Which motivated seller lead service should I use?

I hear this question in some form every week, and it usually comes with a story. A list tool that sat unused after the second month. A batch of paid leads where half the houses were already on the market.

Each of those services does a real job. Most of the pain comes from buying the wrong job for how you like to work.

Here are the four models in plain words, what each one is good for, and the questions worth asking before you pay any of them.

The four models

List software you pull yourself

PropStream, BatchLeads, DealMachine and PropertyRadar are tools a lot of readers already use. You set the filters, pull the list, skip trace it and send it to a mail house or your callers. You pay a monthly subscription, and skip tracing and postage on top as you use them.

It's the cheapest way in and the most work. It suits the investor who likes the data and has the hours. Two things to know: anyone with the same filters can pull the same names, and you're the one who has to work out which lists actually sell in your county.

Pay-per-lead marketplaces

You pay for each seller lead, usually a homeowner who filled out a form or answered a call. No list to pull and no mail to send. The cost rises with every lead you buy, and what you learn is who raised a hand, not which list in your county sells.

Before you buy, ask whether the same lead goes to more than one investor, and what happens if the house turns out to be listed already. Get both answers in writing.

Done-for-you mail services

The service pulls the list, picks the owners, prints and mails the letters, and the calls come to you. You usually pay a monthly fee plus postage. It suits the investor who would rather spend time with sellers than with spreadsheets.

These services differ a lot underneath. Ask where the records come from, how often the list gets re-checked, and whether they'll show you which lists sold in your county before you start.

Lead-gen agencies running ads

The agency runs Google or Facebook ads aimed at homeowners who want to sell, then passes the leads to you. You pay a management fee plus the ad spend. You learn what a lead costs from ads in your area. You don't learn much about the owners sitting in your county's records, because ads only find the people who come looking.

Side by side

Subscription or pay-per-lead?

One version of this shows up in search a lot: subscription versus pay-per-lead if I'm closing about five deals a month. The honest answer comes from your own numbers, not a vendor's.

Take one month. Add up everything you spent on a model, including lead fees or the subscription, skip tracing, postage and ad spend. Divide by the deals it produced. Do the same for the other model. Whichever costs less per deal in your market wins, and next year the answer may flip.

Two forces push that math around. Pay-per-lead costs climb with every lead, so the more you buy the more you pay. A subscription costs the same whether you work 500 owners or 5,000, so it gets cheaper per lead as you grow.

That only holds if those owners are on lists that sell. Mailing a list that doesn't sell is how a cheap subscription turns into an expensive one.

The list still decides most of it

Whatever model you pick, the list underneath does most of the work.

In Harris County, Texas, about 15 of every 100 owners whose listing expired or was cancelled sold off-market within 12 months of the filing. On a list of owners with a judgment against them, in the same county and the same 12 months, about 1.5 of every 100 sold. A house picked at random there came in at about 1.4 of every 100.

Both lists are easy to buy. Only one of them earned its postage in Houston. The full tables, and a second county where the order flips, are in which motivated seller lists actually sell. Timing matters too; when to mail each list covers that.

How GoForClose does it

This is our model, so read this part knowing who wrote it.

GoForClose is a done-for-you direct mail service. Every week we pull your county's new filings from the county's own records, rank the owners against what actually sold off-market in your county, and mail the ones worth a stamp.

Every record is re-checked before it's mailed again, and owners who already sold or put the house on the market are taken out every week. You answer the phone.

It's $298 a month for your county. Mail is 70 cents a piece, all in, and you pick the volume, including zero if you'd rather dial or door-knock the list yourself. It's month-to-month with no setup fee. The full breakdown is on the pricing page, and the compare page says plainly who we're not a fit for.

We protect market capacity. We don't oversell a market: a market is open or at capacity. If yours is at capacity when you sign up, you get a full refund within 5 business days, a place on the waitlist, or an open market next door.

On timing, straight: your first mail drops within 7 days of signup. The honest window before a first deal is 60 to 90 days, and plenty take longer. We don't promise deals. We show you your county's record before you pay, and we'll tell you if it's thin.

How we counted

We counted every off-market, arm's-length sale recorded in the county after each filing, for filings from October 2024 through March 2025. Lists that sit there, like high equity or back taxes, and the house picked at random are counted over 12 months. Probate and divorce are left out: there are too few on record in most counties to measure honestly.

Every number here is counted from the county's own records. The numbers were counted by FirstPulse, the data engine GoForClose runs on.