Your Guide to Mortgage Lead Cost in the UK

For millions of families in the United Kingdom, obtaining a mortgage is the only viable option for purchasing real estate, making practically every citizen a mortgage lead. However, for mortgage lenders, the process begins far earlier, with the production and acquisition of mortgage leads.

Recent statistics show that UK residents filed for more than 279,000 mortgages from January to March 2024, totalling over £51.5 billion.

Mortgages have become the cornerstone of the property market since now 25% of UK citizens have a mortgage, while in Northern Ireland, more than 40% of residents obtain some type of mortgage.

When it comes to mortgage lead acquisition, lenders must understand how much different types of mortgage leads cost. Then, understanding the cost of mortgage leads your business needs, how much they can bring you if converted, and the estimated conversion rate, you can make an educated decision about whether specific lead acquisition campaigns are right for your business.

Let’s examine how much mortgage leads cost, what influences the prices, and what sources you should use to get the best leads for your case.

The Current Price of Mortgage Leads

Mortgage lead costs begin at around £10 for leads unlikely to convert into real purchasers and rise to £100 and much more for borrowers likely to take out a mortgage loan. At the same time, factors like geographic location, purchasing history, income level, etc., all significantly impact the pricing of a certain mortgage lead.

Here’s an estimate based on our experience:

Conventional Loan Leads	£20 to £100
FHA Loan Leads	£20 to £100
VA Loan Leads	£50 to £150
Jumbo Loan Leads	£100 to £200
Reverse Mortgage Leads	£50 to £150

However, shared leads may cost less than the specified lower values, but unique leads from competitive locations may cost more. This is why you need a lead tracking and analytics system like Phonexa’s LMS Sync, which provides a suite of lead tracking, routing, and analytics tools to ensure you’re paying or charging the correct price for the leads you buy or sell.

 

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What Are Qualified Mortgage Leads?

Qualified mortgage leads are individuals and businesses interested in obtaining a mortgage loan or refinancing an existing one. Such leads express a specific buying intent with a certain lender and meet its marketing or sales criteria.

Qualified mortgage leads will bring greater profits for all other parties, which makes them one of the most compelling leads throughout all industries. Maintaining a steady flow of prospective customers is crucial to ensure mortgage companies have clients who bring them stable revenue.

From the lender’s perspective, purchasing qualified mortgage leads is cheaper than nurturing them from scratch. It especially relates to exclusive mortgage leads sent only to one buyer. This specialness makes them so desirable for lenders.

However, promoting your business with brand awareness and lead generation campaigns is still desirable. That way, you’ll achieve the maximum brand coverage while having a stable customer flow.

Mortgage Lead Sources

As of 2025, online platforms, targeted ads, network partnerships, referrals, and lead generation services are the five most common mortgage lead sources. They have proven effective, so you can use them to get potential clients. The exact combination to get as many qualified mortgage leads as possible will depend on your niche, business goals, marketing aims, and budget.

#1. Online Platforms

The post-pandemic digital era has embraced the power of fast and reliable online communications, making online platforms one of the main communication media. Most British citizens prefer to get news through digital platforms, whether online websites, social media, online newspapers, or BVoD (Broadcaster on Demand) streaming services.

Source: Ofcom

This behaviour is natural since customers prefer to save time and effort. Reading news is the most striking example of this behaviour. However, the same logic applies to product and service research. You should keep that in mind while creating marketing campaigns to acquire and nurture qualified mortgage leads.

Given that 93% of users rarely go beyond Google’s first page, keeping all your content optimised to the latest SEO practices is vital. It includes posts on social media, as search engines also parse them.

That way, a company can achieve a broader reach to target the highest converting mortgage leads. To create the best mortgage ads, lenders should use the following marketing techniques:

• Search engine optimisation (SEO)
• Pay-per-click (PPC)
• Targeted ads on socials

SEO practices include but are not limited to your website’s UX-UI optimisation, posting content that fits the latest Google requirements, and setting a strong backlink strategy.

Pay-per-click promo allows targeted reach to those already interested in mortgages and searching for them online. Targeted ads on social are great for increasing brand awareness. Combining all those online activities allows you to achieve the lowest possible mortgage leads cost while collecting contact data from qualified users.

#2. Advertising 

Taking out a mortgage is a life-changing event, so people prefer to take the weight off their decision. While potential clients are already sure that they will take the mortgage, they may spend months. While they are still qualified mortgage leads, they aren’t sure where to take this loan.

 It’s recommended to use both traditional and online methods to improve general brand awareness and prompt a decision among qualified mortgage leads:

• Traditional promotions are great for supporting general brand awareness. Businesses can use newspapers, direct mail campaigns, and TV and radio advertisements.
• Online advertising can be precisely tailored to fit the stage of the users’ customer journey. That’s why many businesses use it to reach qualified mortgage leads. They can leverage email marketing, pay-per-click campaigns, targeted ads on social, etc.

