Real Estate Lead Cost Report for Buyers on Google | Q3 2025 Update

Written by Dan Lott | 12/17/25 4:25 PM

In the third quarter of 2025, Google Buyer CPLs continued their upward trend—but with some surprising stability across markets. That’s good news for forecasting and planning your ad spend.

St. Louis once again tops the list of big markets with the lowest CPL, while Bangor, ME takes the crown for the lowest Google Buyer CPL market overall, followed my Kingston, NY and Pittsfield, MA. Meanwhile, major metros like Los Angeles and Arlington/Alexandria saw increases, reminding us how dynamic lead costs can be.

Looking ahead to the rest of the year, Google Buyer CPL typically trends upward as the months progress. Historically, Q1 delivers the lowest costs, while Q4 sees the highest. That pattern is expected to hold in 2025—though CINC’s recent site enhancements early in Q4 have already started improving CPL performance, which could help offset the usual seasonal spike.

Dive into the full report to see where your market ranks and how you can leverage these insights to maximize ROI.

Looking at all markets, Bangor, ME had the lowest CPL at $1.60 per lead. Kingston, NY and Pittsfield, MA were in 2nd and 3rd place.

Keeping consistent with historic Google Buyer Cost Per lead trends, each of the top 25 markets saw an increase in CPL in Q3.

Of the top 26th-50th markets, Richmond, VA and Buffalo, NY each saw lead costs decrease in Q3 2025.

Of the 51st to 75th largest markets Worcester, MA saw the largest decrease (-32% CPL change) while Baton Rouge, LA saw the largest growth year over year (147% CPL change).

For the 76th-100th largest markets Cape Coral, FL saw a decrease (-4% CPL change); And Wichita, KS remained flat, while other markets with available data saw an increase in CPL.

CINC is the leader in online real estate lead generation with more than 50,000 clients. This behind-the-scenes lead cost data is what we were seeing for our portfolio of real estate team and agent clients during Q3 2025. The CINC client marketing team manages almost $30 million in search and social advertising spend annually for real estate teams and agents across the United States and Canada. If you want to see how CINC can help you find more higher quality hyperlocal real estate leads on Google, request a demo here.

Additional Google Real Estate Lead Gen Resources from CINC:

With the real estate market shifting, it is more important than ever to be more efficient paying for leads on Google. Try our free local Google real estate targeting tool here to find hidden pockets of more cost effective hyper-local leads near you.

Watch our recent on-demand real estate lead gen webinar here where we discuss new trends for real estate teams and agents on Google Ads, including a deep dive on Google Local Service Ads (LSA's) for realtors.

Here are links to past historic Buyer Cost Per Lead Reports for Q2 2025, Q1 2025, Q4 2024,Q3 2024, Q2 2024, Q1 2024, Q4 2023, Q3 2023, Q2 2023, Q1 2023, Q4 2022, Q3 2022, Q2 2022, Q1 2022, Q4 2021, Q3 2021, Q2 2021, Q1 2021, Q4 2020, Q3 2020, Q2 2020, Q1 2020.

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