Lead List Return Calculator: Cost per Deal, Break-even and Return on Spend

Authored by Carson Nordmann, Founder of Keystone Court Data. See our editorial standards.

Buying a list of property owners to call and mail costs money every month: the list, skip tracing, postage, the callers or dialer. Whether it pays depends on how many owners you reach, how many of those turn into appointments and deals, and what a deal makes you. Type in your own figures, and the calculator works out the monthly cost, the deals it comes to, the cost per deal, how many deals cover the cost, and the net and return each month, with a grid of what changes if your reach or close rate is higher or lower.

The list and what it costs each month

Example figures are filled in so the page has something to show. They are placeholders, not typical or expected rates and not benchmarks; replace each one with your own figure or estimate. Every answer updates as you type.

Records on the list each month

How many owners (records) you buy or pull each month and work.

List cost per month

What the list itself costs you each month, all in.

Skip tracing cost per record

What one phone or email lookup costs you, for each record you trace. Cents are used as typed, to a hundredth of a cent.

Share of records skip traced

Type 0 if you do not skip trace. Read to 4 decimals.

Mail pieces per record

Letters or postcards sent to each record in a month. Type 0 if you do not mail. Read to 3 decimals.

Cost per mail piece

Printing and postage for one piece.

Callers and dialer per month

What you pay each month for calling and texting: callers, a dialer, phone lines. Type 0 for none.

From reached owners to deals

Reach rate

% of records

Of all the records you work in a month, the share where you actually talk to or hear back from the owner, by phone, text or mail. Read to 4 decimals.

Appointment rate

% of reached

Of the owners you reach, the share that turn into an appointment or a real offer conversation. Read to 4 decimals.

Close rate

% of appointments

Of the appointments, the share that become a closed deal. Read to 4 decimals.

Profit per deal

What one deal leaves you on average after that deal's own costs (fees, repairs, closing). Your own figure.

Months until a deal pays

months

From the month you work the list to the month the deal's profit reaches you, for example at closing. Read to 3 decimals.

Net per month-

Monthly cost-

Deals per month-

Cost per deal-

Deals a month to break even-

Return on spend-

Paid out before the first profit arrives-

Each answer is worked out from your exact figures and rounded once, and each sentence shows its figures to as many decimals as it takes for the sums in it to work out from what it shows.

What if the reach or close rate were different

Net per month at half, three quarters, one and a quarter and one and a half times your reach rate (rows) and at half and one and a half times your close rate (columns), with every cost the same. A rate is never taken past 100%. Your own figures are in the shaded square.

If you reached owners sooner

Your reach rate if owners were contacted sooner

% of records

Optional: leave it blank and every other answer still works. Your own figure, for example from your own past results; it starts blank, with no example figure. Read to 4 decimals. The calculator does not know whether contacting owners sooner changes how many you reach. It only shows what your figure would mean, with every cost and every other rate the same.

This is arithmetic on the figures and estimates you type in, for general information only. It is not investment, financial, tax or legal advice. It does not know your market, your list, your callers, or the rules that apply to calling, texting and mailing owners, and the example figures are placeholders, not typical or expected results. Every result is only as good as the numbers entered. Talk to an attorney licensed in your state about the rules for contacting owners, and to your own accountant, before relying on it.

How each number is worked out

Monthly cost: the list cost, plus callers and dialer, plus skip tracing (records times the share traced times the cost per record), plus mail (records times pieces per record times the cost per piece).
Owners reached, appointments and deals: records times the reach rate, then times the appointment rate, then times the close rate. Deals are shown to at least four decimals and three significant figures, so a list that makes one deal every two months shows 0.5 and one that makes one deal every 200 months shows 0.005.
Net per month: deals per month times the profit per deal, minus the monthly cost.
Cost per deal: the monthly cost divided by deals per month.
Deals a month to break even: the monthly cost divided by the profit per deal. The card rounds it up to two decimals; the sentence under it gives it to as many decimals as the deals figure, and the spacing it quotes (one deal at least every so many months) is one divided by that printed figure, rounded down to a tenth of a month. There is no break-even when the profit per deal is $0 or less.
Return on spend: net per month divided by the monthly cost, as a percent. A return that is not zero but smaller than a tenth of a percent shows as “under 0.1%”, or “a loss under 0.1%” when it is a loss, instead of being rounded to a tenth of a percent.
Paid out before the first profit arrives: the monthly cost times the months that pass before the first deal’s profit reaches you. At one deal a month or more, that is the months until a deal pays. Below one deal a month, the deals are counted as adding up evenly, so the first whole deal comes in the month they reach one, and the months before it are added. Real deals come unevenly, so the first one can come sooner or later.
The what-if grid and the earlier-contact line: the same arithmetic with a different reach or close rate and every cost unchanged.

Every figure is worked out exactly from the digits typed and rounded once: dollars to the dollar (any amount under one dollar to the cent, and the parts of the monthly cost all to the cent when one under ten dollars has cents). When a sum in a line would not add up from whole dollars, including the parts of the monthly cost adding up to the total, every amount on the page is shown to the cent, or finer if a typed fraction of a cent means that is what it takes. Every deals figure (deals a month, the deals needed to break even and the earlier-contact pair) is shown to one shared number of decimals: at least four and three significant figures, and more where needed so each line that quotes them works out from what it shows (the deals times the profit gives the gross, the cost divided by the deals gives the cost per deal, the deals needed sits on the right side of the deals, the spacing and the first whole deal month follow from the deals shown). Owners and appointments are rounded to at least hundredths, and more where needed so the owners times the appointment rate gives the appointments shown and the appointments times the close rate gives the deals shown; the break-even card rounded up to two decimals, months to a thousandth, the deal spacing to a hundredth of a month, the break-even spacing to a tenth (rounded down from the printed deals needed, so it is never longer than that figure gives) and the return to a tenth of a percent.

What it leaves out

Taxes, your own time, office and software costs you did not type into a box, the cost of money while you wait for deals to pay, deals that fall through after a contract, and any change in your rates from month to month or as the list grows or shrinks. It treats every record the same: each one mailed the same number of pieces, the traced share applied to all of them, and the reach rate counted against every record, not just the traced ones. It counts each month's deals and their profit in that same month; the last card shows how much is paid out before the first profit arrives. It does not know any list, market or caller, or the rules on calling, texting and mailing owners in your state, and the example figures are placeholders, not typical or expected results.

General information only, not investment, financial, tax or legal advice. The calculator only does arithmetic on the numbers typed into it; it holds no data about any list, owner or market.