This combination allows businesses to maximise efforts while keeping mortgage leads at reasonable pricing. If businesses solely concentrate on traditional promotion, they may lose the cost-effectiveness of digital advertisements. Meanwhile, if companies decide to work solely with online promotion, they may lose potential brand awareness and non-direct, qualified mortgage leads.

#3. Networking and Niche-Specific Events

While this lead generation approach may not give immediate results, it benefits the company in the long run. Lenders and brokers are people-centred professions, so meeting new partners and clients in real life is vital. It’s also a great way to promote your business and get quality mortgage leads organically.

You can visit niche-specific events around the UK or become a sponsor for local events. Conferences and trade shows can help you connect with potential partners and bring in more mortgage leads.

Here are three popular events for mortgage lenders to visit:

• The Mortgage and Protection Event: This series of free events across the UK focuses on the latest mortgage and real estate trends. Here, experts can discuss new regulations and innovations. It’s a great place to find a mortgage leads company that can bring you new clients.
• Scottish Mortgage Awards: This Edinburgh-based event honours outstanding individuals and companies. Visiting this event is a great opportunity to connect with experts, including mortgage lead providers.
• Mortgage Introducer Awards: A prestigious award that encourages tech innovations inside the mortgage industry.

While attending events isn’t directly related to generating qualified mortgage leads, it can still benefit your business in the long run.

#4. Lead Generation Services

Collaborating with lead generation companies is another popular and effective way to get qualified mortgage leads. Lead generation companies use the most up-to-date marketing approaches to connect brokers and lenders with high-quality mortgage leads.

Mortgage lead generation companies identify and filter potential borrowers, converting a large audience into high-intent leads. They maximise your marketing budget by strategically promoting and finding prospective customers with genuine mortgage interest, focusing on prospects more likely to become clients.

These companies are excellent at creating, managing, and fine-tuning the lead conversion funnel, from the initial interest to a qualified prospect. They can either work with you to build this funnel into your existing mortgage business or supply you with a curated list of pre-qualified and already-nurtured prospects. Their expertise lies in scoring leads based on their level of interest and constantly refining their criteria with the most recent data, ensuring you get the most promising leads for your money.

#5. Referrals

This method involves securing qualified leads through referrals from existing clients, estate agents, or other industry professionals. These qualified mortgage leads are direct recommendations that are credible and reliable.

Lead forms proved to be one of the most popular referral methods, as more than 70% of B2B and B2C companies use them in their marketing strategy. Other popular referral methods include email communication, verbal networking, social media posts, and shareable links. The final mortgage leads cost can change depending on your niche, target audience, and timing.

Factors Influencing Mortgage Leads Cost

Each business has multiple overlapping types of target audiences, and companies in the mortgage industry aren’t exception to this rule. That’s why lenders may have a few groups of qualified mortgage leads. To achieve the best results in promotional campaigns, brands should analyse users’ actions and confidently implement data-driven insights.

The average lead cost can change depending on the industry type, market competition, and other factors. According to the LocaliQ 2022 research, the median price per lead was approximately £80, which can drastically differ depending on the industry. For instance, the cost per lead for search advertising in real estate was £48.03. 

Source: LOCALiQ

Marketers also must keep in mind that paid leads are usually pricier than organic leads. Phonexa experts thoroughly studied the U.S. market to grasp the average cost difference between paid and organic ads. While numbers in the UK market are slightly different, the overall ratio stays the same.

Shifting focus from the broader industry overview to the mortgage market reveals how lead types, sources, origins, geographic factors, and even generation processes are all interconnected. To keep their mortgage lead conversion rates high, lenders should carefully tailor each promotion aspect to ensure it covers users’ needs.

Lead Source

The source of mortgage leads has a significant impact on the final cost, so lenders and lead generation companies need to recognise the key characteristics of each source:

• Organic SEO and content leads can be considered cheap mortgage leads, but require constant attention. If the company’s executives decide to move away from organic promotion, the business will lose its SERP results relatively quickly. Meanwhile, those leads tend to have an astonishingly high 60% conversion rate, while the bot and CRM leads have only a 20% rate.
• The cost of mortgage leads, exclusive or non-exclusive, largely depends on the vendor’s reputation and the quality of the leads provided.
• While you can get low-cost mortgage leads from prior customers or partners, keep in mind that nurturing them requires time and rewards. The same applies to leads from targeted advertising or industry events.

Exclusivity

• Exclusive mortgage leads are supplied only to a single lender. Due to lower competition, they are usually priced higher than shared leads. They are often described as qualified mortgage leads due to their high chance of conversion.
• Shared leads are distributed to multiple lenders. It makes them more affordable while significantly increasing competition for a potential conversion.

