Key findings
- Zillow is moving its buyer leads to Zillow Preferred, where agents pay nothing upfront and hand over 15% to 40% of their commission at closing. Two-thirds of buyer connections went to Preferred agents in Q3 2026, and Zillow expects 100% in the first half of 2027.
- An Orange County agent who spent about nine months on Zillow Flex says Flex agents pay Zillow 40% at closing, and agents on his team kept 25% of the commission. A Maryland agent got 10 deals from Zillow; one neighbourhood cost him almost $1,600 a month, where a closing may pay $13,000 or more.
- The real Facebook lead costs shown ran from $4 to $10. One Texas campaign spent $2,184 for 283 leads at $7.72 each, and its first closing, worth $10,710 in commission, came in month five.
- A Toronto team leader paid an agency while his cost per lead climbed to about $80. His own campaigns now get leads at $4 to $6.
- An Austin agent spent $1,300 on ChatGPT ads for 13 seller leads, about $100 each, at a $63 cost per 1,000 impressions.
- We screened 69 videos: 36 were more than a year old, and only 14 of the 30 recent ones gave a number we could use. 50% of the 104 numbers came from a real account.
English YouTube videos, transcripts read from caption tracks · 14 videos from 13 channels with concrete numbers, out of 69 screened; 104 numbers · 6 November 2026 · How we did this · Download the data (CSV)
Real estate leads from Zillow are turning into a share of your commission. Zillow is moving all of its buyer leads, by the first half of 2027, to a model where agents pay nothing upfront and give up 15% to 40% of the commission when the deal closes. Meanwhile the agents who showed their own ad accounts on YouTube were paying $4 to $10 for a Facebook lead, and one agent who tried ChatGPT ads paid about $100.
Agents' own numbers are rarely written down. So we searched YouTube for videos on real estate leads, Zillow, Realtor.com, Redfin, pay-at-closing referral companies and ads for agents, and screened 69. Most were older than they looked: 36 were uploaded more than a year ago. Of the 30 recent ones, 14 gave a number we could use. We logged all 104 of those numbers, marked which came from a real account, and checked the platform claims against what Zillow publishes.
What Zillow's real estate leads cost now
The biggest change for anyone buying real estate leads this year is Zillow's. Zillow calls Zillow Preferred the next evolution of Flex, its program where agents pay a fee only when a Zillow buyer closes; teams on Flex by 15 October 2025 moved over automatically. The FAQ is plain about the price: no upfront cost, a Follow Up Boss subscription, and success fees that "currently range between 15% to 40% of the agent's commission", set by ZIP code. Entry is by invitation, and Zillow says strong performers get a larger share of connections over time.
In its Q3 2026 shareholder letter, Zillow says two-thirds of buyer connections went to a Preferred partner, against about one-third a year earlier, and that it expects every connection to go through Preferred in the first half of 2027. Preferred connections bring in 35% more revenue per connection than the old advertising model. Zillow's FAQ tells invited teams that once their market switches, agents who decline stop receiving Zillow leads there.
Two agents in our sample put numbers on what that means in practice.
| Agent | Source | What they reported |
|---|---|---|
| Iain Phillips, Orange County | Zillow Flex | Flex agents agree to pay Zillow 40% at closing; he spent about nine months on Flex, and agents on his team kept 25% of the total commission |
| Iain Phillips, Orange County | Zillow pay per call (secondhand) | Agents he knows paid $500, then $800, then $1,200 per connected call by 2024, before the area moved to Flex in 2025 |
| Raymond Reffell, Maryland and DC | Zillow, buying a ZIP | 10 deals from Zillow; one neighbourhood cost almost $1,600 a month, where a closing may pay $13,000 or more |
| Raymond Reffell | Redfin partner referrals | A referral fee of up to 33% or higher, depending on the price of the home |
| Raymond Reffell | Realtor.com | 0 closings in his first stint; 1 or 2 solid leads in the month since he rejoined |
| Real Geeks podcast | Pay-at-closing providers | Their sales VP says such providers take 42% of the agent's commission (no company named) |
Reffell's numbers make the trade-off easy to see. On his $13,000 commission, Zillow's published range would take between $1,950 and $5,200 at closing, against the $1,600 a month he used to pay whether or not anyone closed. Pay at closing removes the risk of a dry month. It also takes 15% to 40% of every good one, and on Phillips's team the agent's share after all the splits was 25%. A Zillow executive interviewed on BAM in October said Preferred agents are twice as productive as the average agent, which is Zillow's own claim and comes with no published method.
Real Geeks, which sells lead generation and websites, is the loudest critic of pay-at-closing in our sample, so weigh its 42% figure with that in mind. Its sales VP also says online leads take 8 to 12 months on average to turn into a deal.
