Where clients come from
Where Real Estate Clients Actually Come From
The channel-by-channel breakdown from NAR's buyer and seller survey, including the two numbers the lead industry never puts side by side.
Part of the Real Estate Lead Generation guide · Last reviewed 2026-08-09
Real estate clients come overwhelmingly from people who already know the agent. In the National Association of REALTORS 2025 Generational Trends Report, 40% of buyers found their agent through a referral from a friend, neighbour or relative, 17% used an agent they had worked with before, and 7% were referred by another agent or broker. Together that is 64% arriving through a person. The online channels the industry sells hardest are much smaller: 7% of buyers inquired about a specific property they saw online, and 6% found their agent through a website with no specific reference.
Key takeaways
- Referral and repeat business account for 57% of buyers and 66% of sellers choosing an agent (NAR 2025 Generational Trends Report, Exhibits 4-4 and 7-1).
- The two online channels most often sold to agents, property inquiry and general website, account for 7% and 6% of buyers respectively.
- Younger buyers rely on referrals more, not less. Among buyers aged 26 to 34, 54% came through a referral from someone they know.
- Buyers aged 26 to 34 almost never return to a previous agent, at 9%, because they have no transaction history to return to.
- Seeing contact information on a For Sale or Open House sign accounted for 5% of buyers finding their agent, and a referral from another agent or broker for 7%.
- The channel mix tells you where to spend time, but it does not tell you what a channel costs. Referrals are cheap in money and expensive in time.
The full breakdown, in the order it actually falls
NAR surveys people who completed a transaction and asks how they found the agent they used. Because the question is asked after the fact, the answers describe finished relationships rather than enquiries, which is exactly what an agent planning their time needs.
For buyers, the order runs: referred by a friend, neighbour or relative at 40%, used an agent previously at 17%, inquired about a specific property seen online at 7%, website with no specific reference at 6%, referred by another agent or broker at 7%, and saw contact information on a For Sale or Open House sign at 5%.
For sellers the concentration is sharper still. Referred by a friend, neighbour or relative at 38%, used an agent previously at 28%, referred by another agent or broker at 4%, website with no specific reference at 4%.
Put the top two rows against the online rows and the ratio is roughly eight to one for buyers. That is the single most useful proportion in this hub, because most marketing advice inverts it.
Younger buyers do not behave the way the pitch assumes
The usual assumption is that younger buyers, being more comfortable online, arrive through digital channels while older buyers rely on word of mouth. The data does not support that.
Among buyers aged 26 to 34, 54% found their agent through a referral from a friend, neighbour or relative. That is well above the 40% all-buyer average. What collapses in that age group is the other relationship channel: only 9% used an agent they had worked with before, because a first-time buyer has no previous agent.
So younger buyers are more dependent on referrals, not less. They are simply dependent on a different kind: the network they already have rather than a transaction history they do not.
This matters if you are deciding who to stay in contact with. A 30 year old who has never bought a home cannot refer you from experience, but the people around them are the exact source that 54% figure describes.
Where buyers search is a different question from how they choose you
These two get conflated constantly, and separating them removes most of the confusion about whether portals are taking over.
On searching, buyers are firmly online. 43% said their first step was looking online for properties, against 21% who contacted a real estate agent first. And 51% found the home they eventually purchased on the internet, against 29% who found it through their agent.
On choosing an agent, the same buyers went back to people they knew. There is no contradiction here. Someone can spend three months browsing listings on a portal and still hire the agent their sister recommended, because those activities answer different questions.
The practical consequence: your website is not usually competing to be found in a property search. It is being visited by someone who already has your name and wants to know whether to call.
What the channel mix does not tell you
Reading a channel breakdown as a spending plan is the obvious next step and it is a mistake, for two reasons worth stating plainly.
First, share and cost are different things. Referrals produce the most clients and cost almost nothing in money, but they cost years in time, and they are the one channel a new agent cannot buy their way into. A channel producing 7% of transactions could still be the right investment for a specific agent in a specific year.
Second, these figures are national medians across the United States for the July 2023 to June 2024 survey year. Your own market, price point, and client type can differ substantially. The right use of this table is to challenge an assumption, not to replace measuring your own business.
