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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 you should avoid at all costs.
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 |
| zBuyer | Excellent customer service | Leads are well-qualified before hitting your CRM |
| Catalyze AI | Exclusive leads | Inherited property leads generated through sophisticated predictive analytic tools |
| REDX | Budget-conscious agents | Various lead types available for all business needs |
| Smartzip | Leads driven by predictive analytics | Boasts a 72% prediction accuracy rate |
| Revaluate | Agents with a large sphere of influence | One of the highest conversion rates of any provider on our list |
| BoomTown | A CRM + lead gen combo | Fantastic lead-sharing and assignment options |
| Zillow Premier Agent | Buyer leads | Presence on the highest-trafficked real estate website on the internet |
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. I also like that once you’ve collected enough data to accurately predict your conversion rates, it allows you to forecast your return on investment with greater accuracy.
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How Market Leader Generates 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’s automatically populated in the Market Leader customer relationship management system (or sent to 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 trailblazer in lead generation. I like its 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 Customer Service: zBuyer
Price: Starting at $12 per lead
Why We Like zBuyer
For starters, zBuyer has an excellent track record of supplying valuable, verified leads. But add to that its strong commitment to customer satisfaction, and you get a combination that some of the larger software companies simply can’t match.
zBuyer is 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.
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How zBuyer Generates Real Estate Leads
zBuyer uses cutting-edge analytics to uncover early indications of interest in selling or buying. The company offers targeted potential sellers 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 via the zBuyer app, email, and your customer relationship manager (CRM) of choice. While the leads aren’t exclusive, zBuyer says they work hard to “limit their exposure.” All in all, zBuyer is a low-cost, low-risk option, with excellent customer service and a strong lead generation strategy.
Best for Exclusive Real Estate Leads: Catalyze AI
Price: Starting at $360 per month
Why We Like Catalyze AI
Catalyze AI uses predictive analytics to uncover leads, which focus on inherited properties. They boast that four out of 10 of the properties they target sell within 12 months. Plus, the leads are local, not outrageously expensive, highly probable to convert, and exclusive. Because it’s month-to-month, it’s definitely worth checking out Catalyze AI—it’s a company in the predictive analytics space that we’re excited to watch.
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How Catalyze AI Generates Real Estate Leads
Every year, hundreds of thousands of people inherit properties. Catalyze AI helps sort through more than 400 million data points to narrow these properties down to excellent leads—so excellent that Catalyze AI estimates this market represents $77 billion in property value each year.
I like that Catalyze AI offers leads within a 20-mile radius of your search area and that you can pay based on the value of the property: one monthly rate for properties valued above $1 million and one for those valued below that threshold. And finally, and perhaps most importantly, these leads are exclusive, which makes them pretty darn valuable.
Best for Outbound Real Estate 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 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. Watch this space to see if Vulcan7 can take over the top spot!
Best Lead Generation With Predictive Analytics: Smartzip
Price: Starting at $350 per month; average $1,000 per month
Why We Like Smartzip
Smartzip claims they can predict the homes that will sell in a particular neighborhood in the upcoming 12 to 18 months with up to 72% accuracy. For anyone working purchased leads, this is a stunning statistic. If you’re already investing heavily in real estate farming, Smartzip is an excellent real estate predictive analytics tool for you. Leads from Smartzip do tend to take a little longer to nurture than traditional listing leads, so you will need to have a solid keep-in-touch strategy. If you’ve got a good lead nurturing game in place, Smartzip is absolutely worth considering.
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Related Article
Is SmartZip the Future of Real Estate Prospecting?
How Smartzip Generates Real Estate Leads
Smartzip combs through consumer data (from places like credit card companies), market data (from places like your MLS), and demographic data, and predicts which homeowners in your targeted region are most likely to sell.
Realtors who sign up with Smartzip immediately get access to the Smartzip CRM, populated with “Smart Data” for your areas. Essentially, this is a list of all the property owners in your targeted area, ranked by how likely they are to sell their home in the next year and a half.
Armed with this information, you can focus your outreach on only the most likely sellers, saving you time and money on marketing efforts and making your lead conversations more meaningful and fruitful.
Best for 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 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 contacts are “cleaned and detoxed.” Duplicates are removed, partial profiles are combined, and Revaluate fills in gaps by adding social media handles, phone numbers, email addresses, and more.
After your database is organized, Revaluate runs it through their 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.
Related Article
6 Real Estate Predictive Analytics Companies You Need to Know About
Best Combo of CRM & Lead Generation: 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 are automatically dropped into the CRM and 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 shouldn’t have to worry about your newly paid-for leads falling out of your funnel—the company’s tools and automation processes help to keep that from happening.
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How BoomTown Generates Real Estate Leads
BoomTown’s lead gen strategy starts with their 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, its sophisticated range of tools is certainly worth considering.
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 Buyer’s Agents: Zillow Premier Agent
Price: Starting at $350 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. Zillow 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…”).
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 (at least 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 and offers a limited return. Read more in our review, Is Zillow Flex Worth the 35% Referral Fee? and you’ll see why it’s not.
Inbox Real Estate Leads
Long-time readers of The Close 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
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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