Most Real Estate Marketing Channels Deliver Zero Leads to Most Agents, New Report Finds

2026 State of Real Estate Marketing Report from Knwn Local surveys 462 working agents on AI, content, lead generation, and 2026 budget intent

, /PRNewswire/ — Thirteen of the twenty-one marketing channels used by working real estate agents deliver zero leads to more than 70% of the agents using them in a typical month, according to the 2026 State of Real Estate Marketing Report released today by Knwn Local.

The finding comes from a survey of 462 working real estate agents conducted between May 7 and May 20, 2026. The report, sponsored by Beacon and Listing Leads, examines how agents are using AI, creating content, generating listings, and planning their 2026 marketing budgets.

82% of agents generate zero leads from these sources.

The “Zillow leads suck” narrative is mostly from agents who don’t pay.

Across paid digital and portal channels, the average zero-lead rate is 82%. TikTok delivered zero leads to 94% of agents using it. LinkedIn to 86%. YouTube to 84%. Both major real estate portals delivered zero leads to roughly 80% of their users.

“The industry has spent twenty years being told that lead generation is a numbers game, that the right mix of paid channels will produce a pipeline if you just spend enough,” said Chris Smith, co-founder of Knwn Local. “The data says, for most agents on most channels, the number is zero. Not low. Zero.”

The report also documents a sharp reversal of one of real estate’s loudest narratives. The “Zillow is broken” story collapses under spend-tier segmentation: agents who pay for Zillow rate their leads good or excellent at 31%, compared with 3% among free users. A 10× separation. Direct mail shows the same pattern at 7×.

“The ‘X is broken’ narratives in real estate are almost always told by people who don’t pay for X,” said Jimmy Mackin, co-founder of Beacon and Listing Leads. “When you segment by who’s actually a customer, the failure narratives collapse. That changes how agents should think about every channel evaluation conversation they have for the next year.”

Other key findings:

63% of agents use AI every day. 32% report saving six or more hours per week. 86% of every AI task is text-based.
Content compounds. Agents with 4+ years of consistent creation and 5+ short-form posts per month report content driving “a lot of deals” at 9× the rate of agents with neither trait, the largest single effect in the dataset.
60% of agents fly blind on attribution, either not tracking listing sources or estimating less than 10% come from content.
The 2026 budget is moving. AI, YouTube, short-form video, and email get the biggest “invest more” votes. Zillow and Realtor.com are the only channels where more agents plan to cut than grow.
Compass agents turn content into deals at 2.4× the rate of Keller Williams. Keller Williams returns the favor on Google ads leads (3.1×) and 31+ transaction production (2.1×).