Estate agents are overpaying for property sales leads, according to new research by a call tracking platform.

The findings of a study, undertaken by Call360, claims that estate agents will collectively overpay around £220m this year to acquire customers.

Call360 says that estate agents typically look to pay up to £250 for every successful instruction to sell a property via a variety of lead sources – from Google Ads to property aggregators.

The research found that less than 2% of the estate agency market is currently using tech, and argues that agents could potentially win significantly more businesses by following this method – frequently used in retail and recruitment – to lower the cost per acquisition.

Mark Taylor, CEO of Call360, said: “The estate agency profession relies heavily on aggregators to generate valuation leads. But analysing inbound calls at branch and call-centre level will massively lower the cost per instruction for an agency.

“Advancements in artificial intelligence and automated analytics have enabled industry-leading companies to close the loop between online clicks and high value sales conversations taking place over the phone.

“The property industry has huge potential to use AI to get control of their marketing spend. Just knowing which are the good sources of valuation leads versus the poorly performing sources could save 20% of the marketing spend – let alone the time savings made from not chasing poor quality leads. Without this data and insight, agents will continue to have to rely on portals and some very unsophisticated spend on web search.”

Call360 says the industry is overly reliant on aggregators. It points to data from Google showing that 71% of online searchers still call estate agents with their initial enquiry.

This break in the sales chain means agents do not always know exactly how their online campaigns are driving results, according to Call360.

Taylor continued: “Estate agents can’t always establish the value of their online spend against results to keyword level, so they’re unable to optimise their online campaigns. We know from our experience in the industry that, as a result, agents struggle to know which lead sources are their best and worst.

“AI can generate a much higher level of data insight by closing the loop from online clicks to offline sales. Agents with enhanced conversion data – and there are very few – are optimising their media spend to grow instructions.”