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The Best Real Estate Lead Generation Websites of 2021
How We Chose the Best Real Estate Lead Generation Websites
Generating and closing quality leads is the essence of the real estate business. Online services that can support those efforts, bringing to bear sophisticated software tools and features, are becoming an increasingly important item in a real estate professional’s arsenal. There are plenty of companies offering a wide variety of features and packages in this space; we evaluated the best on the three most important core criteria.
Lead Management Features
Leveraging lead generation effectively means tracking the data connected with incoming leads, identifying them in terms of the key applicable market segments, and taking note of (and ranking or scoring) the likeliest lead-to-conversion prospects. Collectively, these are lead management features, and we recommend software that executes on as many such features as possible.
Marketing Features
Lead management is at its most effective when it’s paired with marketing initiatives that can maximize visibility and bring in targeted traffic. For that reason, we looked for sites that provided marketing tools such as email marketing and campaign management and branded advertising.
Reports
Lead management and marketing features yield the most value when it’s easy to evaluate how your audience is responding to your efforts, which campaigns are the most effective, and what kind of prospects are showing the best conversion rates. Detailed reports are the key, helping real estate professionals measure and improve their use of lead generation.
The 14 Best Real Estate Lead Generation Websites of 2021
AgentLocator
AgentLocator provides real estate website design targeted at single agents, small brokerages, and teams in the market for lead generation pipelines and brand building features, integrated with CRM software that offers automated SMS messaging and support for VOIP calls. With a decade-long track record, the site provides branded and unbranded PPC advertising through Facebook, Instagram, and Google and offers both templated and fully customized real estate websites that support IDX/VOW feeds that pull data from local Multiple Listing Services (MLS). AgentLocator also offers add-on services like managed lead generation — providing added support for managing leads generated from PPC ad campaigns — and a tag marketing tool called “remarketing,” which tags anywhere from a hundred to over a thousand unique visitors to an ad on the website and shows the ad to those users upwards of a thousand times per month wherever else they go online. These features tie in with a basic CRM system featuring a leads database and a reporting system for tracking lead totals and several productivity metrics.
Pricing | Free Trial/Demo | Features |
---|---|---|
Starts at $158.95/month | Free Demo | >IDX/VOW feed support >SMS messaging and VOIP calls >Lead database and reports tracking lead totals and productivity >More features at AgentLocator |
Pros & Cons of AgentLocator Real Estate Lead Generation Website
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
>Solid and affordable core feature set for single agents or small brokerages >IDX and VOW support for MLS feeds | >Basic feature set does not offer lead scoring and segmentation >Potentially useful add-ons ramp up the cost of use |
BoldLeads
BoldLeads offers lead nurturing and automated advertising solutions focused on branding clients as the local real estate expert within a specific ZIP code. It provides landing pages, CRM tools that support SMS messaging, drip emails and scheduled task reminders, and lead funnels that enable text, email, and voice broadcast connections with prospects. BoldLeads’ managed ad services provide full support of the creation of landing pages, ad posting, and overall marketing campaign management, allowing clients to focus on the business of converting procured leads. Its engagement indicator tools track leads that open and reply to emails or provide contact information through contact with the platform. Pricing proceeds by custom quote but starts at $399 per month for service fees — ranging up to $899 per month for multi-agent brokerages — not counting onboarding and advertising costs, marking BoldLeads as a fairly expensive solution.
Pricing | Free Trial/Demo | Features |
---|---|---|
Quote-based | Free Demo | >Pipeline management tools >CRM tools for SMS messaging and drip email campaigns >Engagement tracking reports to identify which leads are most responsive >More features at BoldLeads |
Pros & Cons of BoldLeads Real Estate Lead Generation Website
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
>Limiting the number of clients by area makes excellent localized lead gen and branding tool >Excellent integrated CRM and pipeline management tools | >No free trial |
BoomTown
BoomTown provides IDX-enabled lead generation sites designed primarily with larger teams and brokerages in mind, building customizable websites that offer subdomains for specific team members. It offers features like automated round-robin lead distribution for agent groups, shared resource libraries, and centralized reporting on team conversion and response rates for managers. Its predictive CRM tools match listings with potential buyers, track lead activity, and support lead segmentation. It offers location-targeted Google and Facebook advertising, along with the ability to auto-import leads from Zillow or Realtor.com, and a powerful mobile app called NOW enables team members to stay in touch with prospects and remain up-to-date with follow-ups wherever they are. BoomTown’s optional features include concierge support for lead nurturing and a Success Assurance feature that qualifies leads, identifying the most transaction-ready prospects.
