Key findings
- Our six seller searches had a median US Google cost per click of $25.41, about 16 times the $1.61 median for six buyer searches. Sell-now searches drove it; value checks cost under $3.
- "Sell my house" was estimated at $69.29 a click and "we buy houses" $40.68, while "homes for sale" was $0.48.
- Searches for an agent cost from $7.30 ("realtor near me") to $13.21 ("listing agent"); the five in our agents group had a median of $8.
- In our Facebook Ad Library sample, 92% of the 87 real estate advertisers appeared with just one ad, and the median ad had been running for 347 days.
- 88.9% of the 99 consumer real estate ads carried Meta's Housing label, and 19.2% were catalog ads built from a listing feed.
Semrush Keyword Overview (US) and Meta Ad Library · 30 keywords (22 consumer searches) and 99 ads from 87 real estate advertisers · 3 November 2026 · How we did this · Download the data (CSV)
In our view, most real estate marketing advice is about posting more on social media, and it rarely says what a click costs. On 3 November 2026 we put two datasets side by side: Semrush's US Google cost-per-click estimates for 30 real estate keywords, and 99 live real estate ads from 87 advertisers in the Facebook Ad Library.
The short answer for real estate marketing budgets: sellers ready to sell are expensive and buyers are cheap. Our six seller searches had a median click of $25.41, against $1.61 for six buyer searches. "Sell my house" was estimated at $69.29 a click, while "homes for sale" was $0.48. In our Facebook Ad Library sample, most real estate advertisers showed up with a single ad, and the median live ad had been running for 347 days. The keyword data is free to download at the end.
Real estate marketing costs depend on who is searching
At the median, seller searches cost about 16 times as much as buyer searches. What surprised us was how cheap buyer clicks were: 6 of the 22 consumer searches cost under $1.
| Who is searching | Keywords | Median CPC | Priciest keyword | Its CPC |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sellers | 6 | $25.41 | sell my house | $69.29 |
| Agents (realtor near me, real estate agent) | 5 | $8.00 | best realtor near me | $11.72 |
| Buyers | 6 | $1.61 | buyers agent | $9.67 |
| Rentals and investing | 4 | $2.30 | property management companies | $5.62 |
| Commercial | 1 | $0.96 | commercial real estate | $0.96 |
Our read: a listing is an agent's inventory, and it comes from a seller, while iBuyers and cash-buyer companies chase the same homeowners. That would explain the prices: "we buy houses" was $40.68 and "sell my house fast" $37.60. Buyer searches are cheap partly because people searching "homes for sale" usually want to browse listings, and we think a click from them is less likely to turn into a signed client for a local agent.
The seller group also shows how wording changes intent. "Sell my house" was $69.29, but "home value estimator" was only $2.27 and "how much is my house worth" $2.81. We think people checking a value are often months from listing, which would explain the lower price.
What agent searches cost
When people search for an agent directly, the price sits in the middle. "Realtor near me" was $7.30, "real estate agent near me" $9.44, "best realtor near me" $11.72 and "real estate agent" $8. "Listing agent" was $13.21 against $9.67 for "buyers agent", the same seller-over-buyer pattern on a smaller scale.
For a single agent or a small team, these are the keywords we would test first on Google. At around $7 to $12 a click, they are a cheap way to learn which areas and which wording bring calls. For ads shown in the US and Canada, Google treats them as housing ads, so you target by city or radius, and ZIP codes, age and gender are off limits.
Rentals, investors and new homes
Rental searches were among the cheapest we priced. "Houses for rent near me" was $0.46 and "apartments for rent" $0.85, which suggests a single rental click is worth little to the portals and landlords bidding on it. "Property management companies" was $5.62, because a landlord looking for a manager is a business lead, and "investment property" sat at $3.75. "Commercial real estate" was $0.96.
New homes are busy on Meta. 22.2% of the real estate ads we read came from builders or manufactured-home dealers promoting new homes, nearly all of them returned by our "homes for sale" search, while "new construction homes" cost only $2.73 a click on Google. In the builder ads we read, the usual pitch was homes ready to move into now, and pre-sale VIP lists were rare. If you sell new builds, a pre-sale list is a pitch few competitors in our sample used, and that is our reason to test one.
Copy details were sparse. Only 12.1% of the ads wrote a dollar figure into the ad text, though 11 catalog ads filled in each listing's price from the feed. 10.1% gave a phone number, 5.1% mentioned financing and 2% were in Spanish or bilingual.
What real estate advertisers run on Facebook and Instagram
From our Facebook Ad Library study we took the 99 live US ads from 87 real estate advertisers aimed at buyers, sellers or renters. Our searches were "real estate agent" and "homes for sale", so buyer, listing and builder ads are over-represented.
60.6% of the ads were aimed at buyers or showed listings, 22.2% promoted new homes, and 17.2% were aimed at sellers. The low seller share mostly reflects our "homes for sale" search, which returns listings; among agents, seller ads such as home valuations and market updates are common. So a seller ad on Meta has competition too, and it has to be better than the valuation ads already running.
| Measure | Real estate ads |
|---|---|
| Single image | 35.4% |
| Dynamic creative | 28.3% |
| Catalog (listing feed) | 19.2% |
| Carousel | 9.1% |
| Video | 8.1% |
| Learn more button | 61.6% |
| Housing label | 88.9% |
| Live a year or more | 48.5% |
92% of the 87 advertisers appeared with just one ad in our sample, and the median ad had been running for 347 days. Video was rare at 8.1%. 19.2% of the ads were catalog ads, which build an ad for each listing from a home listing feed, the format several brokerages in our sample used to keep listings current without making new creative.