To balance cost-effectiveness and the number of closed deals, consider mixing both types while concentrating on exclusive deals. The best mortgage lead companies consider your marketing aims and help you find the perfect ratio for your case.

Lead Quality and Detail

Qualified mortgage leads sourced from in-depth form submissions contain the latest data about a user’s financial situation. You can use information on their credit score, debt levels, and income details to tailor future communication.

Qualified mortgage leads with positive credit histories and consistent incomes cost more due to their higher chance of conversion. Meanwhile, lower-quality leads that lack accurate or complete information are usually cheaper but less likely to result in an actual mortgage deal.

The same applies to the leads with vague or outdated financial data, which may take longer to qualify. So, many businesses prefer to skip the risk by ignoring leads that may take too long to convert. 

Lenders favour qualified mortgage leads because of their conversion potential. In most cases, paying more for those leads is more cost-effective than investing in aged mortgage leads. However, it still varies depending on the case and the number of leads you purchase.

Buyer Intent and Readiness

The cost to purchase leads for mortgage deals is directly influenced by the buyer’s level of intent and preparedness. Hot leads have the highest intent and are ready to buy a property. 

Cold leads may cost less, but nurturing them into actual clients may take a long time.  In the long run, efforts spent on cold leads often outweigh the final costs.

Hot leads have a significantly higher close rate of 14.6% compared to the 1.7% achieved by cold leads. That’s why most lenders and brokers prefer to justify hot leads at high costs with their quick conversion.

Market Competition and Geographic Location

Business location is a key factor, as cities with larger populations usually have higher numbers of brokers and lenders, increasing competition. It especially relates to metropolitan areas like London, Bristol, Glasgow, and Manchester. Lenders and brokers must perform extra steps to generate leads in large cities.

Another factor is the precise location of the proposed property, as even mid-range houses in expensive locations can cost more than average, reflecting the premium factor of the location. The same logic applies to mortgage protection insurance leads, where premium locations often indicate higher-value clients with greater protection needs.

In contrast, less competitive or lower-cost markets tend to lower mortgage leads cost. Rural areas with fewer lenders often provide more economical options than busy urban markets. Lenders should carefully evaluate mortgage leads cost and ROI, tailoring their strategies to market or regional competitiveness.

Those who seek the best mortgage leads company should understand these market dynamics. In most cases, a partnership with a local lead generation firm can help lenders to optimise their marketing efforts.

Loan Type Specificity

Different loan types, such as first-time buyers, remortgage, buy-to-let, shared ownership, commercial, specialist, and reverse (lifetime) mortgages, have their eligibility criteria that can affect lead costs. 

For instance, businesses need in-depth knowledge of users’ pain points and motives to launch a promotion for reverse mortgage leads and mortgage protection leads. They understand their background and why they want to take a mortgage, even though they are not typical borrowers.

Businesses seeking qualified mortgage leads should create separate campaigns for each target audience. Otherwise, they may end up in a situation where they get no leads despite all their efforts. So, it’s preferable to “play it by ear”, adjusting marketing strategy and changing the approximate qualified mortgage leads cost on a case-by-case basis.

Make the Most of Your Mortgage Leads with Phonexa

The UK mortgage market presents a complex yet opportunity-rich environment for lead acquisition. Lenders seeking proven solutions for mortgage leads need to recognise what factors impact the final cost in their case. It can be exclusivity, buyer intent, geographical limits, and more.

Qualified leads are vital for boosting sales department productivity and profitability. To achieve the best results, lenders and brokers should balance costs with exclusivity, adapting to the ever-changing market.

Phonexa can help you achieve your goals by uniting all your marketing efforts under a single roof, from lead generation to conversion and beyond.

Discover how Phonexa can take your lead management to the next level. 

 

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Frequently Asked Questions

How many mortgage brokers are in the UK?

According to the IBISWorld statistics, there are 5,593 mortgage brokers in the United Kingdom.

Who is a mortgage sales lead?

A mortgage sales lead is a general term referring to a potential client interested in mortgage-related services. It can be a flat purchase, refinancing, etc.

What is a trigger lead in a mortgage?

It’s a borrower who provides certain data about themselves to the credit reporting agencies. Those leads may ask reporting agencies to check whether their credit score is enough to purchase a property, whether they can refinance a current loan, etc.

Where to buy mortgage leads?

The easiest way to get the best mortgage leads to buy is to use lead generation services, affiliate networks, or mortgage-specific platforms. You can also run targeted ads to generate traffic to your landing pages or use referrals with other industry professionals.

What are the chances of getting mortgage leads for new brokers?

The brokers’ market is highly saturated, so you need to combine both paid exclusive and organic leads. While creating content for organic promotion, use long keywords with less competition and make your content potentially viral.