Headline cost per lead is the wrong metric. Cost per closed deal is the one that matters. Here is how the three main acquisition channels compare for a UK cash-buying company in 2026, with the assumptions laid out so you can plug in your own numbers.
Cost per lead is what you pay for a single seller enquiry. Cost per closed deal is what you pay for a single seller who actually sells to you. These two numbers can easily diverge by an order of magnitude. A £20 shared lead with 2% conversion costs £1,000 per deal. A £95 exclusive lead with 12% conversion costs £790 per deal. Channel selection turns on conversion, not headline price.
| Channel | Cost per lead | Realistic conversion | Cost per closed deal |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shared lead networks | £15–£40 | 2–5% | £300–£2,000 |
| DIY Google / Meta ads (at maturity) | £8–£25 per click; ~£40–£120 per lead | 5–10% | £150–£300 |
| DIY Google / Meta ads (first 3–6 months) | £20–£60 per click; ~£150–£400 per lead | 2–6% | £500–£1,500 (often higher) |
| SEO / organic (at year 2+) | ~£10–£30 amortised | 5–10% | £100–£300 — but huge upfront investment |
| Home Sale Harry (exclusive) | £85–£95 | 8–15% | £600–£1,000 |
Ranges are observed market norms from public competitor pricing, operator interviews, and Home Sale Harry's internal benchmarks at pack-level pricing. Verify against your own cohort before budgeting. See methodology footnote below.
On shared networks, sub-60-second dial discipline can double conversion. On exclusive leads, response within 24 hours is usually fine — the seller has no other buyer to defect to.
Narrow postcode and property-type filters drop volume but raise conversion sharply. A £95 lead in your perfect buy box converts; a £40 lead outside it almost never does.
A phone-verified seller with a stated reason and rough value converts 3–5× better than a form-fill from a paid ad. Pay for the screening; do not redo it yourself.
A 48-hour refund on bad data turns your effective cost from headline price to (price × 1 / good-data rate). Without a replacement SLA, expect 15–25% of paid leads to be unworkable.
How the same £10,000/month delivers different deal counts:
Conversion assumption ranges from the table above. Your own cohort numbers will differ — run a 25-pack and benchmark against your existing channel before scaling.
Headline cost per lead ignores conversion. A cheap lead that converts at 2% is more expensive than an expensive lead that converts at 12%. Cost per closed deal normalises across channels and reveals what you actually pay for revenue.
Take the band published in the table above and adjust down 20–30% for the first 25-lead cohort while you build dial discipline and post-call follow-up. Update the assumption monthly against your real numbers. Do not budget against best-case conversion.
At maturity (month 4+, with stable creative and a converting landing page), DIY Google Ads can deliver £150–£300 per closed deal in some buy boxes. The first 3–6 months are typically £500–£1,500 per deal while you debug. Most operators conclude that exclusive lead-buying is faster to ramp and shared lead-buying is cheaper at steady-state — but the ranges overlap. Run both for a quarter.
A replacement SLA is the single biggest determinant of effective cost. Home Sale Harry refunds bad data within 48 hours (wrong contact details, duplicate within 30 days, out of declared area). Without that, expect 15–25% of any paid lead source to be unworkable.
SEO is a 12–24 month investment, not a monthly line item. Plan for £4k–£10k/month in content + technical SEO spend with zero leads in months 1–6 and ramping cost-per-deal in months 7–18. After that, amortised cost per closed deal can drop below £200, but you do not control the timeline.
Three reasons: each lead is exclusive to one partner in your postcode area (not shared with 3–5 competitors), every seller is phone-verified and situation-scored before dispatch, and bad data is refunded within 48 hours. The unit economics of exclusive routing make sub-£50 pricing impossible without breaking those guarantees.
Prepaid 10-lead pack at £95/lead. Exclusive routing, 48-hour refund on bad data, pause filters any time. Cohort against your existing acquisition cost and decide from real numbers.
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