read more about REDX in our review: Why Smart Realtors Use REDX & Power Dialer.
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How REDX Generates Real Estate Leads
Instead of waiting for leads, REDX flips the script with an outbound real estate lead generation system, putting contact information (and the power to make connections) into the hands of REDX agents, teams, and brokers.
REDX users choose the lead types (such as expired listings, FSBOs, and preforeclosures, to name a few) they want to target, and REDX provides contact information. With a constantly updated system, you’ve always got a fresh list of leads in your area so you can decide how much time you want to spend reaching out, following up, and converting them into clients.
Honorable Mention: Vulcan7
Honestly, it was a toss-up between whether to feature REDX or Vulcan7 as the go-to outbound lead generation tool in this guide. REDX has a longer track record of success, which is why they ultimately won the top spot. But Vulcan7 is innovating in exciting ways and many of the Realtors I talked to are raving about. Watch this space to see if Vulcan7 can take over the top spot!
Best Lead Generation Company for Agents With a Large Sphere of Influence: Revaluate
Price: Starting $1 per contact, per year
Why We Like Revaluate
Revaluate is a predictive analytics company that sorts and prioritizes your most valuable asset as a real estate professional: your sphere of influence (SOI) contact list. Revaluate provides data-driven insights into which members of your circle are most likely to buy or sell in the near future, which results in some of the highest conversion rates of any of the tools on our list.
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How Revaluate Generates Real Estate Leads
Real estate pros upload their contact database to the Revaluate system, where it “cleans and detoxes” contacts. Revaluate removes duplicates, combines partial profiles, and fills in gaps by adding social media handles, phone numbers, email addresses, and more.
Next, Revaluate runs your database through its proprietary big-data-driven algorithm, which uses market data, consumer analytics, demographic insights, and more to predict which members of your sphere of influence are most likely to buy or sell in the next year. This sort of predictive strategy allows you to prioritize your outreach efforts and spend your nurturing time, energy, and resources wisely.
6 Real Estate Predictive Analytics Companies You Need to Know About
Honorable Mention: Offrs
If you don’t have a robust set of SOI connections, a tool like Offrs might be a better fit. Offrs takes the same predictive analytics approach (using big data to predict the most likely buyers and sellers) to analyze prospects in geographic neighborhoods and communities. We’re big fans of this approach (and this company), and you can learn more in our Offrs review: Are AI & Predictive Analytics the Future of Real Estate?
Best Lead Generation Company for CRM/Lead Generation Combo: BoomTown
Price: Starting at $1,000 per month
BoomTown has a top spot on our list because their lead generation systems integrate so seamlessly with their CRM. Leads generated with BoomTown automatically drop into the CRM. From there, agents can choose from hundreds of options for lead nurturing, including custom text-message campaigns, email, snail mail, and even integrated campaigns.
Why We Like BoomTown
With BoomTown, you never have to worry about newly paid-for leads falling out of your funnel prematurely—the company’s tools and automation processes assure that won’t happen.
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How BoomTown Generates Leads
BoomTown’s lead gen strategy starts with its website and CRM combo, which uses landing pages to direct traffic and generate leads. Its sites include customized content gating systems. For example, if someone is searching for properties on your website, you can trigger a required form to capture their contact info. BoomTown also offers an integrated Facebook and Google ads tool that helps agents build their audience. While BoomTown is a CRM first and a lead gen company second, their sophisticated range of tools is certainly worth considering.
Honorable Mention: Elevate
Elevate, the flagship CRM for Elm Street Technology, is one of our favorite new CRMs. They offer a ton of great features and are well-suited for businesses of any size. We’re also impressed by their top-notch social media and content marketing services. Learn more about Elevate in our video walk-through and review.
Best Lead Generation Company for Buyer Leads: Zillow Premier Agent
Price: Starting at $250 for most agents
Why We Like Zillow Premier Agent
There is literally nobody in the consumer real estate market as big as Zillow—not by a long shot. If you’re looking for buyer leads at volume, it’s hard to argue with Zillow.
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How Zillow Premier Agent Generates Real Estate Leads
Zillow sells display advertising next to listings in specific ZIP codes to its clients (known as Premier Agents). Pricing varies depending on the number of agents and median sold price in each market, but it generally starts at $250 per month. The company transfers leads to the Zillow CRM or into whatever CRM you’re using, and the nurturing and conversion is up to you. Read more in our in-depth review, Is Zillow Premier Agent Worth the Cost? (Hint: The answer is “yes, but…”).
Best Lead Generation Company for Social Media Ads: StreetText
Price: $200 a month for most agents + ad budget
Why We Like StreetText
When a company has generated 5.14 million leads, you have to sit up and take notice. StreetText is a lead generation company with a simple strategy: harness the power of Meta. And because it’s using social media so effectively, they have high conversion rates for their leads.
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How StreetText Generates Real Estate Leads
StreetText generates real estate leads by placing targeted Facebook ads on your behalf, but beyond that, they tailor the ad process to the real estate profession. The company fills in the gaps on lead profiles for prospects who complete your forms (adding social media handles, more contact information, etc.) and they do phone number and email verification.
StreetText comes with nice-to-have features such as its automated email and SMS texting services, artificial intelligence chatbot, deal pipeline tracker, and more. But the agents I’ve spoken to who use StreetText say all of that is window dressing to the actual lead generation.
Honorable Mention: Brivity
We, like many in the industry, are keeping a close eye on Brivity. A part of Ben Kinney’s PLACE, the company provides one of the most comprehensive CRMs on the market, including lead capture, IDX websites, and social media ad campaigns designed by marketing experts. With their cult following and competitive pricing, I predict a bright future.
