The real cost of finding real estate clients: count it per deal

Real estate teams and brokerages often judge their outbound calling programmes only by the caller's salary and the software fees. In a column published on HousingWire, Robyn Thompson DeSantos, founder of Ascension Group, argues that the real cost is much higher and that the channel should be measured by its cost per closed deal.

Why does a calling team cost more than its salary?

Because tools, data and the team lead's time sit on top of the salary. According to the author, in a typical set-up the dialer can run from $150 to more than $400 a month, and list services for expired listings or for-sale-by-owner properties from $100 to more than $300 a month. On top of that come the hours the team lead spends reviewing recordings, adjusting scripts and chasing leads that fell through.

Citing MyOutDesk, the column puts the published rate for a dedicated full-time virtual ISA (inside sales agent) at $1,988 a month, or roughly $23,856 a year. Once tools and management time are added, most virtual ISA programmes run between $32,000 and $48,000 a year fully loaded. An in-house caller is heavier still: Glassdoor puts the national average salary for a real estate ISA in the US at $55,692. Turnover compounds these costs.

An example from the author shows why the maths matters. A team lead was paying a virtual assistant $1,200 a month to call leads from cheap lead vendors and another $1,000 a month for the leads. Six months in, she realised the assistant was not trained well enough, the calls were burning leads and the loss was growing every month.

How many deals does the spend produce?

According to NAR data cited in the column, the national average lead conversion rate in real estate is 0.4% to 1.2% across all channels and sources, and cold outbound funnels are not meaningfully different. A productive ISA on cold seller lists typically sets 8 to 12 appointments a month. After hold rates and close rates, most dedicated outbound programmes close 10 to 20 transactions a year from that channel.

The industry is still moving towards the model. VA Masters' 2026 research found that 52% of real estate teams and brokerages use at least one virtual assistant, up from 24% in 2022, with inside sales and appointment setting the most commonly outsourced function.

How do you calculate cost per closed deal?

The author's method has three steps:

1. 1.Pull 12 months of data.
2. 2.Add the fully loaded cost of the calling team, all software and data subscriptions, and an honest value for the hours you personally spent on the programme.
3. 3.Divide the total by the number of closed deals that can be traced specifically to this channel.

If the CRM does not track lead source through to close, the problem is measurement, not the programme. According to the author, you cannot make a sound decision about a channel you cannot isolate; teams that build lasting calling programmes know their cost per close from that channel as well as they know their gross commission income.