Content
Real Estate Benchmarks 2024
December 15, 2023
20 mins
Despite numerous challenges underway, the real estate sector continues to flourish by adapting to technological advancements, evolving customer preferences, hyping trends, and market dynamics:
🔴 Traditional classifieds have seamlessly transitioned into digital 3D tours
🔴 Open houses have transformed into virtual walkthroughs
🔴 Leasing apartments for weeks or months occurs without the need for in-person interactions.
Browsing properties online has turned into a pleasurable pastime for many people. TV shows like Million Dollar Listing and Selling Sunset have become the benchmarks for reality TV in this industry.
In 2023, real estate industry has enthusiastically embraced digital marketing, ushering in virtual showings and digital transactions.
Real estate agencies have capitalized on this shift by employing high-quality video content and 360-degree virtual tours to let potential buyers explore properties from the comfort of their homes.
Notably, digital ad spending in real estate has gravitated towards mobile platforms, which aligns with the prevailing trend of property searches on mobile devices.
As many as 43% of American online news readers exit a website after perusing one page only. Similarly, Americans spend about 6 minutes and 30 seconds shopping online before they lose interest.
In 2023, user interaction in the real estate industry websites of 3.22K almost caught up with the estimated median value of website sessions across all industries of 3.93K.
Pro Tip: To boost sessions on your real estate site, tailor content targeted at low-hanging fruit keywords on the bottom of Google page one or the second page within the real estate industry. While these keywords may not be related to your primary real estate offerings directly, be sure to optimize them for long-tail search queries. This is the proven way to engage a broader audience, bet on less saturated keywords, and win more focused traffic to your website. With that, the incorporation of internal links will improve search rankings and foster user engagement.
Given the median value of pageviews across industries of 8.82K, the real estate niche scored 9.03K in 2023.
Pro Tip: It is crucial to monitor the pageviews on your website to track month-over-month growth or declines. This is how you’ll follow real estate trends continuously and set timely adjustments to enhance your website performance.
The average time on a page for the real estate industry is 1m.34s. The benchmark almost correlates with the median time of 1m.31s. across all industries.
Pro Tip: Crafting top-tier content stands as one of the most effective methods to increase user time on your pages. When users perceive your content as informative, engaging, and well-crafted, they are more inclined to invest time in reading it. Conduct thorough real estate research and delve into topics that best resonate with the local property needs of homebuyers, sellers, tenants, lessors, lessees, and real estate investors. Employ clear and concise language, and break up the text with headings, subheadings, and eye-catching images.
With 2.02K, the user count in real estate in 2023 is slightly below the estimated all-industry median of 3.02.
Pro Tip: To ensure effective website user tracking, focus on the ratio of new versus returning visitors. This metric will help you attract new users and retain the existing ones. Analyze user demographics and behaviors to fine-tune your marketing strategies by optimizing user experience, enhancing engagement, and driving conversions.
An estimated 2.62K new users visit real estate websites per month. With that, the median indicator across all industries is 3.66K.
Pro Tip: Closely examine real estate web analytics to identify opportunities that will help you attract specific new users. In line with your strategic marketing objectives and the specific real estate needs of your target audience, contemplate design adjustments, make SEO updates, and generate additional backlinks.
Returning users are people who’ve returned to your website within two years after their first visit. With that, they interacted with your website with the same device they used for their first visit.
30% to 50% is considered a sound returning customer rate across the industries.
Given the tough competition in the real estate market, aim at <50% mark as relevant proof that your content is engaging to regular readers.
Pro Tip: RCR marks the balance between customer acquisition and retention strategy. Once your strategic real estate count is on one-time purchases, your new-to-returning visitors' rate should favor acquiring new visitors. Whether you care about the retention and lifetime value (LTV) of your customers, bet on returning visitors. In addition to attracting new visitors and converting them to paying customers, RCR will signal whether your existing customers are satisfied with your real estate services and are willing to get back to you.
30% marks a healthy balance of new vs. returning visitors for eCommerce.
With a median bounce rate of 60.78% across the industries in 2023 real estate scored 46.85%. Given the acceptable customer churn rate (CCR) of >10%, the key question is how soon users leave real estate pages and why.
Pro Tip: To mitigate your site's bounce rate, ensure that content aligns seamlessly with user search intent. Basic steps include optimizing load times and implementing effective content interlinking. Faster websites offer a more enjoyable browsing experience and positively affect search rankings. Optimize file sizes, eliminate unnecessary code, and streamline the design to encourage visitors to linger on your website.
While paid ads potentially generate $2 in return for every dollar spent, real estate businesses consider a pay-per-click (PPC) strategy as a sustainable option to surge the return on investment (ROI).
Given the extended buying cycle and substantial investment associated with real estate, it's reasonable to orient at an average monthly spend on paid ads of $1000 compared to businesses offering less expensive and less personalized products.
In 2023, Google Ads showed the following averages across top-performing industries:
🔴 Click-through rate (CTR) 6.11% | 3% YoY increase vs. 2022.