The check worth running is simple. List your last ten closed transactions and write down where each one actually came from. Most agents who do this find their real mix looks more like the NAR table than like their marketing spend.
| Channel | Share of buyers |
|---|---|
| Referred by a friend, neighbour or relative | 40% |
| Used an agent previously to buy or sell | 17% |
| Inquired about a specific property seen online | 7% |
| Website with no specific reference | 6% |
| Referred by another agent or broker | 7% |
| Saw contact information on a For Sale or Open House sign | 5% |
NAR 2025 Home Buyers and Sellers Generational Trends Report, Exhibit 4-4, p. 64. Smaller categories are omitted, so the column does not total 100%.
Frequently asked questions
What percentage of real estate clients come from referrals?
Referrals from friends, neighbours and relatives accounted for 40% of buyers and 38% of sellers choosing their agent, according to NAR's 2025 Generational Trends Report. Adding agents used previously brings the relationship-based total to 57% of buyers and 66% of sellers. A further 7% of buyers and 4% of sellers came through a referral from another agent or broker.
How many real estate clients come from a website?
Websites accounted for a smaller share than most marketing advice implies. In NAR's 2025 Generational Trends Report, 6% of buyers found their agent through a website with no specific reference, and 7% inquired about a specific property they had seen online. For sellers, the website channel with no specific reference was 3%. Those figures describe how the agent was found, not how much the website influenced the decision afterwards.
Do younger home buyers use referrals less than older buyers?
No, younger buyers rely on referrals more. NAR's 2025 Generational Trends Report shows 54% of buyers aged 26 to 34 found their agent through a referral from a friend, neighbour or relative, compared with the 40% all-buyer average. What is low in that age group is returning to a previously used agent, at 9%, because first-time buyers have no prior transaction to draw on.
How many buyers find their agent from a For Sale sign?
Seeing contact information on a For Sale or Open House sign accounted for 5% of buyers finding the agent they used, according to NAR's 2025 Generational Trends Report, Exhibit 4-4. A further 5% visited an open house and met the agent there. Those figures cover agent discovery specifically, so they measure the sign as a route to a client rather than its wider effect on neighbourhood awareness.
Where do most home buyers start their search?
Most home buyers start online. NAR's 2025 Generational Trends Report found 43% of buyers took looking online for properties as their first step, while 21% contacted a real estate agent first, 9% looked online for information about the process, 9% talked with a friend or relative, and 7% contacted a bank or lender. Starting online is a search behaviour and does not predict how the buyer later chooses an agent.
Should I stop spending on online lead generation given these numbers?
Not automatically, because share and cost measure different things. The NAR channel mix shows where clients come from nationally, not what each channel costs you or what it can produce in your market. A channel producing 7% of transactions may still suit an agent with no referral base yet. Check your own last ten closings against the national pattern before changing anything.
Are these NAR figures for the United States or Canada?
These figures are United States data. The National Association of REALTORS surveys US buyers and sellers, and the 2025 Generational Trends Report covers transactions from July 2023 to June 2024. Canadian agents should treat the pattern as directional rather than exact, and check the Canadian Real Estate Association for domestic figures where a precise national number matters.
How recent is the NAR data on how buyers found their agent?
The channel figures come from NAR's 2025 Home Buyers and Sellers Generational Trends Report, published in April 2025 from a survey mailed in July 2024, covering purchases between July 2023 and June 2024. NAR publishes newer editions, but the detailed exhibit tables behind them sit in paywalled chapters, so this is the most recent freely readable primary source for the full channel breakdown.
Do sellers choose agents differently from buyers?
Sellers lean on existing relationships more heavily than buyers. In NAR's 2025 Generational Trends Report, 28% of sellers used an agent they had worked with before against 17% of buyers, while referral rates were similar at 38% and 40%. Combined, 66% of sellers came through an existing relationship compared with 57% of buyers, which reflects that many sellers have transacted before.
What is the difference between how buyers find a home and how they find an agent?
Finding a home and finding an agent are separate processes with different winners. NAR's 2025 Generational Trends Report shows 51% of buyers found the home they purchased on the internet, but only 13% found their agent through online channels combined. Buyers search listings independently on portals and then hire an agent through their personal network, so portal dominance in search does not translate into portal dominance in agent selection.
Related pages in this guide
Related reading
Sources
Every claim on this page that could be checked against a primary source is linked below. Where something is not publicly documented by a vendor, the page says so rather than filling the gap with an estimate.
- 2025 Home Buyers and Sellers Generational Trends Report (National Association of REALTORS)
- 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers (highlights) (National Association of REALTORS)