Australian brokers now write 81% of new residential home loans. What that means for lead pricing, exclusivity, and the compliance you inherit the moment you dial.
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.
Australia is the most broker-mediated mortgage market on earth, and that single fact reshapes what a purchased lead is worth and what it obliges you to do.
MFAA data puts broker share of new residential home loans at 81.0% for the March 2026 quarter, the highest level since records began more than a decade ago. Eight years earlier, in the March 2018 quarter, the figure was 55.3%. Leading aggregators settled A$124.88 billion in new home loans in the March 2026 quarter alone, up A$25.51 billion year on year and the highest volume recorded for any January to March quarter.
The result places Australia alongside the United Kingdom and the Netherlands as one of only a small group of countries where brokers facilitate more than 80% of mortgage lending.
| March 2018 quarter | 55.3% |
|---|---|
| March 2026 quarter | 81.0% |
A 25.7 percentage point rise across eight years. The consumer question in Australia has largely stopped being whether to use a broker and become which broker.
On volumes, ABS Lending Indicators for the March quarter 2026 recorded total new dwelling loan commitments falling 6.2% by number and 3.8% by value, with owner-occupier commitments down 6.9% by number and first home buyer commitments down 4.3% by number. A softening quarter in a structurally broker-dominated market changes the competitive intensity rather than the channel.
Because the competition is between brokers. When four out of five borrowers reach a broker regardless, buying a shared lead means racing other brokers to the same person who was always going to use one of you.
The response-time research makes that race brutal. The MIT Sloan study found the odds of contacting a lead drop by a factor of 100 between a five minute and a thirty minute response. On a shared lead, most of the brokers who bought it will lose that race no matter how good they are, and will have paid for the privilege.
The competition arithmetic: A shared lead split four ways gives you a one in four contact race before the conversation starts, in a market where the borrower will use a broker either way. An exclusive lead removes the race entirely. The price gap rarely reflects how large that difference is.
Three obligations attach the moment you contact a purchased lead, and none of them are transferred to you by the supplier's standards.
ASIC RG 273 explains what ASIC looks for when assessing compliance with the best interests obligations in Part 3-5A of the National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009, which commenced on 1 January 2021. Where there is a conflict of interest, brokers must prioritise the consumer's interests. ASIC also states that a failure to consider cost and investigate the lowest cost options available may suggest non-compliance.
The anti-avoidance provision in section 158T means a broker cannot contract out of the duty. ASIC is explicit that the obligation cannot be avoided by any notice or disclosure given to or signed by the customer, nor by procuring the customer's consent to credit assistance or to a conflict of interest.
The financial product hawking prohibition makes unsolicited real-time contact about a financial product a live risk. The defence is documented consent, which is a property of how the lead was captured rather than of how carefully you speak on the call.
ACMA has published its expectations for businesses conducting telemarketing and e-marketing. Consent may be express or inferred, and businesses must keep reliable consent records covering the method used to give consent, the terms of that consent, and the date and time it was obtained. ACMA can require production of those records on complaint.
ACMA names several practices as non-compliant: placing contact details on marketing lists without consent, relying on old consent, requiring consumers to log in to an account in order to unsubscribe, and inferring consent from a one-off purchase. Separately, a telemarketing call to a number on the Do Not Call Register requires the recipient's consent, and the Spam Act 2003 governs commercial electronic messages.
Businesses remain responsible for reliable and well-maintained consent records that should include the method used to provide consent, the terms of consent, and the date and time consent was obtained.
ACMA, consent expectations for businesses using direct marketing
No official New Zealand or Australian dataset on lead pricing exists. The ranges below are working benchmarks assembled from vendor quotes, international mortgage lead markets where the economics are comparable, and the published cost of generating equivalent enquiry through paid search. Treat them as a place to start a negotiation rather than as measured market data.
| Lead type | Working AU range per lead | What it means in this market |
|---|---|---|
| Shared, sold to several brokers | AU$25 to $80 | A contact race in the most competitive broker market there is |
| Exclusive, sold once | AU$100 to $250 | The only broker calling a borrower who will use a broker |
| Self-generated through paid search | Your cost per enquiry | Finance and Insurance converts at 2.64% on WordStream benchmarks |
Australian media costs generally run higher than New Zealand, and the broker count competing for the same enquiry is far larger. Both push exclusive pricing up and both make shared supply harder to work profitably.
The strongest position a supplier can hold is owning the consumer brand the enquiry came from. When the operator runs the site, the form and the verification, they control quality end to end, they can sell each enquiry once, and the consent record travels with the lead because they captured it.
Where Lead Foundry sits, in plain terms: Lead Foundry currently supplies life insurance enquiries in New Zealand. Mortgage supply opens when LoanWatch launches. This article is a buyer's guide to the Australian market rather than an offer, and the standards it describes are the ones we hold ourselves to on the supply we do sell: owned consumer brands, verification at submission, one buyer per enquiry, and delivery into your CRM.
Brokers facilitated 81.0% of all 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 in eight years, placing Australia alongside the UK and the Netherlands as one of the few markets above 80%.
Yes, buying enquiry data is legal. What is regulated is the contact and the advice. You need an Australian Credit Licence or credit representative status to provide credit assistance, the best interests duty under ASIC RG 273 applies, the hawking prohibition restricts unsolicited contact about financial products, and both the Spam Act 2003 and the Do Not Call Register Act 2006 govern how you may reach the consumer.
ACMA expects reliable records covering the method used to give consent, the terms of that consent, and the date and time it was obtained, and can compel their production on complaint. Ask your supplier to provide that artefact per record rather than a general assurance that consent was obtained.
No published dataset exists, so figures are working benchmarks. Exclusive enquiries commonly quote around AU$100 to $250 and shared enquiries around AU$25 to $80. In a market where brokers write 81% of new lending, the competition for a shared record is intense, which is why cost per settled loan usually favours exclusivity despite the higher unit price.