Pricing | Free Trial/Demo | Features |
---|---|---|
Quote-based | Free Demo | >Offers lead tracking, qualification and segmentation >IDX support for importing MLS data >Location-targeted advertising >Mobile app support through NOW >More features at BoomTown |
Pros & Cons of BoomTown Real Estate Lead Generation Website
BoomTown is an excellent platform for the large teams it’s built for, offering ample tools for workflow management and centralized reporting purpose-built for big brokerages. Its robust lead management features and especially its potential support for lead qualification are major advantages. The platform is expensive, starting at $750 per month even before factoring in the considerable added costs of Success Assurance, and is probably priced out of reach for single agents and small teams.
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
>Workflow management and reporting tools are ideal for large teams >Robust lead management features >Offers Success Assurance lead qualification add-on | >No free trial |
Chime
This combined CRM and lead generation platform allows its users to generate, nurture, and track leads, run AI-powered advertising campaigns, and benefit from predictive analytics and detailed reporting on performance and productivity. Designed for offices that handle large contact volumes, it includes a Smart Dialer with a convenient click-to-call feature for lead outreach, along with IDX-powered features like Lead Capture — which offers information like home valuation and mortgage calculators — and listing-to-lead matching to connect potential buyers with the properties best matched to their interests. The software offers a wealth of third-party integrations and the ability to auto-import leads from other providers such as Zillow and Realtor.com, and its lead scoring feature evaluates the credibility of potential contacts on multiple metrics. Even the most basic Chime plan covers the essentials of real estate CRM, although the overall pricing structure is likely too expensive for small offices or solo realtors.
Pricing | Free Trial/Demo | Features |
---|---|---|
Growth: $499/month Team: $899/month Broker: Custom quote | Free Demo | >Lead management features include sophisticated lead scoring >IDX-supported lead capture and listing-to-lead matching >Detailed business reports and forecasting with certain plans >More features at Chime |
Pros & Cons of Chime Real Estate Lead Generation Website
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
>AI-powered advertising, lead gen and lead scoring >Even basic Growth plan provides most essential lead gen and CRM features | >Most robust reporting features available only in Team or Broker plans >No free trial |
InCom
InCom focuses on website building solutions for real estate marketing, and its services are targeted at offices that need a website that integrates with their marketing materials and process without requiring much in the way of web design skills. The aim of the software is ease of use and high quality for users who don’t have a lot of in-house time to dedicate to website creation, with a multitude of prebuilt templates spanning a wide range of design and security priorities. Adding new listings to an IDX-enabled InCom site connects directly to the creation and sharing of marketing campaigns on other platforms, including Facebook and Google (with whom InCom has official partnerships), LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr, Twitter, and KakaoTalk. Landing pages and forms can save leads straight to integrated CRM software, and traffic monitoring features track unique site visitors, the length of time they spend viewing pages, and the marketing channels that brought them there.
Pricing | Free Trial/Demo | Features |
---|---|---|
Quote-based | Free Demo | >IDX-augmented websites >Traffic monitoring reports >More features at InCom |
Pros & Cons of InCom Real Estate Lead Generation Website
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
>Extensive IDX-powered cross-platform marketing features >Detailed traffic reporting | >Basic service fees leave out the monthly expense of IDX functionality >No free trial |
Market Leader
Combining website creation, marketing automation, and contact management features, Market Leader’s lead generation platform also offers CRM and team analytics tools. Its CRM tool supports auto-import of leads from platforms like Realtor.com, Trulia, and Zillow, and integrated IDX support allows the user to track the specific properties viewed by site visitors. It provides a mobile app that allows users to keep up with their alerts and follow-up schedules and leverages its own proprietary valuation site, HouseValues.com, and PPC advertising on Leads Direct as sources of leads. Designed to maximize the user’s profile as a local real estate authority, Market Leader makes access to leads within certain ZIP codes exclusive to users working there and offers a full suite of lead and pipeline management features. Market Leader offers comprehensive marketing automation that creates a full package for each listing with a property website, listing email, ready-to-print flyers, and social media posts.
Pricing | Free Trial/Demo | Features |
---|---|---|
Quote-based | Free Demo | >Mobile app >Team analytics features >IDX-powered marketing automations >Full suite of lead and pipeline management tools >More features at Market Leader |
Pros & Cons of Market Leader Real Estate Lead Generation Website
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
>High-quality mobile app >Strong set of user-friendly lead management, marketing, and CRM features | >No free trial |
offrs
Designed to use predictive analytics to connect real estate agents with property sellers, offrs provides automated marketing with customizable email templates and supports territory-based lead searches. It’s a highly specialized platform focused on a predictive algorithm that analyzes over 200 homeowner data points, identifying properties that are likely to go on sale in the coming year, and does not deal with buyer prospects or with the more detailed aspects of lead or pipeline management. Its territory-based land search comes with an interactive map and simple ZIP code-based system for creating custom territories, and its automated marketing contacts prospective sellers through email, voicemail, direct mail, and online advertising. Offrs is notable for its flexible and affordable pricing structure, with per-property and per-month pricing being the norm but with customized quotes available.
