I've never purchased leads and I'm not inclined to do so.  If you put that marketing money into marketing yourself, going out and meeting prospective clients, you'll probably have a better return.

All Internet leads are good provided you follow up with them - and convert.

They are the bane of our existence.  Buying 3rd party leads is seldom a good idea.  And why would you want to support an entity that uses your information steal people away from you when if they were not there, the clients would call you directly.

WASTE of money.  Besides why do you want to pay a site that steals your clients and then sells them back to you?  The more agents support these 3rd party sites the longer they take our leads away from us.

These are internet leads.

They range in quality from a heartbeat on the other side of an email address to someone wanting to buy the house that sold 3 months ago. They are overwhelmingly the former category.

If you have a long term nurturing program, know how to spot the real lead, and can resist the temptation to chase vapors, it can work.  Such companies will accept your money.

The issue you must understand is the 'who' regarding those that use these resources. What message did 'who' respond to in order to end up in your lead queue. If you don't know this you can not intelligently follow up. 

My advise to you is to observe if the company is modeling the same marketing to you as they are to the consumer. If not, be afraid, very much afraid. These 1980 methods should not be where you want to spend your money.

Now, here is the rub. If you follow the program of each of these lead services, you will in essence have a second job, you will feel as though you are working for Market Leader, Trulia, Zillow, Realtor.  After all, don't they tell you that Internet leads should be responded to within five minutes or less for best results.  How are you going to do that? Then the evaluation. Then the phone calls, Then the door drop/knock. Then the retouch.  If you have any REAL business going on, you will soon see you MUST have a squeeze in place and not allow these lead plans to compromise your current business activity.

You would be much better off launching your own Ad-words campaing or deploy other inbound marketing stategies.

I'm using trulia now.. no closings yet, but a couple promising leads. Fingers crossed!

I dont spend any energy thinking about them.

No good.

We don't use them

just looking back over some old questions and answers, looks like you got some decent replies to this one.

Those sites aren't where I want to spend my marketing dollars. My broker paid for leads from one of them. He won't do it again. Nothing came out of it. He was also getting leads that would come in late at night, and he felt because he didn't respond right away, that the lead just went to someone else. 

The best lead generating is through past clients and their friends.  Why should I pay for it.

Not worth the money. My brokerage gives us these leads as part of our package and the % that get converted to real sales averages under 2% for agents that really work hard to respond and serve those leads. Most of the leads are very low quality in my experience.

Shuchi Agrawal it's all about how you want to handle Internet leads that you bought from these sources.

If you are good at following up with them, talking to strangers using your scripts and dialogues and converting these leads to prospects, go for it!

Now if you are afraid to strike the conversation, I'd say, don't waste your money - use Brian Buffini's Referral System that should work for most relational people like us.

I think it depends on your area. They work her and I have first hand experience with it.

For the vast majority, it's a waste of money.

Shucchi,

We don't recommend them.  There are better ways to generate leads by networking and marketing yourself.  A

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Interesting topic

I am surprised how overwhelmingly the answers here are dead set against buying leads. As a mortgage guy - I am constantly approached to share in that cost, and I hate it- in 28yrs of doing this I never had to pay for business, but it feels like the industry is moving in that direction. Overall I think we should all strive to provide our clients with a great experience, open lines of communication and create raving fans that refer us their friends and family. PS: I have tried zillow on the mortgage side, it hasnt paid for itself.

I've bought leads from Trulia, Zillow and Realtor.com and have only had success from Trulia.  With Zillow and Realtor, I tended to get fewer but more promising leads, although neither has panned out yet.  Trulia was more of an avalanche of leads, but many of them were renters and very low dollar homes with buyers with poor credit.  I agree with Jill Murty that I believe spending that money marketing yourself is better, but especially for newer agents that may not have the network yet, I recommend supplementing that with buying leads. 

I found most leads are bogus. I alson found leads with numbers and requesting cma on properties which didn't appear to belong to them. 

Have a Wonderful Blessed Day!!!

Have had some success with Trulia.  Actually had a closing but nothing with Zillow as yet.  

I don't like to market on sites where I am in a dependent relationship. With Z&T I pay for whatever they give me whether it fits or not. I prefer a PPC program where I target who I want to deal with.

I purchased buyer leads from Zillow for a couple of years and sold 2 very large homes from it with buyers. I completed my profile and put all my sales on their website.   I do think they use MY listings to get leads and sell them back to me!!! However, I had 0 leads the last year I was using them so I decided it is not worth it.  I have also been hearing & reading,  if we keep using these sites the MLS will not be needed!!! I have decided not to support something that may jeopardize what I do for a living!!! 

I say stick with AR and your sphere of influence. I would never have the web presence I have now in my area,  if it were not for this platform!! 

William Feela great point about purchasing leads, most agent do not understand they are actually purchasing lists. In the online business world we understand that lists purchased typically are poor quality leads. Lists generated by providing great content are far more valuable. 

That being said, as I mentioned before all leads must be attached to a phone number for higher conversions. 

Love the question!! I work with several agents with all of these lead generating sources. My advise make sure you have capture capability to get phone numbers. These services typically cost more, however you have higher quality leads as a result. 

Market Leader seller leads are work intensive.  When I first started out, I didn't have listings, not so many leads and I did turn a couple into closed sales. I also turned a couple buyers leads from Market Leader into closed sales.  However, if you ever change your contract, it is like re-upping the whole thing for another 6 months or 12 months.  And that is not totally clear going in. 

Recently have gotten some action on TRULIA Pro where I advertised 3 listings for 49.95/month.  A bargain really, closed 2 in December.

My 6 month Trulia lead subscription just ended. I received about 12 leads total and no closed sales. My last lead was a Seller asking for a price evaluation. Great. I thought! However when I looked up the address, the person asking for the CMA was not listed on the tax records as the property owner. I looked up the phone number he gave, again it was not his.

Has anyone else run into this? A person requesting information about someone else's property? I did not give it to him, btw. There should be a law against this!

I paid Market Leader several years $300 a month for ten leads per month. While it paid for itself for many years, 2013 was a dry year, and I stopped paying them $3,600 a year for their service. Most of the leads were bogus, but between one and two percent of the leads actually close, and that is all that you need to pay for the service.

I paid for one year of leads from realtor.com for the zip code that I live in, but nothing ever panned out from them.

I am currently paying Trulia about $100 per month for a small percentage of buyer and seller leads in my zip, and that provides mostly bogus leads as well. Like Hank Dugie says, though, I have received a few promising leads from the service, and I am hoping fo rthe best.

We just work with existing clients and referrals from clients and spheres of influence.  Will be interested to see as more answers come in concerning ROI for these sites.