REDX just published the largest lead-performance study ever conducted in residential real estate — 2.7 million listings tracked across all 50 states from May 2024 to January 2026. The results settle a debate that agents have been arguing about in Facebook groups and brokerage meetings for years: where should your lead-generation dollars actually go?

On one side, Zillow Premier Agent — the default answer for the last decade. On the other, expired listings — the unsexy, phone-heavy, data-driven approach that most agents avoid because it requires effort, not a credit card. The data is no longer ambiguous about which one wins.

The Numbers Most Agents Never Run

Cost per lead is the metric platforms want you to focus on because it makes their product look reasonable. A $40 Zillow lead sounds manageable. A $60 REDX subscription sounds cheap. But neither number tells you what matters: what does each closed deal actually cost you?

We built a full cost-per-closed-deal breakdown across every major lead source on this site. This article zooms in on the two sources agents ask about most — and runs the math side-by-side with the latest data.

Sources: REDX 2026 (2.7M lead analysis); REDX Expired Listing Surge Report, April 2026; HousingWire 2026; REDX Pricing; Revalto 2026

Why Expired Listings Convert at 44% and Zillow Converts at 1–3%

The conversion gap isn't random. It's structural — driven by three fundamental differences in seller psychology and lead mechanics.

1. Intent has already been proven

An expired listing seller has already committed to selling. They hired an agent, paid for staging and photography, endured showings, and waited. Something went wrong — pricing, marketing, market conditions — but the desire to sell didn't disappear when the listing expired. They've overcome the three biggest barriers to listing: commitment to sell, acceptance of commission costs, and willingness to work with an agent.

A Zillow lead, by contrast, is usually someone scrolling through listings because the kitchen looked nice in the photos. They may transact in 12 months. They may never transact. And when they do fill out a form, that lead gets routed to 2–4 agents simultaneously, turning your first conversation into a race rather than a relationship.

2. The competition dynamics are inverted

On Zillow, you're one of multiple agents receiving the same lead. You're competing on response time, headshot quality, and Zillow review count. The platform is designed to commoditize agents — you're a line item in a directory.

With expired listings, you're one of perhaps 5–10 agents who bother to make the call. Most agents avoid expired listings because the work feels harder than clicking "buy leads." But according to REDX, agents who systematically work expired listings take 3× more listings than the average agent — precisely because the competition is lower relative to the conversion opportunity.

3. Speed matters more with expired sellers — and agents who call first, win

See the full speed-to-lead data →

REDX data shows that 44.6% of expired sellers relist within 30–35 days, almost always with a new agent. That creates a tight window where speed-to-contact is everything. The agent who calls on day one — with data, a plan, and empathy — captures the listing before the seller is overwhelmed by calls or decides to wait.

This aligns with the broader speed-to-lead research: Harvard Business Review found that leads contacted within 5 minutes are 21× more likely to be qualified than leads contacted after 30 minutes. And NAR data shows 78% of buyers and sellers work with the first agent who responds.

The 78,000 Expired Listings Per Week That Most Agents Ignore

This is the context that makes the conversion data actionable. As of April 2026, REDX's national tracking shows more than 78,000 listings expire off the MLS without selling every single week — up 83% from two years ago. Redfin confirmed in February 2026 that 52.2% of all active listings had been sitting unsold for 60 days or more, representing $347 billion in stale inventory.

The surge isn't isolated to one market. Texas saw a 155% increase in weekly expired listings (from 5,348 to 13,648). Florida jumped 80%. California rose 66%. Nebraska leads in relist efficiency, with 67–70% of expired sellers relisting within 14–17 days.

Meanwhile, Zillow's agent-discovery traffic is moving in the opposite direction. HousingWire reported that Zillow's share of agent-discovery traffic fell from 41.2% to 33.8% year-over-year — a 17.5% relative decline — as 67% of homebuyers shifted to AI search tools as their primary research method.

Running the Real Math: $15,000 Budget, Two Scenarios

Let's make this concrete. A mid-market agent (metro area of 250K–750K people, median home price $400,000, 3% commission = $12,000 per deal) has $15,000 to spend annually on lead generation. How do the two approaches compare?