Facebook ads: the numbers agents put on screen
Facebook was where agents were most willing to show their own accounts, and the costs were low. Tyler Roicki walks through a partner agent's campaign for a list of new construction homes in Conroe, Texas: $2,184 for 283 leads, $7.72 each. The first closing, worth $10,710 in commission, came in month five, after about $1,400 to $1,500 had gone in with nothing to show for it. His best campaign later ran on $15 a day at $6.34 a lead, and a second deal went under contract after about 150 more leads.
Sidd Sur, a team leader in Toronto, paid an agency about $2,000 a month in 2021, and after roughly $70,000 of ad spend his cost per lead had crept up to about $80. He says his own campaigns now bring in leads at $4 to $6. Boosting listing posts, which he tried first, cost him about $1,000 over three months for zero leads. Pasi Poutanen, who runs Facebook ads for agents and sells a course, opens it on an Ads Manager screen showing five leads and three listing appointments in 12 hours, at $10 a lead.
Poutanen also gives the funnel he expects, which is a useful check on whether a cheap lead is a good one. These are his rules of thumb.
| Step | What he expects |
|---|---|
| Cost per lead | $10 to $25, more in expensive areas |
| Leads you reach by phone | 30% to 50% |
| Leads that book an appointment | 5% to 15% |
| Appointments that sign | 40% to 60% |
| Starting budget | $20 to $50 a day |
For comparison, WordStream and LocalIQ's 2026 benchmark put the median real estate lead on Facebook at $13.74, as we covered in our Facebook ads cost study. Housing ads run in Meta's special ad category, and Jerad Larkin of Chicago Title points out that it forces a 15-mile minimum radius, against 1 mile on Google.
Boosted posts split opinion. Sur got nothing from them. A South Carolina team leader speaking at a Tom Ferry event boosts each listing or sold-story post for about $25 and says that approach brought 22 sellers and 4 buyers, 27% of his business last year. He says Facebook marketing as a whole has brought over $2 million in commission since 2018. His posts send people to his own site, which has a lead pop-up; Sur's complaint was that a boosted post has no lead form.
Google ads and the new listing ads
Kory Prince, who runs Google Ads for agents, says his clients' campaigns were producing leads at $3 to $5 until they followed a Google rep's suggestions, after which the cost rose to $120. Click prices for buyer searches can be very low: Keyword Planner showed him estimated top-of-page bids of 11 cents to $2.24 for a Los Angeles homes search. Seller searches are another matter. In our real estate marketing study, six seller searches had a median click price of $25.41, about 16 times the $1.61 for six buyer searches, and "sell my house" was estimated at $69.29 a click.
Google also became a listing site this year. In June it rolled out listing ads through Local Services Ads in all 50 states, with home details in the results and a button to call, message or book an agent. Agents in Local Services Ads were added automatically. If you are new to that product, our Local Services Ads guide covers how leads are charged and what changed in 2026.
ChatGPT ads: one agent's test
The newest channel in our sample was also the most expensive. William Zhang, an agent in Austin, spent about $1,300 on ChatGPT ads for seller leads and got 13, about $100 each. His click-through rate was 0.83%, he paid $63 per 1,000 impressions and about $7.63 a click, and he thinks $20 to $25 a day is the minimum to get clicks at all. By his estimate a seller lead on Facebook costs $25 to $50. It is one test, and the only ChatGPT ads result from an agent we found.
Leads from your own content and contacts
The same South Carolina team leader built a YouTube channel of home tours that he says produced over 100 conversations and 26 closings, and he pays at least $20 to $25 to promote each video. He also credits recommendations from AI search with 32 clients in 2026, mostly listings. Raymond Reffell gets 1 or 2 deals a year from people he already knows, and a coach on Realtor Growth Gym cites NAR figures for 2026 putting repeat clients at 28% of agents' business and past-client referrals at 22%. None of these come with a cost per lead.
Answer in five minutes
Four videos gave a response time, and all four said 5 minutes. Roicki and Poutanen say to call, Sur says to text, email or message, and coach Brittany Handura says it about open-house sign-ins. Roicki says each new lead should get 15 to 22 calls, texts and emails in the first week, some of them automated, and Poutanen dials up to seven times over four days, because only 10% to 15% of dials get answered. The studies they cite are unnamed or old. Roicki's point stands anyway: a $7 lead is wasted if nobody calls it.
Where the numbers came from
Half of the numbers in this sample came from a real account, against 24.8% in our study of home service lead costs. That is mostly because a few creators, Roicki, Sur, Zhang and the South Carolina team leader, built whole videos around their own results. Zillow was the opposite. Only 3 of the 14 videos put a number on it, and only Reffell gave his own spend.
What we would take from this
- Price every source per closing. Roicki's client spent $2,184 for one $10,710 closing. Reffell's Zillow ZIP cost about $1,600 a month. A 35% success fee on a $13,000 commission is $4,550. Put them side by side before you choose.
- If Zillow moves your market to Preferred, check your fee by ZIP. Zillow publishes a pricing tool for its 15% to 40% range. Phillips kept 25% of the commission after the fee and his team's splits.
