More Real Estate Agents Turning to Lead Companies

New York, NY, March 12, 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 began to need 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 extend when put to the test.

While there were a few that did generate more leads than others, comparitively speaking,  the ones with the more qualified lead charged considerably more for their services (for the most part.)  All of the companies below have passed performance tests, did not have excess negative reviews on the web, and are viewed not to be among the companies that you need to beware of. 

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.

The company we looked at was Zurple, a California based company who touts the slogan, "Lead Generation to Client Generation."  Zurple provides 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   The number of leads received in the month that we tested were 11, however their leads were all good valid and not outdated.  The 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. 

A company called Agent Assist has a very interesting approach that features no contracts and no monthly fees.  You only pay for the leads you accept, and there is nothing else to pay.  They also provide each agent with their own website which also has no monthly fees involved.  They also provide the home buyer/seller with a practical set of tools to help make their process easier.  During the trial period, the lead cost was only $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 more importantly have indicated they would like the assistance of an agent.   In the case of the 5 leads we received in 30 days, each prospect was actually expecting a call with one of them actually panning out and is still working with our subject agent.

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 as there is nothing stopping a homebuyer to use any of the other services.  Good point and we give them kudos for admitting to that.   Nevertheless we tried it out, and at $999 for the month, we received 28 leads.  Many of the leads were outdated, most had no phone numbers for contact and most that our agent could contact did not want to talk or asked to be removed from our call list.  There were a handful that asked questions and seemed as thouth they would work with our agent.   The company did provide a nice looking web page for each client.  They charge $999 per month for their services.

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 homebuyer and homeseller to make the process easier. They also market to people who have to sell their homes quickly due to financial difficulties.  While a little more pricey than their counterpart, the test agent did receive 7 leads during this time of which 5 seemed to be willing for the most part to work with our agent, however, of the 7, none are still currently working with our agent.  While the pricing on ZBuyer seems to be a bit higher than Agent Assist, $179 month, they seem to attract more home sellers than agent assist and probably worth a try as this is a numbers game and it won't break the bank!

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 which will free up some of your resources, enabling you to spend more quality time with your buyers and sellers.