Best Lead Generation Company for Exclusive Leads: BoldLeads
Price: starting at $399/month
Why We Like BoldLeads
BoldLeads has been around a long time and they’re known for providing exclusive leads. So if you want a personalized, exclusive lead set at a reasonable price, BoldLeads is a great choice. However, we understand that BoldLeads is undertaking some pretty major changes and we’re very interested to see how things shake out. Trust that we’ll be following along and updating this review as we learn more.
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How BoldLeads Generates Real Estate Leads
Like Market Leader, BoldLeads creates and places ads on platforms like Facebook and Google to draw prospects to customized landing pages. There, potential clients are enticed to provide their contact info, and BAM—you have another lead in the hopper.
However, BoldLeads differs from Market Leader in providing more landing page options and lead magnet customization, as well as specialized follow-up tools like its automated text concierge that helps you better convert leads into clients.
Since BoldLeads creates ads specifically for you and your business, the leads you get are yours and yours alone, unlike other lead gen companies that will create generic ads and then divvy up the leads among subscribed agents.
Honorable Mention: Zurple
The BoldLeads strategy for lead generation has been imitated by a number of other real estate tech companies, but the most interesting one on our radar right now is Zurple. Zurple offers the same approach for lead generation, but includes advanced analytics and extra control over where and when they display your ads, giving you more opportunity to optimize your strategy for your specific market. Learn more about Zurple in our deep-dive review: The World’s First Real Estate CLIENT Generation Platform?
Real Estate Lead Generation Companies to Avoid
We’re not typically ones to throw shade here on The Close, but we wouldn’t be doing our job as real estate and technology experts if we didn’t also steer you away from products we don’t like (in their current form).
Zillow Flex
You might be thinking, “You’re recommending Zillow Premier Agent, but not Zillow Flex? What gives?” The fact is, the cost of Zillow Flex—which allows Zillow Premier agents to skip paying for leads until they successfully close—simply isn’t worth the value, in my opinion. Based on the percentage Zillow takes at closing and the projected low-referral and low-repeat occurrence of the leads, investing in Zillow Flex is time-intensive for limited return. Read more: Is Zillow Flex Worth the 35% Referral Fee? And you’ll see why it’s not.
Inbox Real Estate Leads
If you’re a long-time reader of The Close, you know that, at one point, I actually endorsed this company as an interesting alternative to the traditional paid lead generation model. But, after speaking with a number of users of this service, I’m changing that stance. The Realtors I spoke to who have used this service consider it unreliable at best, extremely competitive, and a tool that makes forecasting your future revenue very difficult.
Foreclosure.com
OK, so it’s important to say that Foreclosure.com doesn’t actually bill itself as a real estate leads source, so I’m not knocking this platform for the same reasons I’m knocking the others.
However, I see second-rate real estate coaches across the internet touting Foreclosure.com as a place you should be prospecting preforeclosure property owners. Some of these “coaches” will even sell you courses on how to convert these too-good-to-be-true leads.
The fact is, the foreclosure process in the U.S. is very complicated, there are many stages to it, and in a COVID (and near post-COVID) era, that’s even more true. There really is no telling whether the leads on Foreclosure.com are even leads at all. And even if you do manage to find potential sellers, it is very difficult to portray yourself as anything other than predatory. Our advice: Steer clear of Foreclosure.com as a lead source.
Real Estate Lead Generation Companies FAQs
Here at The Close, we get a lot of questions about lead gen. Here are a few of the most common ones:
Do real estate brokerages provide leads?
Yes, some brokerages will provide you with leads, but that is usually a decision made on an office-by-office basis. Remember though, those leads aren’t free (even if you don’t pay anything upfront for them). Offices that provide agents with real estate leads often require higher splits and caps, as well as monthly desk fees.
Check out our article about the best real estate companies to work for to learn more.
How do most real estate agents get leads?
Most (successful) real estate agents diversify their lead generation so that their business doesn’t live or die by a single source. Paid lead generation, referrals and repeat business, and organic social marketing are some great examples of where real estate agents get leads.
Having a plan for your overall real estate lead generation strategy is important. If you need help with this, make sure to check out our article on creating a custom real estate lead generation plan. It even has some useful templates to get you started.
Are paid lead generation companies worth it?
If you can get a high enough return on your investment, real estate lead generation companies are absolutely worth it. Think about it: If someone told you that you could earn $15,000 in commission by writing a $5,000 check, you’d do it, right? Assuming the number of hours you need to put in to get that commission won’t be worth more than $10,000 of work, the numbers pencil out.
What’s a good price per lead in real estate?
In most markets, the max price a real estate agent should be comfortable spending per lead is $200. I know, that seems high, but do a little mental math with me, and I’ll show you it’s not.
Let’s say you get 10 leads a week from Market Leader, and one of them turns into a client. Now, let’s assume you’re converting 75% of those clients into sales. This means that you’re closing three transactions every month as a result of 40 total leads.
For 40 leads a month, you’re paying $8,000 (40 x $200). That may seem like too much until you remember that the typical home is selling for more than $300,000. At a 3% commission, those three sales are grossing you $27,000 in commission income, netting you $19,000 before splits and taxes.
Of course, this price changes based on your conversion rates, the typical sale price of a home in your market, and your typical commission. But for most agents, $200 per lead is a great place to start.
Bringing It All Together
I hope this has been a helpful list of top lead generation companies (and a few to avoid). Lead generation is a crucial aspect of all real estate businesses and with the right partner, a real estate lead gen company can give yours the boost you need for 2023!
Did we miss a real estate lead generation company you want to learn more about? Have experiences with ones we’ve selected? Comment below!
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