Pricing | Free Trial/Demo | Features |
---|---|---|
Quote-based | Free Demo | >Automated email marketing and online ads >Predictive analytics for lead generation >More features at offrs |
Pros & Cons of offrs Real Estate Lead Generation Website
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
>High-quality property seller leads >Flexible pricing >Useful email and advertising automations | >Does not provide IDX support >No free trial |
Placester
Placester brings together website building, CRM, marketing, and lead capture solutions in a single package. It offers IDX (Internet data exchange) and SEO tools and is designed to be functional for users without coding knowledge; it handles everything from image and testimonials to IDX search tools through a drag-and-drop interface. Placester’s target market is National Association of Realtors (NAR) members in particular, who can access its plans at a 20% discount through their NAR benefits. IDX-powered lead capture data, updated daily, identifies leads who search for specific properties, and the platform provides SEO tactics and index information to help real estate professionals achieve websites that rank higher on search engines. Its CRM includes email campaign management, reports on open and click rates, and auto-responses to new leads. Placester has a relatively affordable pricing structure that ranges from $100 to $200 monthly, with dedicated customer care representatives available at higher service tiers.
Pricing | Free Trial/Demo | Features |
---|---|---|
Starter: $100/month Advanced: $190/month Office Builder: $200/month | Free Trial | >IDX search tools >Provides lead database and lead scoring >Reports track open-and-click rates on marketing campaigns >More features at Placester |
Pros & Cons of Placester Real Estate Lead Generation Website
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
>Easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface >Affordable pricing >Excellent IDX-driven lead capture | >Despite offering a brokerage-level service tier, designed primarily for single agents and small teams >Doesn't provide a mobile app |
Propertybase
Built on the same back-end as Salesforce, this integrated platform provides website building, marketing automation, CRM and lead capture, and management tools, including lead scoring. Propertybase makes it possible to list, manage, and promote properties from a single dashboard, controlling how and where listings are displayed and making it possible to aggregate data from multiple MLS providers into a single search. Propertybase provides automated notifications whenever a contact engages with and opens an email and makes it possible to target follow-ups on the basis of factors like buying timelines, property views, and recorded searches. It offers a wide range of third-party integrations, including the ability to sync data from Google and Office 365, and provides easy access to performance forecast data and real-time reporting on subjects like marketing spend and projected contact volume. Pricing is by custom quote but is estimated to average from $89 to $99 monthly per user.
Pricing | Free Trial/Demo | Features |
---|---|---|
Quote-based | Free Demo | >Reporting includes performance forecasts and real-time marketing data >IDX data searches aggregate from multiple MLS sources >Comprehensive lead management features >More features at Propertybase |
Pros & Cons of Propertybase Real Estate Lead Generation Website
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
>Feature-rich CRM, lead management and marketing >Sophisticated reporting and lead scoring features >Impressive selection of third-party integrations | >No free trial |
Real Geeks
Primarily focused on the creation of internet data exchange (IDX) websites and nurturing the leads they generate, Real Geeks also offers customer relationship management (CRM), property valuation, and marketing features. The platform offers a mobile app, handles both buyer and seller leads, and provides the fundamentals in lead generation tools — custom IDX website designs and Facebook marketing tools in particular. It supports lead management and reporting features that include advanced filtered searches on leads, automated location of leads’ social media profiles, real-time surveys of leads’ website activity, agent activity tracking, and SMS auto-responses. It provides lead segmentation and can launch targeted drip email campaigns tailored to specific market segments. Real Geeks pricing starts at $249 per month for two-user full access, with additional seats at $25 monthly per user and additional fees for setup and for managed marketing services.