Scenario A: $15,000 on Zillow Premier Agent

Scenario B: $15,000 on Expired Listings + Signal Stacking

The Counterargument: When Zillow Still Makes Sense

This article isn't a Zillow hit piece. There are legitimate situations where Zillow Premier Agent is the right short-term choice.

If you're a brand-new agent with zero pipeline, zero sphere, and zero marketing skills, Zillow delivers immediate lead flow within 24 hours. You don't need a website. You don't need to learn a dialer. You don't need to handle rejection on cold calls. For the first 3–6 months of a career, that simplicity has genuine value.

But there's a critical distinction between using Zillow as a launch pad and using Zillow as a long-term business model. The data says the latter is increasingly expensive, increasingly competitive, and increasingly fragile as buyer behavior shifts to AI-powered search. An agent who starts on Zillow, builds skills and pipeline, then transitions to expired listings and signal stacking is making a smart sequential decision. An agent who stays on Zillow for years because it's comfortable is overpaying for every deal by a factor of 3–10×.

What Makes This Gap Widen in 2026

Three macro trends are compressing Zillow's value while expanding the expired listing opportunity.

The expired listing surge keeps growing

78,000+ weekly expirations, up 83% in two years. More sellers are failing to sell — meaning more high-intent prospects entering the expired pool every day. REDX data shows foreclosure leads are up 55% and FRBO leads are up 32% over the same period. Seller stress is rising across the board, and stressed sellers are the most motivated prospects in real estate.

Zillow's audience is migrating to AI search

The FlyDragon 2026 State of AI SEO in Real Estate report found that 67% of homebuyers now use an AI tool as their primary research method, up from 17% in late 2024. Zillow's share of agent-discovery traffic declined from 41.2% to 33.8%. The buyers who used to find agents through Zillow are increasingly finding them through ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews — platforms that reward citation authority, not ad spend.

AI-sourced leads already outperform Zillow leads by 4×

FlyDragon's lead attribution data shows AI-sourced leads close at 9.6% within 90 days versus 2.4% for Zillow Premier Agent. Average GCI per AI-sourced lead is $1,180 versus $240 for Zillow. Time to close is 42 days versus 87 days. As AI search adoption continues to grow — projected to reach 80%+ of transactions by Q4 2026 — the gap between what Zillow delivers and what agents could earn from other channels keeps widening.

The Speed Factor That Connects Everything

Whether you work expired listings, AI-sourced leads, or any other channel, one variable determines whether conversion data matters in practice: how fast you respond.

The numbers are unambiguous. Leads contacted within 5 minutes are 21× more likely to be qualified than leads contacted after 30 minutes. 78% of buyers work with the first agent who responds. And yet the average agent takes 15+ hours to respond to a web lead, and 48% never follow up at all.

This is why expired listings reward effort so disproportionately. The agent who calls on the morning the listing expires — with the homeowner's contact information already pulled, a conversation framework ready, and empathy for the seller's frustration — is often the only agent making that call with preparation rather than a generic script. When 80% of sales happen between the 5th and 12th contact, and most agents quit after 1–2 attempts, persistence alone creates an enormous structural advantage.

What This Means for Your Next 90 Days

If you're currently spending $1,000+/month on Zillow and you've never systematically worked expired listings, the data suggests a clear experiment: allocate 30–50% of your Zillow budget to a REDX Expired Leads subscription ($60/month) and a dialer ($100–$200/month) for 90 days. Track every call, every appointment, and every listing separately from your Zillow pipeline. After 90 days, compare cost per closed deal.

Based on the REDX dataset of 2.7 million leads and the agent outcomes documented in their case studies, the expired listing channel should produce more appointments, faster conversions, and dramatically lower cost per deal. If it does, you'll have the data to reallocate confidently. If it doesn't, you'll have spent less than $800 to find out — roughly what Zillow charges for 10–20 shared leads.

For agents who want to go further, signal stacking — layering expired listings with equity data, ownership duration, pre-foreclosure signals, and absentee ownership — pushes the cost per closed deal below $700 and the appointment-setting rate to 10–15%. It's the approach our 500+ tracked agents use to generate 1,000+ listing appointments per month collectively, at a fraction of what portal leads cost.