Market Leader | Reviews and Pricing | 2024
Market Leader is an affordable CRM + website combo for real estate agents and teams. They own HouseValues.com from which they generate many of the primarily Facebook leads they sell to their users. Their system is simple, functional, and one of the easiest solutions for an agent who needs a platform on a budget.
Founded in 1999, Market Leader was purchased in 2013 by Trulia. After the Zillow-Trulia merger, Zillow sold Market Leader, and it is now a product with the Constellation Real Estate Group with sister real estate products like Z57 and Zurple. They are located in Bellevue, WA.
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Use Market Leader if…
- You want a very affordable CRM-website combo that can do the basics
- You prize simplicity and are turned off by the clutter of more feature-rich and pricey options
Skip Market Leader if…
- You want a more powerful all-in-one system and have a bigger budget (consider Real Geeks)
- You just need a website and have a CRM already (consider Placester)
- You want a simple website but with a much more customizable backend (consider Agentfire)
View Other Real Estate Platforms
Market Leader Design Examples
Market Leader has three starting templates to choose from: Bungalow, Tudor, and Villa. There are dark and light modes for each, meaning there are effectively 6 versions of their site.
They’ve added more opportunities to customize your website recently, however, including a drag-and-drop WYSIWYG editor. In the editor, you can easily add, remove, and move components on your homepage to get a look more closely aligned with what you want.
Their sites are very simple but follow some of the best practices in real estate web design. The homepages are generally minimalist designs with a search bar in the center, just like you’d expect from the portals.
Their IDX buyer home search is functional. It features the map display I like – with the listings in a sidebar, just like Zillow or Trulia. Matching consumer expectations on pages like those will help keep them on your site and comfortable navigating listings.
In the end, their sites are much more basic than some of their (more costly) competitors. It is best designed as a minimalist lead generation site to send and convert paid traffic or social media call-to-actions.
I found examples of Market Leader websites, a few of which are below!
Tene Villarreal
Realty ONE Group Dockside
Tammy Wasinger
Best Features
Paid Leads
Everyone complains about the quality of leads, and users in Market Leader reviews are no different.
But the reality is that leads are expensive. A good ROI on a real estate lead is 5-1, meaning you could easily spend as much a $1000 or more for a closing. If you aren’t spending that much on leads and complaining about lead quality, then chances are you simply don’t understand lead generation very well, if I may be frank.
No doubt leads have gotten tougher as Google and Facebook ad spending has skyrocketed in the past few years. The quality or frequency has probably gone down for everyone on the same ad spend. But that is not Market Leader’s fault.
Market Leader owns the site HouseValues.com. They have a variety of lead sources they route through this landing page and send on to their participating customers.
For real estate site paid leads, they create Google PPC ads to send traffic directly to your buyer search pages, at which they force registration to collect buyer leads for you.
Simple CRM Backend
Market Leader’s CRM is not feature-rich like other CRM options. But it is easy to use and gets the job done well enough.
Because the CRM and website are integrated, you can easily follow your users as they browse homes, seeing which they like or viewed multiple times. That can make for an easy launching point when starting a conversation.
It also has basic email marketing templates and features, as well as a mobile app.
The CRM allows you to group and bucket contacts, and even auto-trigger marketing plans when added to these groups.
It is not a good transaction management tool but does integrate with DotLoop.
Affordable
Market Leader is a ready out-of-the-box solution that covers all the basics and does the basics well. All of that for half of what you would likely pay for the higher tier solutions.
While it’s probable that your business will outgrow Market Leader’s features, it is a very affordable starting place that allows you to break away from your broker’s site and have your own online real estate for customers.
Biggest Pitfalls
Weak Website
Market Leader has gotten better at having more flexible website options, especially on the homepage. You’ll still be limited if trying to make numerous custom interior pages. Don’t use Market Leader if you are intending on building a content site. It’s not adequate for bloggers, video content producers, etc.
It’s also not an SEO-centric solution. Of the sites I looked at, most were getting an estimated 1 or 0 organic visitors from Google. I did find one brokerage site getting approximately 350 visits from Google according to SEMRush.
The website as a whole is functional and not ugly. The minimalism likely plays in its favor as it’s best use is giving clients a place to shop for homes in your ecosystem.
Individuals or Small Teams at Most
Market Leader has a close relationship with Keller Williams, meaning many of top KW agents have a Market Leader site under KW. But every one of those top agents with a Market Leader site had another site that was clearly the main hub of their business, whether it was CINC or Brivity or something else.