- Run at least one channel yourself. The cheapest real leads in our sample, $3 to $6, came from agents' own Facebook and Google campaigns, and those leads went to them alone.
- Judge a cheap lead by the appointments it books. Poutanen expects 5% to 15% of leads to book an appointment, and Sur's $80 agency leads are a reminder to read the numbers yourself.
If you run ads for a brokerage or team in the US, UK, Canada or Australia, give us read access to your Meta or Google ad accounts. A senior buyer will write a free audit of where the spend goes, whether your tracking counts real leads and appointments, and the three things we would fix first. It takes about two working days and the document is yours. If you have not run ads yet, say so and we will write a plan instead. Our real estate lead generation team runs Facebook and Google campaigns for agents and judges them on appointments. More studies, including our Ad Library study, are on our research page.
How we did this
- Source
- English YouTube videos, transcripts read from caption tracks
- Country
- United States and Canada (where stated)
- Collected
- 6 November 2026
- Sample
- 14 videos from 13 channels with concrete numbers, out of 69 screened; 104 numbers
- Upload window
- 1 November 2025 to 6 November 2026
- Platform facts checked
- Zillow Preferred FAQ, Zillow's Q3 2026 shareholder letter, HousingWire on Google's listing ads
We found videos through web searches of YouTube for Zillow leads, Zillow Flex and Preferred, Realtor.com and Redfin leads, pay-at-closing referral companies, lead vendors, and Facebook and Google ads for agents. Of 69 videos screened, we left out 36 uploaded before 1 November 2025, 3 that were private or removed, 1 not in English, 14 with no concrete lead-cost number, and 1 faceless channel with a synthetic narrator whose sums did not add up.
We read each transcript and logged every lead price, referral fee, ad spend, lead count, conversion rate, commission and return once, with its timestamp. Each number is labelled as a result from a real account, a figure the platform itself published or quoted, cited data or a secondhand report, a rule of thumb, or a worked example.
The Toronto team leader never says which dollars he means. Three numbers rely on our reading of auto-captions: $4.33 to $6.40 (captions "433 to 640"), $7.63 a click (captions "763") and a $2.24 bid estimate (captions "224"). The Orange County per-call prices are secondhand: he says he never paid per call himself. Real Geeks, which appears twice, sells lead generation and websites, and two of the Facebook figures are shown inside ad software the Toronto team leader sells.
These are creators who chose what to show, the groups are small, and none of this is our own client data. The CSV lists every number with a link to its video and timestamp.
Videos used, oldest first: Jerad Larkin, Chicago Title (16 Nov 2025), Real Geeks (19 Nov 2025), Real Geeks (21 Nov 2025), Brittany Handura (17 Dec 2025), Kory Prince (16 Jan 2026), Iain Phillips (3 Feb 2026), Pasi Poutanen (12 Feb 2026), Sidd Sur (3 Apr 2026), Tyler Roicki (16 May 2026), Raymond Reffell (27 May 2026), William Zhang, AI for Realtors (1 Sep 2026), a South Carolina team leader at a Tom Ferry event, reposted by YouTube Growth, AI Systems & Motivation (11 Sep 2026), Realtor Growth Gym (18 Sep 2026), BAM, interview with a Zillow executive (18 Oct 2026).
Download the data (CSV). Free to reuse with a link to this page.
Questions about real estate leads
How much do real estate leads cost in 2026?
It depends on the model. Zillow Preferred charges nothing upfront and takes 15% to 40% of the commission at closing. Agents showing their own Facebook campaigns paid $4 to $10 a lead, and one agent's ChatGPT ads test came to about $100 per seller lead.
How much does Zillow charge agents in 2026?
Zillow Preferred, the successor to Flex, has no upfront cost and a success fee of 15% to 40% of the agent's commission, set by ZIP code, plus a Follow Up Boss subscription. One Orange County agent on a Flex team paid 40%.
Are Zillow leads worth it?
For some agents. A Maryland agent got 10 deals from Zillow; one neighbourhood cost him almost $1,600 a month, where a closing may pay $13,000 or more. An Orange County agent on a Flex team kept 25% of the commission after Zillow's 40% fee and the team's splits.
How much do Facebook leads cost for realtors?
The real campaigns we logged ran from $4 to $6 for a Toronto team to $7.72 for a Texas new-construction campaign and $10 for an ad shown in a Facebook ads course. WordStream's 2026 median for real estate is $13.74.
What is the cheapest source of real estate leads?
Your own channels: referrals, past clients and content such as YouTube, which carry no cost per lead. NAR figures cited in one video put repeat clients at 28% of agents' business and past-client referrals at 22%. Among paid channels, the cheapest real leads we logged were $3 to $6.
How fast should I respond to a real estate lead?
Within five minutes, according to all four videos in our sample that gave a response time. One marketer says each new lead should get 15 to 22 calls, texts and emails in the first week, some of them automated.