Should I get auto leads, home leads, or both?

The answer depends on your carrier competitiveness, your market, and one thing most agents overlook entirely.

This is one of the most common questions we get from new agency partners at Next Call Club, and it's a good one. But the way most agents frame it misses the real decision underneath it.

The question isn't really "auto or home?" It's "where are you most competitive, and what does your cross-sell process look like?" Once you answer those two questions, the lead type decision becomes a lot simpler.

The first question we always ask back

When an agency owner comes to us asking about auto versus home leads, the first thing we ask is: Which vertical are you most competitive in right now?

Competitiveness is carrier-specific. If your rates on auto are strong in your market but your home rates are getting beaten consistently, buying home leads just gives you more opportunities to lose on price. The lead type doesn't fix a carrier competitiveness problem.

The follow-up question is about bundling. Do you quote home and auto together on every single call, regardless of which product the lead came in for? If you're buying an auto lead but not asking for the home, or buying a home lead but not asking for the autos, you're leaving items on the table that cost you nothing extra to quote. NCC's internet leads come with carrier competitiveness filters built in — so you're not buying volume in markets where your rates can't compete. 

That cross-sell question matters a lot more than which lead type you start with.

The ROI reality: home leads aren't always the better buy

A lot of agents assume home leads are higher value because the premium is bigger. It's a logical assumption, but the data tells a more complicated story.

Here's how the three main lead types rank by ROI based on what we see across our agency network and at Peachy Insurance:

Multi-car renter leads are the most overlooked segment in the industry. Demand is low, so the cost is low. But premiums are real, and you're guaranteed multiple vehicles on the quote. The catch is retention. Renters move more frequently and churn at a higher rate. They should be part of your mix, but not the majority of it.

Multi-car homeowner leads, accessed through the auto side and filtered for confirmed homeowners, often produce better ROI than going straight to home leads. You get the guaranteed vehicles plus the home cross-sell opportunity without paying home lead prices. When you buy a home lead, the household might have one car or no cars. When you buy a multi-car lead filtered for homeowners, you're guaranteed multiple vehicles, and you still have the same home cross-sell opportunity.

Home leads cost the most and produce the fewest items per bind on average. They work well when your carrier is genuinely competitive in the market. But if you're paying more per lead and closing on one item instead of two or three, the math doesn't favor home leads by default. Once you've decided on your vertical mix, the next question is volume. Our guide on how many leads to buy per day walks through the formula for backing into the right number based on your team size and sales targets. 

Why does both beat one, but only if the process supports it

If your operation is built for it, running both auto and home leads simultaneously is almost always the right call. More at-bats. More bundling opportunities. Seasonal variation is balanced out because home and auto don't always peak at the same time of year.

At Peachy Insurance, we buy auto leads, home leads, and multi-car renter leads year-round. We don't pick one and abandon the other, because the relative performance shifts depending on the season and the market.

The trap for smaller agencies is spreading budget across both when the volume on either side is too low to build any real data. If you're running ten leads a day total and splitting it five and five, neither pool is large enough to tell you anything useful in 30 to 45 days. You need enough volume per vertical to generate a real sample before you can make any optimization decisions.

If your budget forces a choice, start with the vertical where you're most competitive and build from there. Don't split this thin volume and expect to learn anything meaningful from either half.

What you need in place before running both

The process requirements for working auto and home leads are nearly identical. The same call cadence structure applies. The same speed-to-lead requirements apply. The same contact rate and quote rate benchmarks apply.

The one additional requirement when working on both is that your team needs to be genuinely fluent in quoting both products. An agent who is comfortable quoting auto but fumbles through a homeowner's quote is going to underperform on the home side, no matter how good the leads are. Make sure the skill gap doesn't create a false conclusion about lead quality.

Beyond that, the fundamentals don't change. Strong cadence, aggressive speed-to-lead, consistent follow-up, and a team that's asking for the cross-sell on every single call, regardless of which lead type brought the prospect in.

Geography and carrier competitiveness change everything

This is probably the most underappreciated variable in the auto vs. home decision. Your carrier's rates in a specific geography determine your ability to compete, and competitiveness is not uniform across markets.

Before you commit budget to a vertical, know your rates against your primary competitors in your target zip codes. If your carrier's home rates are consistently above market in a particular region, home leads in that region are going to produce lower close rates regardless of lead quality, cadence, or team skill.

Managing auto and home leads simultaneously in the same operation requires a CRM that can separate cadences, track dispositions by vertical, and surface which lead type is performing. See our recommended CRM for insurance agencies. 

Zip code targeting is one of the highest-leverage filters available to you. Being strategic about which zips you include and exclude based on carrier competitiveness is how you avoid spending money in markets where you're structurally disadvantaged.

The two mistakes that kill results in the first 90 days

Most agencies that don't get a fair read on whether a lead type is working for them fall into one of two traps.

The first is an inconsistent or inadequate call cadence. We regularly see agencies that call a lead once or twice in a five-day window and then conclude the leads don't work. A lead that received two call attempts has not been properly worked. You need 7 to 9 attempts over the first three to four days to know whether a lead is genuinely unresponsive or just unavailable at the wrong times.

The second is volume that's too high or too low. Too many leads means the cadence breaks down because agents can't keep up. Too few leads means your sample size is too small to draw any conclusions, even after 60 days. At NCC, the minimum starting volume is around 15 leads per day. That gives you enough data at the 30 to 45 day mark to run a real optimization review. If your contact rate isn't hitting 35% after 45 days, the lead type isn't the problem. Read our guide on why your contact rate may be lower than it should be before making any mix changes. 

How to allocate a $1,500 to $2,000 monthly lead budget

At that budget level, you're looking at roughly 10 leads per day, depending on pricing in your market. That's workable, but it's on the lean side for generating fast, meaningful data.

Our recommendation at that volume: start with the vertical where you're most competitive and run it cleanly for 45 days before making any mix changes. Track your contact rate, quote rate, and close rate by vertical from day one. Those three numbers tell you everything.

If your contact rate is below 35%, don't scale. Fix the process first. More leads on a broken process just cost more money and produce the same failed outcome at a higher volume.

If one vertical is closing at a significantly higher rate after 45 days, shift more of the budget toward it. If both are performing similarly, stay split or tilt slightly toward the vertical, where your carrier is more competitive heading into the next season.

What success actually looks like at 6 and 12 months

Here are the benchmarks we use at NCC to evaluate whether an agency's lead strategy is working:

• Contact rate: 35% or higher. Below this threshold, process or spam issues need to be addressed before volume decisions matter.
• Quote rate: 15 to 20% of total leads purchased. This means out of every 100 leads, 15 to 20 should result in a quote being run.
• Close rate: 2 to 3% of total leads purchased. This is the standard for a well-functioning internet lead operation.
• Cost per item and cost per sale: these numbers vary by market and carrier, but they should be trending down over time as the operation optimizes.
• Positive ROI on lead spend: if the math isn't working at the 12-month mark with consistent volume and a skilled team, the problem is usually carrier competitiveness or zip code targeting, not the lead type.

An agency hitting those benchmarks at the 6-month mark with consistent volume has a working lead strategy. At 12 months, the focus shifts to optimization: which zip codes are outperforming, which filters are producing the best close rates, and whether seasonal shifts in performance favor adjusting the auto-to-home mix.

If you want to work through the right starting mix for your market, carrier, and team, reach out to our team. We run this analysis with new clients regularly, and the starting point usually becomes clear pretty quickly once we look at your rates and your current metrics together.

 This blog is a collaborative piece by: