A new report surveyed 462 working real estate agents and found, for most of them, the channels eating their marketing budget aren’t producing any leads.
According to the 2026 State of Real Estate Marketing Report, published by Knwn Local, Beacon, and Listing Leads, 13 of 21 marketing channels measured deliver zero leads to more than 70% of the agents using them in a typical month.
Across paid digital and portal channels specifically, the average zero-lead rate is 82%.
The report draws from responses collected between May 7 and May 20, 2026. The respondent base skews toward established practitioners: 82% have been in real estate for eight or more years, and 41% closed $10M or more in transaction volume over the trailing twelve months.
These agents are skilled operators, and the channels still aren’t delivering. Or so it would seem.
Here’s what the data shows, and what it means for your business.
Most Paid Channels Aren’t Working for Most Agents
Check out the zero-lead numbers by channel:
- TikTok delivered zero leads to 94.2% of agents using it
- LinkedIn to 86.4%
- YouTube to 83.6%
- Local Service Ads to 83.6%
- Google ads to 82.8%
- Realtor.com to 81.2%
- Zillow to 78.7%
- Meta ads to 78.6%
The question the report asks is whether a channel works for you, at your investment level, in your market.
The “X Is Broken” Narrative Usually Comes From Non-Customers
The failure narratives look different once you segment by paying customers versus non-paying critics.
The report found spend-tier reversals on two of real estate’s loudest “dead channel” debates:
- Zillow: agents who pay rate leads good or excellent at 31%, vs. 3% among free users (a 10x difference)
- Direct mail: paying customers rate lead quality good or excellent at 39.9%, vs. 5.7% among agents spending nothing on mailers (a 7x difference)
The “Zillow leads suck” conversation in real estate is almost entirely driven by agents who aren’t even paying for Zillow. Before writing off any channel, the more useful question is whether the person declaring it “dead” is, in fact, a customer.
The Channels That Actually Outperform
According to agent responses, two channels consistently sit above everything else in the dataset on lead quality: sphere of influence (SOI) and email marketing.
Sphere of influence is in a category by itself, with 81% of agents rating sphere leads as good or excellent. No other channel in the study clears 41%.
Email is the top-ranked listing appointment source, outranking every other channel by more than a full place in the rankings.
Content cadence amplifies both, particularly when agents are consistent with it. Here’s what the cadence data actually shows:
- 0 short-form posts per month: 24% of agents say content has driven deals
- 1 to 4 per month: 44%
- 5 to 15 per month: 66%
- 31+ per month: 78%
Agents with 4+ years of consistent content creation and 5+ short-form posts per month report content driving “a lot of deals” at 9x the rate of agents with neither habit in place.
That’s the single strongest two-variable effect in the entire dataset.
Most Agents Can’t Tell What’s Working
Unfortunately, 60% of agents either don’t track listing sources at all or estimate less than 10% of their business comes from content.
Which means most of the zero-lead narrative, and most of the “content doesn’t work” narrative, is built on a foundation of not actually counting.
Here’s how that goes:
- A seller calls and says they’ve been following you for a while.
- The agent doesn’t write that down.
- The deal doesn’t get attributed to content.
Result? The channel looks like it’s not producing, and the agent keeps spending on the channels that are easier to track but statistically less likely to deliver.
The first move: start tagging deal sources in your CRM. The report suggests content’s contribution to closings is almost certainly understated across the board.
Where Agent Budgets Are Heading in 2026
The investment intent data points in one direction. The channels getting the biggest “invest more” votes from respondents:
- YouTube: 61.6%
- AI tools: 60.8%
- Short-form video: 41.5%
- Email: 39.5%
Zillow and Realtor.com are the only channels in the study where more agents plan to cut spend than increase it, at a 13-to-1 ratio against.
The agents best positioned to benefit from that move started building owned assets years ago.
Email lists, content libraries, and sphere relationships are the channels the data says outperform. They’re also the channels that take the longest to build.
The move right now: audit where your marketing dollars are actually going. Look honestly at what’s producing, and start building an infrastructure on marketing with proven results.
What does that look like?
Start tagging deal sources in your CRM, build the posting habit, and grow the email list. The agents who do that work now won’t be the ones asking why their marketing isn’t working in 2027.