Pricing | Free Trial/Demo | Features |
---|---|---|
Quote-based | Free Demo | >Custom IDX website designs >Lead database, scoring, and segmentation features >Real-time agent activity tracking >Automated email drip campaigns >More features at Real Geeks |
Pros & Cons of Real Geeks Real Estate Lead Generation Website
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
>Solid CRM, IDX, and marketing feature sets >Real-time data on leads, agents, and site activity >Creates mobile-optimized IDX website | >Mobile app has limited functionality >No free trial |
Realtor.com
Well known as the second-largest online real estate market, Realtor.com also provides a wide variety of lead generation and CRM tools for real estate agents:
- Connections Plus, a buyer lead gen service that sells leads from specific ZIP codes with the option to spend extra to gain access to exclusive leads in an area
- Local Expert, providing paid ads on Realtor.com and Facebook, searchable by relevant ZIP code
- Advantage Brand, which displays branding for listing agents on local search results and their own dedicated pages
- Top Producer Real Estate Websites, creating free single-property sites synced with the local MLS
- Top Producer CRM, which provides lead management and follow-up tools along with market snapshot reporting and a range of MLS and office software integrations
Through all these options, accessing the precise features a business needs can cost on average anywhere from $200 up to $1,000 per month.
Pricing | Free Trial/Demo | Features |
---|---|---|
Quote-based | Free Demo | >Branded advertising >IDX integration for local MLS data >Market snapshot reporting >Third-party integrations with Mailchimp and other back-office software >More features at Realtor.com |
Pros & Cons of Realtor.com Real Estate Lead Generation Website
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
>Variety of software solutions provides a wide array of lead gen, CRM, and marketing features >High profile of site provides added punch for branding and marketing | >Integrated MLS data doesn't always update reliably or function in all areas >No free trial |
REDX
REDX specializes in providing access to verified non-mainstream leads, with expired listings, pre-foreclosure properties, For Rent By Owners (FRBOs), and For Sale By Owners (FSBOs) among them. It features an outbound dialer and a built-in lead management tool called Vortex. Its lead management features include a database, a cross-checking function with the national Do Not Call (DNC) Registry, and the ability to segment leads by a variety of filters, statuses, and tags. Automated and multi-line dialer services, under the umbrella of what’s called the Storm Dialer, are available for additional fees, but the service on the whole tends to be inexpensive (starting at $39 per month) thanks to the unconventional nature of the leads it provides. The dialer also allows the creation of different contact categories and filters and supports automatic time zone adjustments and call recording.
Pricing | Free Trial/Demo | Features |
---|---|---|
Quote-based | Free Demo | >Lead database for tracking call outcomes >Lead segmentation tags, statuses, and filters >More features at REDX |
Pros & Cons of REDX Real Estate Lead Generation Website
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
>Performs solidly within its chosen niche >Impressive lead management through built-in Vortex tool | >Storm Dialer and different lead types must be purchased as separate products >No free trial |
Zillow Premier Agent
Zillow has an established reputation as a top real estate website with tens of millions of monthly visitors. Its lead generation software, Zillow Premier Agent, is designed to allow agents to promote properties, nurture leads, and connect to property shoppers across the Zillow network as part of those endeavors. Providing targeted property ads and free CRM software that integrates seamlessly with the larger platform, ZPA comes with user training and support and exclusive access to listings on the Zillow, Trulia, and StreetEasy platforms. It identifies homes and neighborhoods most viewed by visitors in order to effectively target Facebook ads. It provides domain names for IDX-enabled websites that incorporate data from local MLS. While ZPA’s CRM features are free, per-lead pricing still applies and can range from $20 to $60 contingent on leads and competitors in specific areas.
Pricing | Free Trial/Demo | Features |
---|---|---|
Quote-based | Free Demo | >IDX-enabled websites >Lead segmentation and scoring >More features at Zillow |
Pros & Cons of Zillow Premier Agent Real Estate Lead Generation Website
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
>User training and support >Exclusive listing access on Zillow, Trulia, and StreetEasy >Builds IDX websites with their own domain names | >No free trial >Per-lead pricing has the potential to seriously escalate expense over time |
Zurple
Zurple is a lead generation and marketing automation package focused on capturing, managing, and nurturing leads. It provides up to 10 branded IDX websites, allowing users to cover multiple targeted areas at the same time, and allows connection to platforms like Zillow and Trulia to feed off-platform leads. It also offers lead behavior analysis features that include profiles of prospect search behaviors, locations, property preferences, and budget constraints. An on-platform algorithm provides notifications of any leads showing signs of being prepared to buy in the near future, monitoring tells like aggressive home searching and multiple viewings or favoriting of a property. Zurple’s automated follow-up email system personalizes messages with insights about a prospect’s search behaviors and organically directs conversations into home-viewing appointment confirmations. Pricing can vary considerably but averages $399 monthly per website, with the monthly advertising budgets and a one-time onboarding fee added.