🔴 Cost per click (CPC) $4.22 | 5% YoY increase vs. 2022.
🔴 Cost per lead (CPL) $53.52 | 20% YoY increase vs. 2022.
🔴 Conversion rate (CVR) 7.04% | 10% YoY decrease vs. 2022
With a median all-industry click-through rate (CTR) in 2023 of 6.11%, the real estate CTR of 9.09% is above average and close to the highest scorers, Apparel/Fashion & Jewelry 11.78%, Sports & Recreation 10.53%, and Travel 10.03% respectively.
With the estimated median cost per click (CPC) of $4.22 in Google Ads, the real estate industry enjoys one of the lowest rates of $1.55 compared to Attorneys and Legal Services $9.21, Dentists and Dental Services $6.69, and Home and Home Improvement $6.55 accordingly. With that, in 2023 CPC rose in the retail industry by some 12.32%.
The cost per lead (CPL) in real estate of $66.02 is above the all-industry average of $53.52. This signals toughening rivalry across the market, considering a 20% CPL increase YoY vs. 2022.
With the average cost per lead for real estate advertising on search engines of $66.02 across all subcategories, it is the quickest way of getting a potential customer to the agent. The CPL of $35.52 for apartments and rentals is even lower.
Other top-scoring industries for CPL:
🔴 Attorneys & Legal Services $111.05
🔴 Career & Employment $132.95
🔴 Furniture $108.85
🔴 Finance & Insurance $90.02
🔴 Business Services $87.36
🔴 Animals & Pets $72.24
With a substantial CPL YoY rise of 46.22%, real estate is among the top competitive cost-per-lead industries along with Career and Employment (52.19%), and Arts and Entertainment (49.18%).
With the median all-industry conversion rate (CVR) of 7.04%, real estate has scored one of the lowest rates with 2.88% in 2023. The top CVR scorers in 2023 were Animals and Pets (13.41%), Physicians and Surgeons (13.12%), and Automotive Repair, Service, and Parts (12.61%).
With the highest open rate shown by government-related emails of 28.77% vs. the all-industry median of 21.33%, the average open rate in the real estate industry is 19.17%.
With the average all-industries click rate of 2.62%, hobbies scored the highest at 5.01%, while the estimated click rate for the real estate industry is 1.77%.
With an average hard bounce rate across industries of 0.40%, real estate scored 0.38% in 2023.
With an average soft bounce rate of 0.61% across the industries, real estate scored 0.56%.
Finally, real estate almost catches up with a 0.27% unsubscribe rate compared to the all-industry average of 0.25%.
As of Q.3 2023, monthly Facebook page impressions in real estate accounted for 84K. To compare, as the top scorer across all industries, the entertainment industry wins 2M monthly Facebook page impressions.
As for Facebook posting frequency (the average number of posts shared daily), with 0.36 posts a day real estate lags behind the entertainment industry with 1.89 daily posts.
With a post engagement rate of 1%, a declining monthly audience rate of -2.66% on Facebook comes as no surprise.
With over 1M monthly page impressions, the entertainment industry topped Instagram. By contrast, the retail industry scored a mere 646K page impressions.
With monthly Instagram profile impressions of 65,000 across the real estate industry, the audience growth rate of -0.26% shows a negative tendency.
Instagram post engagement rate across the real estate industry is 1.47%, while Instagram posting frequency is 0.56 posts a day.
As for Instagram posting frequency, with 1.02 posts a day real estate almost catches up with the lead entertainment industry with 1.24 daily posts.
We’ve analyzed the engagement rate shown by the industry’s leader Zillow.com. The domain tops rankings across the real estate industry, scoring 76th worldwide and 20th in the United States respectively.
With 291.7M monthly website visits, the company significantly outperformed its closest competitor Realtor.com with 120.0M visits.
Zillow.com traffic flow over the past three months highlights organic (45.24%) and direct (41.27%) search, followed by paid search (8.31%), social media (3.10%), referrals (1.51%), email marketing (0.55%), and display ads (0.02%).
🔴 Out of 361.2 M direct visits over Sep. 23 - Nov. 23, 2023, 55.15% were desktop users, while 44.85% searched for Zillow.com on their mobile phones.
🔴 With 395.9 M total organic search visits, 32.4% of users searched for the company’s real estate services through desktop, while 67.7% did it from their mobile phones.
🔴 With 72.8 M paid search visits, 87.42% of users did it on their desktops, while 12.58% of users clicked on the company’s website on their desktop.
🔴 Social media visits amounted to 27.2 M, with 83.03% from mobile, and 16.97% from desktop accordingly.
🔴 Total referral visits amounted to 13.2 M, with 17.78% through desktop, and 82.22% through mobile phones.
🔴 4.8 M people visited the company’s website by e-mail: 99.04% from desktop, and a mere 0.96% from mobile respectively.
🔴 With 133.6 K display ads visits, 70.36% of users clicked on the company’s ads from their desktop, while 29.64% did it on their mobiles.
