Understanding Property Leads
What are property leads and how are they better than traditional lead generation methods?
Small businesses in the home services industry often struggle to find quality customers without wasting time and marketing dollars. From pricey online lead marketplaces to blanket postcard campaigns, traditional methods of lead generation have clear shortcomings.
A new approach is emerging as a game changer: property leads, which focus on the property itself as the target. By leveraging rich property data, companies can zero in on properties that actually need their services, delivering more bang for each marketing buck.
The Problem with Traditional Lead Generation
Home improvement and maintenance professionals have traditionally relied on a few familiar tactics to drum up business, each with notable drawbacks:
Online Lead Marketplaces (Angi, Thumbtack, etc.)
These platforms promise a stream of customer leads, but contractors often pay $15 to $85+ per lead, only to find the same lead was sold to multiple competitors. It becomes a race to respond first or bid lowest, squeezing margins and wasting time on "leads" that may never convert. Chasing these "hot leads" can turn into a race to the bottom, where you're forced to compete on speed and price instead of quality.
Blanket Mailers and EDDM
Many local businesses try Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM) to blanket entire neighborhoods with flyers. While EDDM is affordable per piece, the response rates are abysmally low. Most recipients simply aren't in the market for the service or their property doesn't need the service. For example, a roofer might send 5,000 postcards to everyone in a zip code, yet most of those homes may have brand new roofs or no need for roofing work. Untargeted marketing means wasted postage on the wrong prospects, yielding just a handful of calls. Targeted direct mail lists can achieve response rates roughly 3-5 times better than saturating a random area.
Demographic Lists
Buying mailing lists based on demographics (income, age, new movers, etc.) is slightly more refined, but still often misses the mark. These lists focus on who the homeowner is, not what the property actually needs. Even targeting "new homeowners" can lead to irrelevant offers if you ignore the property's features. Without property-specific insight, businesses end up pitching services to properties that don't need them, wasting time and money.
Focus on the Property, Not Just the Owner
In home services, the property itself is arguably the real customer. A leaky basement, aging HVAC, or overgrown trees are real problems, if the property needs it, the owner will too. This is the philosophy behind "property leads." Instead of guessing or focusing on demographic profiles, property-led targeting uses data on the property's attributes and status to identify likely needs. Not every property needs your service, so why market to those that don't?
Modern data makes this possible. Publically available real estate data can tell a lot about a property: its age, size, features, and even recent sale and property value. By filtering for the right property characteristics, a business can create a laser-focused prospect list. PropTrove's platform, for example, lets users filter properties by hundreds of features: whether they have a pool, a septic system, a fireplace, a large yard, construction year, number of stories, and so on. Looking for fixer-uppers with shingle roofs and at least two stories for a roofing promotion? Or single-family homes built over 10 years ago that have in-ground pools that may need resurfacing? Those specific segments can be found in minutes.
See How Property Targeting Works for Your Industry
Find properties, including recently sold and fixer-uppers, by specific heating and cooling features like wall and window units, heat pumps, gas systems, or humidifiers that are ideal for HVAC upgrades, replacements, and servicing.
Crucially, property-based lead generation is proactive. Rather than waiting for owners to realize they need a service and then competing for their attention, businesses can reach out first. The key is to target the properties most likely to need your services, beating competitors to the customer by identifying issues before the phone rings at a lead aggregator. For a small business, that means no more sitting idle hoping for referrals or costly leads to come through. You can identify a high-potential property and get your marketing message in front of the owner before they start shopping around.
Why Property Leads Deliver Better Results
For marketing teams and business owners, the appeal of property-targeted leads comes down to better results for less effort. Here's why this approach is proving more effective than traditional methods:
Higher Response Rates
When your mailers or ads only go to qualified properties, more recipients pay attention. Targeted direct mail lists have been shown to achieve around a 3-5x response rate compared to unfiltered mailings. In real terms, instead of getting maybe 2 or 3 calls from a flyer drop of 1,000 homes, you might get 10-15 calls by sending that flyer to 1,000 carefully chosen property leads. This can be the difference between a losing campaign and a thriving one.
Lower Cost Per Lead (and Per Acquisition)
Property leads flip the economics of marketing in favor of the business. Rather than paying $50 or $100 for a single "lead" on a lead-gen platform, you could spend that same $100 on, say, mailing hundreds of postcards to targeted addresses and potentially convert dozens of them into customers. By paying just pennies for data on each prospect and only mailing to likely matches, you'll see far better ROI.
