Nearly 1 in 3 Inman News readers say they’d be willing to give up 35 percent of their commission for highly qualified Internet leads that are more likely to close than leads that haven’t been “scrubbed.”
Would you pay a referral fee of 35 percent for highly qualified, “scrubbed” leads?
Among 2,480 readers responding to the poll beteween Aug. 5 and Aug. 12, 30.1 percent said they’d be willing to pay what amounts to a referral fee for qualified leads that end up closing.
The poll accompanied a story about two new real estate search portals that the nation’s largest brokerage, NRT LLC, is planning to launch to reduce its reliance on leads from Zillow, Trulia and realtor.com.
NRT handled about 1.5 million leads last year, running most through regional call centers to be reviewed and “scrubbed” in order to eliminate those with little prospect of closing.
About 130,000 scrubbed leads were assigned to one of 4,000 “e-agents” willing to pay a 35 percent referral fee if the lead closes.
Those leads generated 4,500 “referral closings” last year, and NRT believes the new websites and improved lead management will boost that total to more than 13,000 over the next several years.