Questions to ask before you buy mortgage leads

Put these questions to any mortgage lead vendor before the first payment, us included. Each one says why it matters and what a good answer looks like, then gives our own answer in one line with a link to the page that answers it in full. No answer replaces the test at the end: you will not know whether a source works for your team until you run a first order and measure it.

Questions about cost

Cost questions decide whether leads pay off, and the price per lead is the least useful of them. Ask what is in the price, then ask what a funded loan costs, because the second number is the one your business actually pays for.

1. What does a lead cost, and is anything charged on top?

A good answer is a published price per lead type, with ad spend, setup and any other fee either included or named. A price you only hear on a call is hard to compare with anything.

Our answer: per lead, and nothing else, with no setup fee. The list price for every lead type is published on our pricing page.

2. What does a funded loan cost your clients?

Cost per funded loan is the lead spend divided by the share of leads that reach a funded loan. Halve the price while that share falls by more than half, and every loan you close gets more expensive. A good answer separates what clients report from what the vendor promises.

Our answer: clients report an average close rate of 8% to 9%, and our cost per funded loan at list price, by lead type, is on our pricing page. The arithmetic is worked through in cost per lead against cost per funded loan.

3. What contact rate do your clients report?

Contact rate tells you how many leads your team will actually speak to. It depends as much on your dialer and follow-up as on the source, so ask what clients report rather than accepting a vendor's own measurement.

Our answer: expect a contact rate of 30% to 40%. Clients report 40% to 50% in the first weeks and 60% to 70% over 90 days. How many pick up depends on your sales strategy, your dialer, your CRM and your follow-up, as our FAQ on how many actually pick up explains.

Source: the close rate and the reported contact rates above are what our clients report to us from their own systems; 30% to 40% is what we expect. We measure no closings ourselves, and no figure here is a promise.

Questions about exclusivity and lead source

Exclusivity and lead source decide how many other lenders reach the borrower first and whether the borrower remembers asking. Ask for both in writing and in detail, because a word on a website costs a vendor nothing.

4. Is the no-resale promise written into the agreement?

A good answer is a clause you can read before you pay: it names every way the lead could be passed on, covers old and unconverted leads, and keeps applying after you stop ordering.

Our answer: One lead goes to exactly one client. It is in writing, in Section 2.3 of the agreement every client signs, and how to check a lead vendor never resells your leads shows what the clause covers.

Source: VisionXLab Lead Generation Service Agreement, Section 2.3 (Lifetime exclusivity), the version clients sign.

5. Where exactly do the leads come from?

A vendor that runs its own advertising can tell you what the borrower saw and answered. A vendor that buys records from a supplier cannot promise what that supplier does with its copy, and the borrower is less likely to remember asking.

Our answer: from paid ads we run and pay for ourselves on Facebook and Instagram. A lead reaches us one of two ways: through the lead form that opens inside the ad, or through our own landing page that the ad clicks through to. The difference is in where mortgage leads come from.

6. How are you different from the big shared lead sites?

Ask how many lenders receive the same borrower's information, and ask for the comparison in facts you can check rather than adjectives.

Our answer: our review of fifteen named mortgage lead sources, each fact tagged by where it came from and dated, is published in our disclosed comparison section.

Questions about lead quality and bad leads

Lead quality questions are about proof: how the vendor knows the person is real and asked to be contacted, and what the vendor does when a lead is wrong. Get both answers before you pay, not after the first bad lead.

7. How do you know a lead is real, and can you prove consent?

A good answer names the check on the phone number and the consent record the vendor can produce on the day a borrower disputes a call, because liability for the call sits with whoever dials.

Our answer: a landing-page lead gets a text with a six-digit code they have to type back before anything is delivered, and on our landing pages consent is captured with a TrustedForm certificate, pulled on request. On the lead form inside our ads, where the form shows a consent box, the wording and the consumer's answer are stored with the lead. More in how do I know a lead is real.

8. What happens when a lead is bad?

A good answer lists which defects are credited or replaced at no charge, what proof the vendor needs, and how long you have to report them. What a vendor can and cannot check is set out in what a lead vendor owes you when a lead is bad.

Our answer: a lead that misses our qualification criteria is never delivered and never billed. An exact duplicate in the same order, a missing or non-existent phone number, or a lead outside your licensed states is replaced at no charge when reported within five business days, as our pricing FAQ states.

9. Which of the borrower's answers are self-reported, and who sets the criteria?

Everything a borrower types on a lead form is self-reported, so a lead is pre-qualified at most. A good answer says who sets the criteria, whether they differ by lead type, and what happens to a lead that misses them.

