Is buying real estate leads really worth it?

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As we’ve shown in HousingStack, there are a lot of companies focused on generating leads for real estate brokerages and agents. Apparently there’s so many that some agents say they get more calls from lead sales people than from actual leads.

Some agents have gone so far as to say that these leads aren’t of great quality and they’re not getting their money’s worth. I say it’s great if you actually know that and are measuring because if you don’t measure, it’s not worth doing paid lead generation anyway.

But beyond the assertion that buying leads isn’t worth it or that one company’s leads have greater quality than another company’s leads, what I’ve tended to see out there, and spent some time corroborating this past week, is that leads are what you make of them. Don’t get me wrong, some “leads” are just crap. But, generally speaking, if you’re handed a contact with an email, name, phone number and some level of intent, it’s what you do with that contact that makes all the difference.

The next installment of HousingStack will focus on the companies that provide solutions for managing, nurturing and converting leads. And since the installment about lead generation stirred up some interesting debate, I decided to drop this article in the middle of it all.