What you actually pay for real-estate leads
A walk through the four ways the real-estate lead-gen market bills Realtors, with what each model hides inside the price.
Most Realtors who ask “what does a lead cost?” get an answer in dollars. That number is rarely the actual cost. The four main pricing models in the lead-gen market each hide costs in a different place — share-of-voice auctions, subscription tiers, commission cuts, or marked-up media. Understanding where the cost lives in each model is more useful than comparing dollar figures across models that don’t measure the same thing.
Share-of-voice auctions
You buy a slice of inbound from a third-party search experience in a geo. The price moves with how many other Realtors are bidding for the same geo. The “cost per lead” is a function of competing demand, not of what the lead is worth to you.
Subscription tiers
You pay a monthly fee for access to leads. Different tiers control how many leads you see, how exclusive they are, and what filters you can apply. The hidden cost is exclusivity — a lower-tier lead shared with two or three other Realtors costs less per contact, but the contact is worth less because the lead is fielding three calls.
Commission cuts
Free to join, but the network takes a percentage of your commission at close. On a single closing the referral fee can be a meaningful four-figure cost. The hidden cost is selection — the network sends you the leads that will most likely close, but it also sends them to the Realtor who most likely wins them, which is usually the one with the deepest discounts.
Marked-up media
A SaaS tool runs your campaign and bills you for “ad spend + management fee.” The fee is sometimes opaque, sometimes a fixed monthly, sometimes a percentage of spend. The hidden cost is markup — if the tool buys $500 of media and bills you $750, you don’t see the markup.
What this site does differently
Turnkey Leads charges one Service Fee on top of ad spend at cost. Two lines on every invoice. The hidden cost is zero — we don’t auction your geo, we don’t take a commission cut, we don’t mark up media. What we spent with Google and Meta is what shows up under “Authorized Media Budget” on your bill.
That’s the entire pricing argument. We earn one Service Fee and pass spend through at cost. If you can see a hidden cost anywhere in the math, please email us and we’ll fix the page.