🔴 While Zillow.com branded 55% vs. non-branded organic search 45% is almost equal, organic search 84.47% considerably outperforms paid search 15.53%.
To achieve the finest effect, we’ve estimated key industry benchmarks. These numbers will serve as recommended guidelines you should follow to catch up with the market competition in 2024 and beyond.
While there is no unified benchmark in real estate, Promodo experts have selected the top ones:
Measuring benchmarks for your digital marketing success in the real estate industry is much about achieving a solid return on investment (ROI). The metric objectively assesses the overall effectiveness of your marketing initiatives by juxtaposing the total investment with the total profit you generate.
Ultimately, the success or failure of your marketing endeavors hinges on the calculated ROI, especially when your primary marketing objective is lead generation.
Our practice shows that organic channels consistently yield a superior long-term ROI compared to paid ad options across media channels. This indicates that real estate clients are far more inclined to organic engagement.
Considering estimated real estate benchmarking indicators, your strategic marketing task is to allocate a marketing budget across diverse inbound demand generation channels.
Benefit from paid lead generation as an effective short-term supplement to driving traffic organically.
In parallel, strategically bet on search engine optimization (SEO) of your real estate website as a slower though higher-ROI channel that will gain momentum in 2024 and beyond.
Total Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) is a high-level metric that swiftly signals the effectiveness of your campaign by assessing the potential lifetime value (LTV) of each of your real estate MQLs.
The recommended MQLgrowth benchmark in real estate is +40% YoY.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is how much you spend on acquiring a single new customer. CAC encompasses the entire marketing and sales process. The metric shows whether or not your marketing efforts exceed budgetary limits per customer acquisition.
Unlike ROI, CAC does not consider the inherent value of each customer, so make sure you apply these metrics as complementary.
Optimize CAC by:
🔴 Allocating paid media CAC channels to target high-value audiences
🔴 Reserving organic CAC channels for the majority of lead generation efforts.
Recommended customer acquisition cost benchmarks in real estate to achieve i 2024: organic benchmark of $660 vs. paid benchmark of $1,185.
Cost Per Lead (CPL) is the cost you pay for generating a new lead from your real estate website. CPL specifically assesses the cost you pay for gaining new customers at the top of the lead generation funnel.
The recommended cost per lead benchmarks in real estate: organic benchmark of $410 vs. paid benchmark of $470.
Pro Tip: Achieving low CAC and Low CPL is your ideal marketing scenario in the real estate business for 2024 and beyond.
The Visitor-to-Lead Conversion Rate (traffic conversion rate) will help you monitor the proportion of your visitors who leave their details in your contact form, subscribe to an email list, or engage in conversions through call-to-action (CTA) offers on your real estate website.
The metric measures the effectiveness of your website performance in terms of conversion optimization and content quality.
The recommended visitor-to-lead conversion benchmark in real estate is 2.2%.
The Lead to MQL conversion rate gauges the proportion of generated leads that transform into your real estate sales prospects. The metric assesses the potential of your marketing efforts to target a genuinely valuable audience.
The best-fit approach here is to refine your targeting strategy by creating detailed customer personas for your potential real estate clients.
The estimated appropriate Lead to MQL conversion rate benchmark in retail industry is 25-30%.
Click-through Rate (CTR) gauges the ratio of users who saw a link to your real estate website and those who clicked on it. In the real estate industry, the CTR benchmark considers organic search results, PPC ads, and email marketing.
We’ve estimated CTR for the real estate industry as follows:
🔴 Organic Search: 39.6% for the 1st position in search engine results pages (SERPs)
🔴 Pay-per-click (PPC): 1.9%
🔴 Email marketing: 4.9%.
The typical budget for a real estate website ranges from $5,000 to $10,000. With that, lead real estate agencies may allocate upwards of $50,000 or more to ensure a superior user experience (UX) and optimal search engine optimization (SEO).
Real estate websites typically rank between 50 and 100 for relevant keywords in search engine results pages (SERPs), but top performers secure positions in the top 10, which enhances their visibility and brings more qualified leads.
This metric gauges the proportion of website visitors undertaking specific actions, such as requesting property valuations or contacting agents.
While the average conversion rate for real estate websites is 2%, top industry performers like Zillow.com and Realtor.com consistently achieve CVR exceeding 5%.
On average, real estate agents generate approximately 100 monthly leads. High-performing agents, however, achieve 200 or more monthly leads.
The average home sales price in the United States is around $350,000. Distinguished real estate agents consistently secure sales at or above this average.
While the median sales conversion rate (CVR) for real estate agents hovers around 20%, top performers consistently achieve 30% or more.
Content Marketing Manager at Promodo
Taras has 16 years of hands-on copywriting experience overseas with 3000+ unique copies.
Accredited with Certificate of Proficiency in English (C2 level) by Cambridge University. Studied at Writing Launch Academy (United States) and owns an Academic Writing Certificate from Oregon University. Author of 12 dictionaries with Apriori Publishers.
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