Market leader does include a Market Leader Pro for Teams package that includes some team monitoring and tools. The lead routing allows you to send leads round robin, best match, by source, by zip code, or a combination of all the above. It also has a team leader dashboard to monitor the entire team funnel.
However each agent is using the same site (it doesn’t have subdomains for each agent like kvCORE or another platform).
Market Leader is ideal for the individual agent and at most the small team.
Renting the Website
Market Leader owns your website. Not you. They own your domain. If you leave Market Leader, realistically you are leaving behind your website completely and starting from scratch.
This is approximately true of most of their competitors, so this isn’t necessarily a knock on Market Leader. But keep that in mind when choosing any website solution for your business!
Market Leader Pricing*
- $129/mo for Market Leader Pro
- ~$20-$30 per lead
Market Leader is one of the most affordable CRM/website all-in-ones at just $129/mo and no setup fees for the Market Leader Pro plan. Leads are optional and cost approximately $20-$30 per lead depending on your market.
They also have a Team and Brokerage solution.
If available, you can also buy out an entire market so as to get exclusivity for leads generated in that region.
*This is current to the best of my knowledge at the time of this writing. Contact the vendor directly to check current prices, discounts, and terms.
My Personal Recommendation
I used Market Leader for my own first site. I haven’t used it since 2015. A lot has no doubt changed since then so I don’t take my own experience as gospel.
That said, I had a good experience. I bought leads from Market Leader my first, meager year in real estate. Just $100/mo in paid leads on top of the CRM cost led to all of my six closings in my first year. A solid ROI! And my follow up was not great as a newbie agent. Leads have gotten more expensive since then, so I wouldn’t necessarily expect those kinds of results today, but I can’t complain.
In 2015, I wanted to stop paying for leads and start earning them. I ultimately built my own WordPress website and focused on content marketing to earn organic traffic and leads.
The consensus on social media about Market Leader seems to be that they may have rested on their laurels a bit, or perhaps struggled keeping focused during their move from Trulia, to Zillow, and then Constellation Software. Maybe Constellation’s focus is torn between Market Leader and its other closely related products like Z57 and Zurple.
The bottom line is that other products have jumped past what Market Leader offers in terms of functions, integrations, usability, and design. Maybe their closer relationship with the KW family will turn things around, but for now, there are better solutions.
That said, for the price, Market Leader is still a very manageable solution that I think is not a bad option for a single agent whose website is not a main pillar of their business. If you want a basic CRM-website combo that won’t break the bank, Market Leader is worth a demo.
Market Leader Videos
Con
We were promised 150 leads in 6 months. Within the 6 months we received 123 leads and 52 of them were not within our territory- not even close. I would not recommend this company for leads.
Pros
WEBSITE
Con
I Roman Mazurkevych signed 6-month contract back in April 1st 2022 to receive 10 guarantied leads from Tampa Bay area based on my Zip code 33647. Starting in July 2022 i have been received leads from other cities all over Florida (Miami, Orlando, Naples, Daytona Beach, Ocala) which are more than 1 hour away from a Zip code I paid for and area of work I was willing to travel too. When I first contacted them back in September 2022, I have talked to case manager Jason Choi, who said quote” that submitted a ticket to our advertising team to see if we can make any changes regarding the areas your leads are coming from and have also flagged your account to follow up with you next month to re-evaluate”.
after month of October or November I have not received a phone call or update regarding this issue.
I contacted them again back in December and January to see what happened in November 2022 which i received a total of 3 LEADS (1 from out of area) out of promised 10. New Case manager Avery that my special account will be put in REVIEW again at the end of January. I shall again pay in Full a total $499 a month for leads which are not verified or services not completed in advance.
December leads 3 out of area of reach for me). January leads are 9 from Tampa and 1 from Boca Raton from East coast.
I tried to return them and it got denied by Custom Service.
I already placed an account for cancelation for so February 2023 will be my last month of paying for this unbelievable bad service.
BTW you will get lucky if one of your leads will have a phone number out of ten. Mine wasn’t.
What I seek is Justice for a new Real estate agents like me, which this company take and advantage and do not follow up on maintaining their customers as they suppose too.
Pros
None
Con
If you are looking for overpromising and underdelivering company comprising of unethical practices and contractual agreements written only for their protection and no thought of client then market leader is for you. The company’s president of sales and service Joe White deceitfully allows employees namely Usman and Spencer Dahlquist to mischievously con customers on an antiquated system and leads that are shared with other agents and found by a service that provides incorrect information and provides not explanation as to how these leads are generated. DO NOT USE MARKET LEADER unless you like waiting money and dealing with unprofessionalism.