GUIDE
HOW MUCH DO ADU LEADS COST?
Across our best ADU accounts, a lead averages about $80 in ad spend and a booked appointment about $350, before our fee. Your numbers depend on your area, product and offer. We found no public average for ADU leads alone: broader public benchmarks put home improvement leads at about $43 on Facebook and $91 on search ads, and general contractor leads at about $166 on search ads. Judge any offer by the cost per booked appointment, not per lead.
What the public benchmarks say
We found no public average for ADU leads alone. These are broader benchmarks, the median cost per lead in ad campaigns for US home improvement and contractor businesses:
| Benchmark | Data period | Cost per lead |
|---|---|---|
| Facebook lead ads, home and home improvement | Apr 2025 to Jun 2026 | $42.95 |
| Google and Microsoft search ads, home and home improvement | Apr 2025 to Mar 2026 | $90.92 |
| Google and Microsoft search ads, construction and contractors | Apr 2024 to Mar 2025 | $165.67 |
These are what an ad turned into a form or a call across many businesses, not what a lead seller charges, and none of them covers ADUs alone. Google says the price of a Local Services Ads lead varies with your location, the job type, the type of lead and how you bid.
What our best ADU accounts pay
Across our best ADU accounts, a lead averages about $80 in ad spend and a booked appointment about $350, before our fee. Your numbers depend on your area, product and offer.
Three ways to buy ADU leads
- Shared leads from a marketplace: you pay per lead, and the same homeowner can go to several contractors, so you race them to the first call.
- Exclusive leads, calls or appointments from a lead seller: you pay for each one, and the seller sells it to no other builder, though the homeowner can still contact others.
- Your own ads, run by your team or a partner: you pay Meta or Google directly, plus your team's time or a management fee, and every lead is yours.
Angi alternatives for contractors compares how the marketplaces charge and how many pros get each homeowner, and exclusive vs shared leads weighs the two.
What drives the cost of an ADU lead
- Project size: Alameda County's 2023 ADU guidebook puts building costs from about $30,000 for a simple interior conversion into a junior ADU to $400,000 or more for a large detached ADU with high-end finishes on a hillside lot, so one signed job can carry a high cost per lead.
- Your market: when more builders bid on ads for the same homeowners, clicks and leads tend to cost more.
- How strict the filter is: screening for ownership, budget and timeline means fewer people pass, so the cost per lead goes up; check whether the cost per booked appointment comes down.
- The channel and the offer: search ads show to people searching for a project, social ads show to the audiences you pick, and the offer and the page decide how many visitors become leads.
- Follow-up: a lead nobody reaches never books, so slow or missed calls raise what each appointment really costs.
Judge cost per appointment, not cost per lead
A cheap lead that never picks up costs more than an expensive one that books. Work it out from your own numbers. In this example, a builder spends $10,000 on ads in a month:
- Cost per lead is spend divided by leads: 50 leads is $200 per lead.
- Cost per appointment is spend divided by booked appointments: if 10 of the 50 book, that is $1,000 per appointment.
- Cost per contract is spend divided by signed contracts: if 2 of the 10 sign, that is $5,000 per contract.
On a $200,000 ADU, $5,000 is 2.5% of the contract. These are example numbers to show the math, not a quote or a promise, so use your own.
Questions to ask before you buy ADU leads
- Is each lead exclusive to you, or sold to other builders too?
- Is the homeowner verified: is the phone real, and do they own the property?
- What counts as a lead you pay for, and which bad leads get a credit?
- Who follows up, how fast, and on which days and hours?
- Can you see cost per appointment and per signed contract, not only cost per lead?
- How long is the contract, and what does it take to leave?
How BINA charges
BINA runs ADU builders' own ads on Meta and Google and charges 20% of the ad spend each month plus a one-time $1,500 setup fee, with no per-lead charges and a $5,000 monthly minimum in ad spend. Meta and Google bill the ad spend to your own card. How we charge has the full breakdown, and ADU lead generation shows how we find, verify and book ADU homeowners.
Sources
Benchmarks change every year, so check the latest figures on each page:
- WordStream, Google Ads benchmarks 2026, home and home improvement cost per lead.
- WordStream, Facebook ads benchmarks 2026, home and home improvement lead campaigns.
- LocaliQ, home services search ads benchmarks, construction and contractors cost per lead.
- Google Local Services Ads help, on how lead prices are set.
- ADU guidebook for Alameda County homeowners, 2023 (PDF), page 49, on ADU building costs.