Pricing | Free Trial/Demo | Features |
---|---|---|
Quote-based | Free Demo | >10 branded IDX website per user >Sophisticated behavior analytics and related alerts >Automated email follow-ups >More features at Zurple |
Pros & Cons of Zurple Real Estate Lead Generation Website
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
>Helps agents target specific areas even within the same ZIP code >Powerful data-driven alerts and auto-responses >Easy for non-designers to set up unique IDX websites | >No free trial |
What Is a Real Estate Lead Generation Website?
A lead generation website is an online portal that provides prebuilt software tools focused on generating closable leads in a chosen industry. Real estate lead gen sites are therefore focused on the kinds of software and data tools, reporting, and customer relations functionality that help real estate agents find success. These sites help real estate professionals generate and host their own lead capture-optimized homepages, in much the same way that blogging and marketing portals host webpages for companies seeking tools to optimize web pages serving those functions.
There are a number of factors that a lead gen website can bring to bear on the task that go beyond the general evaluation criteria we discussed at the beginning of this guide. These include:
- Branded advertising
- Email marketing tools
- IDX functionality (see below for more detail)
- Lead database, scoring, and segmentation
- Mobile app availability
- Pipeline management tools
- Reporting and analytics
You’ll see mention of many of these kinds of tools in the above product reviews. These are the core of a solid lead gen website, and the more of these bases a given website covers, the more flexible a tool it’s likely to be. Note also, however, that some companies may focus on a specific niche and manage to deliver solid value within that specialty.
Benefits of Real Estate Lead Generation Websites
Optimizing for lead generation can be of crucial benefit to the success of a real estate office in several ways:
- It builds a business’ credibility to have an online home thus optimized, which also means having a website that’s informative, streamlined, and easy to interact with and that sells the capability of the real estate professional operating it.
- Lead generation tools can improve targeted traffic to a website, ensuring that the eyes on its content belong to prospects with intention, thereby increasing sales and profit ratio and increasing word-of-mouth awareness and online visibility for an agency.
- With the right databases, tracking, and reporting, lead generation can help collect important information about prospects and about what needs and preferences brought them to an agency’s proverbial door, making it easier to convert them from prospects into clients and to close deals, as well as gain a general sense of what helps a particular agency stand out from the rest.
- Optimizing for lead gen is a cost-effective way to maximize ROI (return on investment) for marketing outlay, especially if a lead generation website can also be used as a tool for effective branded advertising, email, and SMS campaigns, which can be powerfully combined with CRM tools and prospect databases to improve conversion rates.
Must-Have Features of Real Estate Lead Generation Websites
Among the core features of lead generation sites laid out above, some related technologies can be particularly important:
- Automated reporting: Evaluating data from prospects, knowing how and why they came to a website, and which advertising and marketing channels are yielding the most results, is a key part of getting the most out of lead gen optimization. Automated reporting and analytics features make this information far easier and less time-consuming to access.
- Automated lead follow-ups: Lead generation websites offer a wide range of supports in following up on and classifying initial lead contacts. Some offer power dialers and instant AI-automated text and email responses; fewer go so far as to offer human support through call centers that vet and nurture potential leads into transaction-ready status; but on the whole, the more support a real estate business can get on the follow-up front, the more valuable any leads generated become.
- IDX/VOW capability: IDX and VOW technologies allow websites to connect to that most basic tool of the real estate trade, the MLS. IDX applications are mentioned above and can be used to call MLS data to a website or send automated listings to leads and prospects. VOW applications perform a similar function but provide (usually at greater expense) access to more detailed sales history and off-market data for agents looking to a fully online business model. Some lead generation sites provide access to both.
The Cost of Real Estate Lead Generation Websites
There are a number of ways real estate lead gen websites price their services. Some of them charge on a flat monthly basis, others charge on a per-lead basis, and yet others charge on a monthly per-agent basis.
What most of these services have in common, however, is they don’t come cheap. The overall expense can easily range from a few hundred to thousands of dollars a month. In order to sign on with a lead gen website service, it’s necessary to keep an eye on these key details:
- Be clear about your needs:Sites offer vastly different lists of features with different operation sizes in mind. Make sure you have a clear idea about what kinds of lead gen features you absolutely need and what kind of budget you have to pursue them.
- Check how the site delivers on the features it promises: A site with a strong record of delivering results through its promised features is key to justifying the often-considerable costs involved. Some sites skew less expensive than the norm, in which case you’ll want to ascertain whether the lower expense is still delivering a level of service that’s going to make a real difference to the bottom line. This guide aims to give you a starting point for that kind of research.
- Be on the lookout for added expenses:Many sites operate by custom quote. It’s important that any such quote is broken down in enough detail that you know whether and how much you’re being charged for setup, maintenance, and other services. These kinds of additional charges can add up substantially.