How to Find the Best Solar Leads in Any Australian Suburb
Most solar reps start their week the same way: pick a suburb, print a map, and start knocking. Maybe you got a list from your manager. Maybe you chose the area because you drove through it once and saw a few bare roofs. Either way, you are guessing.
The problem with guessing is that it wastes your most valuable resource: time. A rep who knocks 40 doors in a suburb where 30% of homes already have solar is going to have a very different day to one who knocks 40 doors where existing adoption is under 5%. Same effort, wildly different results.
What makes a good solar lead?
Before you can find good leads, you need to know what separates a great prospect from a time-waster. After thousands of doors across the Northern Beaches and North Sydney, the pattern is clear. The best solar leads share a few characteristics.
North-facing roof with decent area. This is the obvious one. A roof that faces north in Australia gets the most direct sunlight throughout the day. But orientation alone is not enough. The roof needs usable area: at least 25 square metres for a standard 6.6kW system, ideally more.
No existing solar installation. If a house already has panels, they are not buying more (unless you are selling batteries or upgrades, which is a different conversation). Checking existing installations before you knock saves you from the most common wasted conversation.
Owner-occupied property. Renters do not buy solar. It sounds obvious, but plenty of reps waste time knocking on rental properties because they have no way to check. Suburbs with high owner-occupier rates convert better across the board.
Above-median property value. Solar is a capital investment. Households with higher property values are statistically more likely to invest in a system. This does not mean you only target expensive homes, but it is a strong qualifying signal.
Low existing solar adoption. A suburb where 3% of homes have solar represents a massive untapped market. A suburb where a quarter of homes are already converted means the easy adopters are taken. The remaining homeowners are either renters, have shading issues, or have already decided against it.
The old way vs the new way
Traditionally, solar reps have used a combination of Google Maps satellite view, driving around suburbs, and buying leads from aggregators at $30 to $50 per lead. Some companies use Nearmap for aerial imagery, but at $10,000+ per year it is only viable for large operations.
The shift happening right now is toward data-driven prospecting. Instead of eyeballing rooftops on Google Maps, you can score every address in a suburb across multiple dimensions simultaneously. Roof suitability, property characteristics, market saturation, and local adoption patterns all factor into a single number.
When those signals combine into one score per address, you get a ranked list of your best prospects. The rep who starts their week with a list of the top 25 addresses in their territory, sorted by conversion likelihood, is going to outperform the rep who picks a random street every single time.
How scoring works in practice
Modern property intelligence platforms assign each address a composite score from 1 to 10. A proprietary algorithm weighs roof suitability, property characteristics, market conditions, and regional adoption patterns into a single number.
A score of 9.2 means this address has a strong roof profile, favourable property indicators, and sits in a suburb with room to grow. A score of 4.1 means the roof is compromised, the area is saturated, or both.
You do not need to understand the maths. You need a list that tells you where to start. The scan does the thinking. You do the selling.
Getting started
The fastest way to test data-driven prospecting is to scan a suburb you already know well. Pick your best-performing area, run a scan, and compare the top-scoring addresses against your own experience. You will likely find that the addresses you have already closed on score high, which validates the model. You will also find high-scoring addresses you have never visited, which is where your next deals are.
Every Vornir account starts with 50 free credits. One credit scans one address. Type a postcode, select the suburbs you want, and get your ranked list in under 30 seconds. No credit card required.