Multifamily cost per lease calculator
Enter what a community spends on paid advertising and what it gets back. You will see cost per lease with and without agency fees, and how it compares with the published industry average.
Benchmark: REACH by RentCafe, average cost per lease across all lead sources ($588) and PPC lead-to-lease rate (15.44%, 1,533 multifamily sites). The calculator runs in your browser; nothing you enter is sent anywhere.
How the math works
Cost per lease is total cost divided by leases. Total cost is ad spend plus any agency fee, whether it is a percentage of spend or a flat monthly amount. If you only know leads, the calculator estimates leases by multiplying qualified leads by a lead-to-lease rate.
Two things change the answer more than anything else. The first is what gets counted as a lead: counting every form fill makes cost per lead look better and lead-to-lease look worse. The second is whether fees are included. A listing site’s fee is its whole cost, so comparing it with paid search on ad spend alone is not a fair fight.
For benchmarks by channel, see what multifamily PPC costs per lease in 2026, and for how fees are structured, what a fair management fee looks like.
Questions about cost per lease
Should agency fees be included in cost per lease?+
Yes, if you want the true cost of the channel. Ad spend alone flatters paid search next to a listing site, whose fee is the whole cost. The calculator shows both, so you can compare like with like.
What lead-to-lease rate should I use?+
Your own, if you have it from your property management system or lead-source report. If you do not, 15.44% is the published PPC lead-to-lease rate from REACH by RentCafe across 1,533 multifamily sites. Count only real leads, like tours, calls of a minute or more and applications, or the rate will be too low.
Is $588 a good cost per lease?+
It is the published average across all lead sources, not a target. Search campaigns for a community people are already looking for usually come in well under it. A lease-up in a crowded submarket can run higher and still be worth it if it hits the absorption date.
30 minutes, your accounts, your properties.
Bring one community's ad account. We'll show you where spend is leaking and what we'd do in the first 30 days. You keep the findings either way.
The person on this call is the person in your ads account. Cameron Day, owner.