Real Estate Agents Now Turning to Lead Companies

New York, NY, July 6, 2015 (Newswire.com) - The days of referring your neighbors to the nice agent who helped you sell your home have all but vanished.  Enter lead generation companies who began popping up a couple of years ago when the market began to rebound and when agents/brokers needed to develop more of a competitive edge.

While lead generation utilizing the web is all the buzz these days, many of these so-called marketing guru's fail to make the grade when it comes to dishing out prospects for your hard earned dollars.  Choosing the right lead generation company is vital when marketing dollars are in short supply.  In fact, only a handful of the lead generation companies actually prove themselves to some extent when put to the test.

While there were a few that did generate more leads, comparatively speaking, than others, the lead companies below have passed our performance tests, which did not come easy, and were unbeknownst to each company.  Additionally, each company that we gave passing grades to had positive reviews on the web.

Note, we have only included companies who provide exclusive real estate leads.  Companies that provided community leads were found only to exasperate the home buyer or seller with a multitude of calls from agents they did not ask for.  We did not list the 6 companies who failed our performance testing.

The first company we looked at was Zurple.com, a California based company who touts the slogan, "Lead Generation to Client Generation."  Zurple provides lead generation software for real estate agents and markets using multiple websites for each agent depending upon how many areas they take. When someone does a home search on the agent's website, they will get the information on whom is searching.   The number of leads received in the month that we tested were 11, and they were exclusive.  The leads were all valid and none were outdated.  After contacting the home buyer, 8 of 11 were willing to talk with our test agent, of them 4 had already been called by a couple of other agents.  Zurple's service is a bit pricey at over $1,000 per month, but of course, if one of these leads turns into a sale, then the monthly fee was worth it. Its also important to know that the company claims that the amount of leads received will go up over time.  Final Cost $1000

Next, a company called AgentAssist.net has a very interesting approach that features no contracts, no monthly fees, and perhaps equally important, no credit cards on file.  The old adage, "You get what you pay for," certainly doesn't apply to Agent Assist in this case, as you only pay for any leads that you accept.  They also provide each agent with their own marketing website which also has no monthly fees involved.  This marketing website aka Agent Capsule provides the home buyer/seller with a practical set of tools to help make their process easier, and their process of generating clients differs from the rest while using a community of marketing partners who are real estate related.  During the trial period, the lead cost was just $3 (increases to $6 after first 90 days,) and you get to view the entire lead before you decide to purchase it. The leads are exclusive leads, and have indicated they would like the assistance of an agent.   In this case, we received 6 leads in the first month which only cost us $18.  We were able to talk to 5 of the 6 leads, and each prospect was actually expecting a call from the agent listed on the website.  Also, none of these 5 leads were given to us by the other real estate lead companies tested.  One more interesting note, at the time of this article, we are 2 weeks into the second 30 day period and have already received 8 leads with 2 more weeks to go!  While the Agent Assist service is very inexpensive, the leads were as good, if not better, than some of the other services.  One caveat:  They only accept one or two agents per area, so if your area is already taken by another agent, you are out of luck!    Final Cost $18 (it would have cost us $54 if it was after the 90 day trial.)

The next company we looked at was Money Tree Leads with the tag line, "the Ultimate Real Estate Competitive Advantage."  While Money Tree called the leads exclusive, we wondered what they considered a lead?  So upon asking that question, they promptly replied that if someone searches a home on one of their partner websites, they become a lead.  Yes the lead is exclusive, but they quickly pointed out that the lead is exclusive to them, and there is nothing stopping a home buyer from using any of the other lead services.  Good point, and we give them kudos for admitting that to us.   Nevertheless we tried it out, and at $999 for the month, we received 28 usable leads.  Its important to note that 6 of these leads were repeats with some of the other lead companies, and some of the leads were outdated.  Some had no phone numbers for contact and of the 15 that our agent could contact, only 7 would talk to our agent while 8 did not want to talk or asked to be removed from our call list.  There were a handful that asked questions and seemed as though they would work with our agent.   The company did provide a nice looking web page for each client that functioned well.  They charged $799 per month for their services and just like Zurple, this may sound like a considerable amount of money, but if just one sells, then their fee was well worth it!  Final Cost: $799

The final one is ZBuyer who uses state of the art technology to simplify the home selling and buying process.  Like Agent Assist, ZBuyer provides useful tools to the home buyer and home seller to make the process easier. They also market to people who have to sell their homes quickly due to financial difficulties.  While less pricey than a few of their counterparts, our test agent did receive 7 leads during this time of which 5 seemed to be willing to work with our agent.  However, of the 5, none are still currently working with our agent.  While the pricing on ZBuyer ($179 per month) is less expensive than Zurple and Money Tree, but is still a bit higher than Agent Assist.  They seem to attract approximately the same amount of leads as the others and their leads seemed to be exclusive as they were not giving the lead to another agent.  Final Cost: $179

There are many blogs on the web which will give you reviews of every lead generation company, we suggest searching what other real estate agents and brokers are saying, and ensure that you don't commit to any lengthy contracts just to see if it works.

Lead generation companies can be challenging, time consuming and costly.  However, if you want to stay competitive, you may soon come to rely on a company that can act as your marketing arm while freeing-up some of your resources, and enabling you to spend more quality time with your buyers and sellers.

Dan Jordan is a former Broker/Agent listed with the Missouri Real Estate Commission and now writes real estate trade and trending articles for many real estate publications.