Lead pricing, contact rates and response time across New Zealand and Australia, from published sources, labelled where estimate not measurement.
Figures in this article describe the wider market and are drawn from the third-party sources listed at the end. They are not Lead Foundry results, and nothing here is a projection of what any individual broker will achieve.
Brokers asking what leads cost get a different answer from every supplier, and no independent source. This report collects what is genuinely published, separates it from what is estimated, and says which is which on every line.
What this report is not: It is not Lead Foundry performance data, and no figure here is a projection of what any individual broker will achieve. Where a number is an estimate rather than a measurement, the table says so in the row.
MFAA data puts broker share of new residential home loans at 81.0% for the March 2026 quarter, the highest since records began more than a decade ago, up from 55.3% in the March 2018 quarter. Leading aggregators settled A$124.88 billion in new home loans in the March 2026 quarter, up A$25.51 billion year on year and the highest volume recorded for any January to March quarter.
| March 2018 quarter | 55.3% |
|---|---|
| March 2026 quarter | 81.0% |
A 25.7 percentage point rise across eight years. Australia sits alongside the UK and the Netherlands as one of the few markets above 80%.
On volumes, ABS Lending Indicators recorded total new dwelling loan commitments falling 6.2% by number and 3.8% by value in the March quarter 2026, with owner-occupier commitments down 6.9% by number and first home buyer commitments down 4.3% by number.
REINZ reported a national median sale price of NZ$753,106 in January 2026, up 0.4% year on year, with 9,019 new listings and a national median of 54 days to sell, unchanged on January 2025. The House Price Index was down 0.7% nationally year on year.
The FMA reports just over 3,000 financial advice businesses: 1,807 Financial Advice Providers and 1,200 Authorised Bodies, engaging 10,743 financial advisers and 12,287 nominated representatives, with 82% of providers having fewer than ten advisers.
On protection, FSC research found only 41% of New Zealand respondents hold life insurance and 11% hold income protection, with around 70% underinsured. The FSC reports roughly 4.13 million life policies and 1.35 million health policies in force against a population of about 5.35 million, with annual life premiums of NZ$3.31 billion.
These are estimates. No published dataset exists for either market, and any supplier quoting a market rate is quoting their own price list. The ranges below are assembled from vendor quotes, international mortgage lead markets where the economics are comparable, and the published cost of generating equivalent enquiry through paid search.
| Segment | Working range per lead | Status |
|---|---|---|
| NZ mortgage, shared | NZ$20 to $60 | Estimate |
| NZ mortgage, exclusive | NZ$80 to $200 | Estimate |
| NZ life and protection, shared | NZ$15 to $50 | Estimate |
| NZ life and protection, exclusive | NZ$60 to $150 | Estimate |
| AU mortgage, shared | AU$25 to $80 | Estimate |
| AU mortgage, exclusive | AU$100 to $250 | Estimate |
This one is measured, and it is the most useful anchor available because self-generation is the real alternative to buying. WordStream's 2026 Google Ads benchmarks, from 13,474 US search campaigns running April 2025 to March 2026, put the all-industry average cost per click at US$5.42 and the all-industry average cost per lead at US$66.69, the first decline in five years.
Finance and Insurance recorded an average cost per click of US$3.39 with a conversion rate of 2.64%, the lowest of any category measured, against a click-through rate above 9%.
| All-industry average cost per lead (US$) | US$66.69 |
|---|---|
| All-industry average cost per click (US$) | US$5.42 |
| Finance and Insurance cost per click (US$) | US$3.39 |
| Finance and Insurance conversion rate (%) | 2.64% |
A cheap click with the worst conversion rate in the dataset. Enquiry cost is click price divided by conversion rate, which is why building is dearer than the click price suggests.
| Metric | Published figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Contact odds, 5 vs 30 minutes | Fall by a factor of 100 | MIT Sloan lead response study |
| Qualification odds, 5 vs 30 minutes | Fall by a factor of 21 | MIT Sloan lead response study |
| Response within an hour vs over a day | 60x more likely to have a meaningful conversation | Harvard Business Review |
| Average first response time | 42 hours | Harvard Business Review |
| Firms never responding | 23% | Harvard Business Review |
| Converted leads reached by call six | 93% | Velocify contact-strategy research |
| Leads never called a second time | 50% | Velocify contact-strategy research |
Treat the measured rows as context and the estimated rows as a negotiating floor. The number that decides whether buying leads works for you is your own cost per settled client, which depends on your contact rate and your conversion rate rather than on any figure in this report.
Where Lead Foundry sits, in plain terms: Lead Foundry currently supplies life insurance enquiries in New Zealand. Mortgage supply opens when LoanWatch launches. The Australian and mortgage sections above are compiled from public data rather than from our own book.
No official dataset exists for either market, so published figures are working benchmarks rather than measurements. As estimates, exclusive New Zealand mortgage enquiries commonly quote around NZ$80 to $200, exclusive New Zealand protection enquiries around NZ$60 to $150, and exclusive Australian mortgage enquiries around AU$100 to $250. Shared supply sits well below all of those.
81.0% of new residential home loans in the March 2026 quarter, according to MFAA data, the highest since records began. That is up from 55.3% in the March 2018 quarter, a rise of 25.7 percentage points across eight years.
FSC research found 41% of New Zealand respondents hold life insurance and 11% hold income protection, with around 70% underinsured. The FSC reports roughly 4.13 million life policies and 1.35 million health policies in force, with annual life premiums of NZ$3.31 billion.
No. Neither New Zealand nor Australia has a published dataset on lead pricing, which is why every supplier can quote a different market rate. The closest measured anchor is the cost of generating equivalent enquiry through paid search, where WordStream's 2026 benchmarks put Finance and Insurance at a US$3.39 average cost per click with a 2.64% conversion rate.