Our answer: the borrower picks their own credit range, income and property on our form. The criteria are ours, they differ by lead type, and a lead that misses them is never delivered and never billed. See prequalified means what, exactly.

Questions about delivery and your CRM

Delivery questions decide how fresh a lead is when your team dials. Ask where leads land, how fast, in which territory, and what the vendor expects from your side once a lead arrives.

10. Can leads go straight into my CRM, and how fast?

A lead that waits in an email inbox or a vendor portal goes cold. A good answer is a direct push into the CRM your team already uses, with a test lead before launch.

Our answer: straight into your CRM, in real time. Across our lead types the median is under one second, 97 of 100 inside ten seconds. We connect natively to several mortgage CRMs, and to anything with a webhook or an API. Why the minutes matter is in how fast a lead should reach your CRM.

Source: our measurement, first-attempt deliveries into client CRMs over the 30 days to 15 September 2026, all lead types. It times delivery into the CRM, not how fast an officer dials.

11. Can I buy only in my states or ZIP codes?

A loan originator is licensed state by state, so a lead outside your states is wasted. Ask how narrow an order can go and what the narrowing does to volume.

Our answer: we deliver by state, and an order can be limited by ZIP code, not by county. Our in-ad form leads carry no ZIP, so a ZIP-limited order gets landing-page leads only and fills slower. The trade-offs are in can I buy mortgage leads by state or ZIP.

12. How fast do my loan officers have to call?

The vendor's answer tells you what it expects from your desk, and a vendor that blames poor results on slow calling should have said so before you paid.

Our answer: our agreement recommends calling within 20 minutes; sooner is better. See how fast loan officers have to call.

Source: VisionXLab Lead Generation Service Agreement, the version clients sign, for the 20-minute recommendation.

Questions about security and vendor approval

If your company approves vendors before a branch can buy, its review will ask who tested the vendor's systems and what your compliance team gets to read. Ask both before the first order, so the paperwork runs while the order is sized.

13. Has the vendor's lead system been penetration tested by an independent firm?

A good answer is a letter signed by the testing firm, with the dates, what was in scope and the findings by severity, not the vendor's own statement. A test is point-in-time, so ask when it ran.

Our answer: yes. MSP Pentesting LLC, an independent U.S. firm, penetration tested our lead system from October 19 to 23, 2026, and found no critical, high or medium severity issues. The signed attestation letter, ready for your vendor approval file, is on our security page.

Source: the Third-Party Penetration Test Attestation by MSP Pentesting LLC, dated October 23, 2026, linked from our security page.

14. What should I send my compliance team or partner?

Whoever signs off will ask about consent, where the leads come from, how they arrive and what the agreement says, so ask the vendor for each of them in a form you can forward.

Our answer: the checklist a loan officer can forward, from the consent wording and how it is recorded to the agreement terms, is in what to send your compliance team or partner. If your company approves vendors, we fill in your security and compliance questionnaire, and no lead is delivered before your approval clears.

Questions about the contract and the first order

Contract and first-order questions decide how much you risk before you know anything. Ask about the term, how orders are paid, and how small a first order can be while still telling you something.

15. Is there a long-term contract, and how is an order paid?

A good answer is an agreement you can read before you pay, with no minimum term and a clear way to stop.

Our answer: no long-term contract. You sign one Lead Generation Service Agreement, every order is prepaid, there is no retainer, and you can stop any re-order at any time. See our FAQ on the contract.

16. How small can a first order be, and what happens after I pay?

A first order has to be big enough to judge and small enough to walk away from. Ask who sizes it and how long setup takes.

Our answer: there is no fixed minimum. Self-serve packs start at 10 leads, and a team order is sized on a call. Setup is one call of 20 to 40 minutes with whoever owns your CRM, as what happens after I pay describes.

Questions to ask for purchase, cash-out and HELOC leads

Each lead type adds questions of its own, such as whether a pre-approved buyer can be bought or which loan a homeowner asked for. They are answered for ours on each product page:

• Questions to ask before you buy purchase leads
• Questions to ask before you buy cash-out refinance leads
• Questions to ask before you buy HELOC leads

Then run a first order

Run a first order, because no answer above tells you whether a source works for your team. Pick one lead type, choose a size big enough to judge, and fix it before the first lead arrives. Keep your dialing, script, hours and CRM path the same while it runs.

• Track every lead. Contact rate, applications and funded loans, from your own CRM.
• Compute cost per funded loan. What the order cost, divided by the loans it funded, as in cost per lead against cost per funded loan.
• Scale or stop. Compare that number with what a funded loan is worth to you, then order more of what worked, or stop.

How to design the test so the result means something is in how to test a new mortgage lead source. Our list prices and cost per funded loan by lead type are on our pricing page.