Real estate lead statistics for agents

Real estate is a referral business with an online front door. Buyers browse listings for weeks on their own, then pick an agent, usually the first one they talk to, based on trust and how quickly that agent responds. This page collects the verified numbers behind that pattern so you can decide where to spend your time and how to handle every inquiry.

How we built this list: we only include figures we could trace to the original source, and each one links to it. Most of the buyer and seller data comes from the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR), which surveys thousands of recent buyers every year; NAR is a trade association, not an independent body, but its methodology is published. We also use the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau. Where NAR’s newest edition is members-only, we use the most recent public edition and say so. Last checked October 2026.

The market you’re working in

A quick snapshot of the market, because lead volume depends on it.

• Existing-home sales ran at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.99 million in September 2026, down 2.2% from a year earlier; the median existing-home price was $417,500 and homes typically sold in 33 days — NAR (2026, monthly existing-home sales report)
• First-time buyers made up 21% of primary-residence buyers from July 2024 to June 2025, a record low, and their median age rose to 40 — NAR (2025 Profile, n=6,103 recent buyers)
• The median repeat buyer was 62, and 26% of buyers paid all cash, which NAR says remains an all-time high — NAR (2025 Profile)
• The US homeownership rate was 65.0% in the second quarter of 2026, virtually unchanged from a year earlier — US Census Bureau (2026, Housing Vacancies and Homeownership survey)

NAR’s monthly sales reports put first-time buyers at 31% of September 2026 sales. That figure comes from a different monthly survey, so don’t compare it directly with the 21% from the annual Profile.

What this means for your team: fewer, older and wealthier buyers means fewer transactions to go around, and more clients who have bought or sold before. Repeat buyers often already have an agent in mind, which raises the value of staying in touch with your own past clients.

How buyers find their agent

The figures in this section and the next two come from NAR’s 2025 Generational Trends report, the latest public edition with full tables (the 2026 edition is for members only). It covers buyers who purchased between July 2023 and June 2024.

• 40% of buyers found their agent through a referral from a friend, neighbor or relative — NAR Generational Trends (2025, n=5,390 recent buyers)
• 54% of buyers ages 26–34 found their agent through a friend, neighbor or relative — NAR Generational Trends (2025, n=5,390)
• 17% used an agent they had worked with before, and 7% were referred by another agent or broker — NAR Generational Trends (2025, n=5,390)
• 7% found their agent by inquiring about a specific property online and 6% through a website — NAR Generational Trends (2025, n=5,390)
• Only 4% found their agent through the agent’s own outreach by phone, email or similar — NAR Generational Trends (2025, n=5,390)

What this means for your team: referrals and repeat clients account for most agent relationships, while cold outreach accounts for very little. Record where every lead came from, including the name of the person who referred them, so you can thank referrers and see which relationships keep sending business. Our guide to lead source tracking shows how to set that up.

How many agents they interview

• 75% of buyers interviewed only one agent, 16% interviewed two and 7% interviewed three — NAR Generational Trends (2025, n=5,390)
• 81% of sellers contacted only one agent before selecting one to sell their home — NAR Generational Trends (2025, sellers among the n=5,390 respondents)
• The typical buyer searched for two weeks before contacting an agent and 10 weeks in total, viewing a median of seven homes — NAR Generational Trends (2025, n=5,390)

What this means for your team: most clients pick the first agent they have a real conversation with. That makes the first response the most important moment in your sales process. By the time a buyer contacts you, they have already spent about two weeks researching, so they’re ready to talk now. See our lead response time statistics for the wider research on speed.

First contact and responsiveness

• 28% of buyers first contacted their agent by phone, 22% in person, 18% by asking a friend to put them in touch, 10% through a third-party website inquiry, 8% by email and 8% by text — NAR Generational Trends (2025, n=5,390)
• 14% of buyers ages 26–34 made first contact by text, compared with 2% of buyers 79 and older — NAR Generational Trends (2025, n=5,390)
• The median buyer contacted their agent once before getting a response — NAR Generational Trends (2025, n=5,390)
• 91% of US adults own a smartphone, including 97% of adults under 50 — Pew Research Center (2026, n=5,511 US adults)

What this means for your team: the phone is still the top first-contact channel, but younger buyers increasingly text first. If calls, texts and portal inquiries land in different places, some will slip. Keeping them in one thread per contact (what the unified inbox in Exa does) means whoever is on duty sees the whole conversation. Our guide to business texting covers consent and etiquette.

What buyers want from agents

• 95% of buyers rated responsiveness as a very important agent quality, second only to honesty and integrity at 98% — NAR Generational Trends (2025, n=5,390)
• 71% valued an agent who calls personally to update them, and 71% valued an agent who sends property information by text (77% among buyers 26–34) — NAR Generational Trends (2025, n=5,390)
• Experience (23%) and honesty (19%) were the most important factors when choosing an agent; only 5% chose mainly because the agent was timely with responses — NAR Generational Trends (2025, n=5,390)
• 51% of buyers found the home they purchased on the internet, and 29% through an agent — NAR Generational Trends (2025, n=5,390)
• 88% of buyers purchased through an agent or broker, and 50% primarily wanted help finding the right home — NAR 2025 Profile (2025, n=6,103 recent buyers)

What this means for your team: responsiveness gets you in the door and keeps clients happy, but it rarely wins on its own. Pair fast replies with proof of experience and honest advice. A simple habit helps: after every showing or call, log a note and set the next follow-up task so no client waits on you.

Sellers and repeat business

• 91% of sellers sold with an agent, and for-sale-by-owner sales fell to 5%, an all-time low — NAR 2025 Profile (2025, n=6,103)
• 91% of buyers would use their agent again or recommend them — NAR (2025 Profile)
• 38% of sellers found their agent through a friend, neighbor or relative, and 28% reused an agent they had worked with before — NAR Generational Trends (2025)
• Sellers had owned their home for a median of 11 years before selling, an all-time high — NAR (2025 Profile)

What this means for your team: a seller who bought with you a decade ago will only call you back if they remember you. Eleven years is a long time to stay top of mind, so plan a light nurture cadence for past clients: a home-anniversary note, an occasional market update and a check-in when rates move. Our lead nurturing playbook has cadences you can copy.

The agent side

• NAR had 1,438,569 members, and the typical member completed nine transaction sides in 2025 — NAR 2026 Member Profile (2026, covering 2025)
• The typical member earned 28% of their business from repeat clients and 22% from referrals by past clients — NAR (2026 Member Profile)
• The median member’s gross income was $59,200 in 2025 — NAR (2026 Member Profile)
• There were 530,600 real estate broker and sales agent jobs in 2025, and about 54% of sales agents were self-employed — US Bureau of Labor Statistics (2026 edition, 2025 data)

What this means for your team: with nine transactions in a typical year, each deal matters, and half of an agent’s business comes from people who already know them. A CRM for agents is mostly a memory system: who you helped, who referred whom and when to reach out next. Our realtors page shows how pipelines, follow-up tasks and texting fit together in Exa.

Final thoughts

The NAR data tells a consistent story. Buyers and sellers find agents through people they trust, talk to only one agent, and expect that agent to answer quickly and keep them informed by phone and text. Online search shapes the journey, but relationships decide who gets hired.

For a small team, that suggests three habits: answer every new inquiry fast, track where each lead came from, and keep in touch with past clients for the years between transactions.