Mortgage live transfers: the five lead types lenders buy, and the one we sell

What a mortgage lead is, in practice

A mortgage lead is a consumer who has shown some intent to borrow against or buy a home, packaged for a lender to contact. At one end is a name and number from public records. At the other is a homeowner who has already answered your qualification questions and is on the line with your loan officer. Both are sold as "mortgage leads". They should not be priced or judged the same way.

Three questions sort them.

The five types of mortgage leads lenders buy

1. Internet leads (also sold as data leads, online or web leads)

A consumer fills out a form on a rate-comparison site or a lender's landing page. The data is sold, often to several lenders at once, within minutes. You get a name, phone, email and the self-reported form fields.

What you are buying is a form, not a conversation. Your team calls the number, usually against other buyers of the same form, and whether the consumer is a homeowner, on title or inside your credit box is unknown until someone reaches them.

2. Aged mortgage leads

Internet leads that did not sell at full price, or are resold weeks or months after the form was submitted. They are cheap per record and sold in volume. The consumer may have closed a loan, lost interest or forgotten the inquiry, and the consent is often older than you would want to rely on.

Aged leads suit teams with a dialer and the staff to work thousands of records for a few conversations.

3. Trigger leads

When a consumer's credit is pulled for a mortgage, that inquiry can trigger a consumer report furnished to another lender. The Homebuyers Privacy Protection Act was enacted September 5, 2025 and took effect 180 days later, on March 4, 2026. It restricts furnishing residential mortgage inquiry-triggered reports: the transaction must consist of a firm offer of credit or insurance, and the recipient must meet specified documented consumer authorization or existing relationship conditions. Those relationships include originating or servicing the consumer's current mortgage, or an insured depository institution or credit union holding a current account. This is not a ban on all mortgage leads, and compliance is not automatic. See the official law and our guide to mortgage trigger leads.

4. Live transfer mortgage leads

A consumer opts in, a screening agent calls them, checks them against the lender's criteria, and connects the call live to a loan officer. The lender pays for the connected call, not the form. Quality depends on three things: how the consent was gathered, how strictly the agent screens, and what happens when a transfer turns out to be bad. Our post on what live transfer leads are walks through a call step by step.

5. Pay-at-closing leads

The vendor charges nothing up front and takes a fee when a loan funds. In practice the vendor has to be paid for every lead that does not close, so the closing fee is set high and the lead quality is whatever can be sourced cheaply. Referral fees on closed loans also raise RESPA questions that the lender carries. We do not offer it, and our pricing page explains why.

What mortgage leads cost: published ranges

We publish one third-party range because it is the one we can stand behind: guides on the subject put mortgage live transfers at roughly $80 to $250 per qualified transfer depending on loan type and exclusivity. That is a published range, not our pricing.

For internet, aged, trigger and pay-at-closing leads the published figures vary too widely by source and year for us to quote a number responsibly. Ask the vendor. The cheaper the record, the more cost shifts to your dialer, staff and loan officers' time.

Our own transfer price is quoted per program. Transfers are priced between $110 and $140 per billable transfer, depending on program, states and criteria. Our transfers are priced between $110 and $140 per billable transfer by program; our published campaign math used $110, the bottom of that range, and that release worked out to a $530 cost per funded loan on one cash-out campaign and $802 to $864 blended across programs. Those are first-week figures from one campaign, published in our October 2026 release, not a guarantee. The full table is on the mortgage leads cost page.

Qualified and verified mortgage leads: what the words should mean

"Qualified mortgage leads" and "verified mortgage leads" are used loosely. On our transfers they mean this.

Qualification is based on information consumers provide during screening. Our specialist is not licensed, never quotes rates, payments, savings or approvals, and never implies government affiliation. Loan terms come only from your licensed loan officer.

Criteria we can screen for

Each client sets the values. These are the shapes.

• Who: veteran or surviving spouse on VA campaigns (with a service probe); any owner otherwise; primary only, or including second homes and rentals.
• Where: your licensed states, with exclusions.
• What: on title; property type; not under construction; no existing reverse mortgage unless allowed.
• Value and equity: a value floor (a current program uses $150,000); a combined LTV cap (a current program uses 80%).
• Credit and history: a score floor (620 on a current program); lookbacks for mortgage lates, bankruptcy and foreclosure (24 months on a current program).
• Purpose and intent: rate-and-term, cash-out, HELOC, purchase; a real reason and a 30-to-60-day horizon.
• Consent and time: a clear yes to speaking with a lender and about 15 minutes now, or a booked callback.
• Duplicate: not sent to your company inside 30 days; not already working with one of your loan officers.

Mortgage leads by loan program

Our screening library covers refinance, cash-out, home equity, purchase, renovation and construction, and specialty programs (HECM reverse, DSCR, bank-statement and non-QM, manufactured). Program pages:

• Refinance leads, including cash-out
• Reverse mortgage leads
• VA loan leads
• FHA mortgage leads
• HELOC leads
• DSCR leads
• Purchase mortgage leads

Why we only sell live transfers

We sell transfers because they are the only type of mortgage lead where the vendor carries the risk of a bad lead instead of the lender.

With a form, you pay whether or not the consumer answers. With a trigger lead, you pay to call someone who did not ask for you. With a live transfer priced per billable call, you pay only after your loan officer has spoken with a screened borrower for 3 minutes, and the credit comes back if the recording shows the borrower missed your criteria.

The published numbers back the approach. On live mortgage transfers, our Q4 2026 KPI release reported a 17.6% transfer-to-application rate and about 16 minutes (15:57) average conversation between borrower and loan officer. On one cash-out refinance campaign, 41.7% of billable transfers completed a loan application on the first call, first-week figures from one campaign published in our October 2026 release. Which lead types convert best is covered on our post about the highest converting mortgage leads.

Every transfer is recorded dual-channel on our own telecom and sits in your dashboard at client.radianleads.com, scored against your criteria.

Mortgage leads for loan officers and brokers

Individual loan officers and brokers buy from us on the same terms as lenders: licensed, with criteria agreed up front and transfers bought in blocks of credits. If you are building your own pipeline alongside purchased leads, our guide to how to get mortgage leads covers the channels that work without a vendor. To see how we compare with other providers, read our mortgage lead companies comparison.

Evaluating mortgage live transfer companies

If you are searching for the best mortgage live transfer companies, evaluate the terms and evidence against your own program rather than treating a vendor's claim as an independent ranking. Ask each buyer-evaluation question before purchasing:

• Screening: which client-chosen criteria are checked, and can you review the recording?
• Exclusivity: does the same borrower go to one lender, and what prevents resale or duplicates?
• Billable duration: when does loan officer talk time start, what is the threshold, and are shorter calls unbilled?
• Replacements: what qualifies for a credit or replacement, and how is the recording reviewed?
• Consent records: how was contact authorized, and what consent documentation and call records are available?

Our buy mortgage leads checklist covers the purchase process and questions to ask any vendor.