The Housing label matters. For ads that reach the US or Canada, Meta requires ads for housing opportunities, such as homes for sale or rent, mortgages and appraisals, to run in the Housing special ad category, which removes age, gender, ZIP code and lookalike targeting and needs a radius of at least 15 miles. 88.9% of these ads carried it; the 11 that did not included homes-for-sale ads, "sell your house for cash" offers and a few ads for property outside the US. If your ads are shown in the US, declare the category, or the ad can be rejected or restricted; check Meta's rules for your country if you advertise elsewhere.
What agencies pay to reach you
"Real estate lead generation" was estimated at $21.69 a click, 2.97 times the $7.30 for "realtor near me", though the other seven marketing terms we priced cost $7.10 to $10.55, a median of $7.86. "Real estate marketing" itself was $7.29. Agents are a competitive audience for lead sellers and agencies, so when you compare offers, ask whether the leads are exclusive to you, who runs your account and what written report you will get each week.
How we would plan an agent's paid media
- Aim at sellers, carefully. Seller clicks are expensive on Google, so give them their own budget and a page built for one job, such as a valuation request.
- Use Meta to reach homeowners before they search. In our view a local market update or a "what homes sold for near you" ad is a cheaper way to get in front of future sellers than paying for seller searches. In the US it must run in the Housing category with a radius of at least 15 miles, so the local detail has to come from the creative.
- Test agent searches on Google first. "Realtor near me" ($7.30) and "real estate agent near me" ($9.44) come from people choosing an agent now.
- Let a listing feed do the busy work. Catalog ads keep listings current without making new creative for every home.
- Refresh the creative. Nearly half of the ads we read had been live for a year or more, so a new video tour or market update stands out.
- Follow up fast. Instant-form leads go cold quickly, so call within minutes.
If you are an agent, team or brokerage in the US, UK, Canada or Australia and already advertise, give us read access and a senior buyer will write a free audit of your Meta and Google ad accounts: which search terms you are paying for and would never choose, what each costs per month, whether your lead numbers are true, and the three things we would fix first. It usually takes two working days, the document is yours to keep, and you get one follow-up email. If you have not advertised yet, the same page gets you a free plan instead. Our Meta ads and Google Ads teams work month to month with no lock-in, a named buyer on every account and a written report every week. For click prices in other industries, read what CPC is and what it costs by industry.
How we did this
- Source
- Semrush Keyword Overview (US) and Meta Ad Library
- Country
- United States
- Collected
- 3 November 2026
- Sample
- 30 keywords (22 consumer searches) and 99 ads from 87 real estate advertisers
- Keyword groups
- buyers, sellers, agents, rentals and investing, commercial, plus 8 marketing terms
- Meta searches
- real estate agent, homes for sale
We wrote 30 keywords: 22 that US buyers, sellers, renters and investors type, grouped by who is searching, and 8 marketing terms an agent types when looking for help. "Commercial real estate" sits in its own group because it is a commercial-property search. On 3 November 2026 we looked each one up in Semrush's Keyword Overview for the US database, in US dollars.
CPC is Semrush's estimate of what advertisers pay on average for one click on that keyword in Google Ads, as a national US figure. Real prices move with the city, the time of day, the quality of your ad and landing page, and local competition, so treat these as planning estimates. Groups have four to six keywords, so treat group medians as a rough guide.
The Facebook and Instagram figures come from our Meta Ad Library study collected the same day. Our two searches (real estate agent and homes for sale, at most 150 ads each) returned 129 ads from pages Meta categorises as Real Estate; we removed 30 of them, mostly ads aimed at agents (schools, recruiting, coaching, tools), plus one storage ad and a few listing ads our product-ad filter caught. That left 99 ads shown in the US from 87 advertisers, a few of them promoting homes outside the US. Buyer, listing and builder ads are over-represented because of the homes for sale search. Audiences were tagged from the ad text with keyword rules; an ad can be tagged more than once, and listing-feed catalog ads count as listings only.
"Days live" counts from the start date the Library shows for ads live on 3 November 2026. Because we sampled ads live on one day, long-running ads are over-represented, and days live says nothing about how well an ad performs.
Download the data (CSV). Free to reuse with a link to this page.
Questions about real estate marketing costs
How much does Google Ads cost for real estate agents?
It depends on who you target. In our US data from 3 November 2026, seller searches had a median CPC of $25.41, agent searches $8 and buyer searches $1.61.
Why are seller leads so expensive?
In our view, because a seller brings a listing, and a listing is an agent's inventory, while iBuyers and cash-buyer companies chase the same homeowners. Sell my house was estimated at $69.29 a click and we buy houses $40.68, though searches to check a home's value cost under $3.
Do real estate agents advertise on Facebook?
Yes. Our two Ad Library searches on 3 November 2026 turned up 99 live US real estate ads from 87 advertisers. 92% of those advertisers appeared with just one ad in our sample, and only 8.1% of the ads were video.
Do real estate ads need the Housing special ad category?
If your ads reach people in the US or Canada, yes: Meta requires housing ads, including homes for sale and rent, to run in the Housing category, and parts of Europe have similar rules. 88.9% of the real estate ads we found carried the label.
Is real estate marketing on Google worth it for a new agent?
In our view, start with agent searches such as realtor near me ($7.30) and real estate agent near me ($9.44) before paying for expensive seller searches.
Can I use this data?
Yes. Download the CSV from this page and reuse it with a link back to the study.