Less Competition, First-Mover Advantage
With property-centric marketing, you're often the only business knocking on that door. You identify the need and reach out before the owner is actively soliciting bids. Contrast this with platforms where the moment an owner indicates interest, 3+ contractors may immediately bombard them with offers. By getting in front of an owner early, perhaps before they've even realized they need a given service, you avoid that crowded contest entirely. You can build a relationship as a helpful advisor, rather than one of many names in an inbox. This first-mover advantage not only improves your chance of winning the business, but also helps you avoid the price wars that come when multiple companies chase the same lead.
More Relevant, Personalized Marketing
Property data enables highly relevant messaging that resonates with property owners. Instead of a one-size-fits-all pitch, you can tailor your outreach to reference the property's actual situation. For example, you might send a note saying, "We noticed your home was built in 1975, if the original plumbing is still in place, it could be due for an upgrade." Or if you target properties with gutters and lots of trees, "Did you know fall leaves can clog your gutters? We offer gutter cleaning for homes like yours."
This level of personalization is possible at scale when you have filters for the features that matter. It's no surprise that personalization boosts mail response rates (the Direct Marketing Association found personalizing mail can significantly lift response). Property owners appreciate offers that actually fit their needs, and they're more likely to respond when they feel singled out in a good way. Simply put, relevance drives results.
Capitalizing on Key Life Moments
Property-focused marketing aligns perfectly with moments when property owners are primed to spend on services. One of these is right after a purchase. Studies show that recent movers spend vastly more on improvements and repairs in their first year than established property owners, often thousands of dollars more. A new owner (especially one who just bought an older house) likely has a checklist of projects, from installing new floors to fixing that old furnace.
"In the first year of ownership, home buyers spend double what long-time owners will spend on upgrades and repairs."
By targeting recently sold properties (one of PropTrove's key filters), businesses can tap into this surge of demand at exactly the right time. Grabbing their attention early means you can connect with them before they've chosen a provider for those projects.
A New Era for Small Business Marketing
All of this points to a fundamental shift: home service marketing is becoming smarter and more data-driven, even for the smallest businesses. In the past, only big companies or those with specialized data could do this kind of targeting. Now platforms like PropTrove are packaging property intelligence in an accessible way for a local roofer, plumber, landscaper, or painter. It's like giving a small business the power of a high-end marketing agency's research department, but at minimal cost.
For small business owners and their marketing teams, the takeaway is to prioritize quality over quantity in lead generation. Rather than casting the widest net and hoping for a catch, it pays to define your ideal customer profile in terms of property attributes and use that as your filter for all outreach.
"If we can take the guesswork out of helping businesses find new customers, we free up them up to focus on what they do best, delivering great service. The days of sending 10,000 postcards to random addresses and hoping for a tiny fraction to respond are numbered. We want to put better leads in your hands so you can concentrate on serving the folks who truly need you."
-PropTrove Co-Founders
In the end, "property leads" could very well become the new gold standard for lead generation in home services and beyond. The result is marketing that feels less like a shot in the dark and more like unlocking the opportunities hidden in plain sight on your street. For anyone tired of wasting money on dead-end leads or unfruitful advertising, it may be time to consider letting the properties do the talking.
The next time you plan a campaign, ask not "Which neighborhoods or people should I target?" but rather "Which properties truly need my service?" The answer to that question could be a game changer for your business.
Introducing PropTrove
One company at the forefront of this property-centric lead movement is PropTrove. PropTrove was founded by brothers Josh and Jordan in 2024 after a personal revelation: the home service marketing model was broken. "After I bought a home, I was shocked by the pile of irrelevant flyers in my mailbox. I even got offers for lawn care when my home doesn't even have a yard," said Josh. "Small businesses were clearly spending time and money reaching out to the wrong customers. My brother and I knew there had to be a smarter way."
PropTrove's solution is a simple self-serve online platform where businesses can define their ideal property profile, instantly see how many properties match, and download a list of relevant addresses.
Why PropTrove Works
- •Precision targeting: Use our filters to find properties that match your ideal customer profile. No more guessing.
- •Cost-Effective: Pay only for the records you download. No subscriptions, no hidden fees.
- •Ready-to-Use Data: Download clean files with property addresses and details, ready for your mailers, CRM, and other tools.
- •Higher customer response rates: Achieve 3-5x higher response rates by marketing to properties that actually need your services.