Most agents who try paid search end up paying for clicks from people who only wanted to look at photos. Searches for a listing address, a home value or an agent in a particular town carry very different intent, and Google applies special housing rules to anyone advertising homes. We set up and run campaigns that separate those intents, respect the policy and judge each week by the leads your team can actually work.
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Send us your website. Within 24 hours, you'll get a written analysis comparing your marketing with your competitors'.
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Your analysis is prepared by a senior project manager with 15+ years of experience in marketing.
Key takeaways
Before you read on
Why it matters
Realtors tend to arrive at Google Ads after a portal subscription stopped paying off or a broker suggested trying it. The first campaign usually targets a broad phrase like homes for sale in a town, the clicks pile up, and the CRM fills with names that never answer the phone. The problem is rarely the platform. It's that someone browsing inventory on a Sunday night and someone who needs to sell before a job transfer look almost identical in a keyword report, unless the account is built to tell them apart.
Seller intent shows up in searches about what a house is worth, how to pick a listing agent, or what it takes to sell a property with tenants in it. Buyer intent is wider and noisier: neighborhood names, school zones, new construction, first-time purchase programs. A sound account gives each group its own campaigns, its own landing pages and its own definition of a good lead, so a flood of low-quality buyer inquiries never hides the fact that seller calls have dried up.
A third group quietly wastes spend: renters, other agents, job seekers looking for a brokerage, and people researching a license. Negative keyword lists built for real estate keep them out from the first week.
Side by side
Quick to start and nothing to manage, but the leads are frequently shared with other agents, the targeting belongs to the vendor, and you never own the search data or the audience lists that would let you improve next season.
You keep control and learn the platform, yet campaigns drift while you're at closings. Smart bidding gets trained on form fills from renters, search terms go unchecked for weeks, and the housing policy review can pause ads without anyone noticing.
A senior project manager reviews your market, your mix of listings and buyers, and how your team follows up, then matches a Google Ads specialist who has run housing campaigns. The account stays in your name, and you go over results together every month.
What to know
In the United States, Google places ads for home sales, rentals and mortgages under its personalized advertising rules for housing. You can't aim campaigns at age groups, gender, parental or marital status, and targeting by postal code is restricted. Similar audience expansion is limited too. None of this makes paid search useless for realtors, but it does move the work toward keyword selection, radius and city-level geography, and sharply written ads.
The federal Fair Housing Act applies to the words in your headlines as much as to your yard signs. Phrases that describe the ideal buyer instead of the property, such as calling a home perfect for young couples or a certain kind of family, can create exposure for you and your broker. Our specialists write ads that describe the home, the location and the service, and they check state license disclosure requirements such as showing the brokerage name where your state asks for it.
Performance Max and remarketing lists need the same care: asset groups should describe properties and services, and audience signals should stay within what the housing category allows.
Step by step
Step 1
You share access or a description of your current setup and the areas you work. Within 24 hours you receive a PDF that separates seller, buyer and wasted search traffic and shows where policy or tracking gaps are costing you leads.
Step 2
A senior project manager looks at whether your business leans on listings, relocation buyers, luxury homes or investors, then assigns a specialist with housing account experience and sets the scope with you.
Step 3
The specialist splits campaigns by intent, adds call assets and lead forms, tests a home valuation page for sellers and wires conversions into your CRM, so a signed listing counts for more than an unanswered form.
Step 4
Every month you see which searches produced appointments, which produced noise and what changes next. Bids move toward the areas and phrases that turn into conversations your agents actually want to have.
Who it's for
Paid search suits agents who already have a follow-up routine and want more predictable pipeline than referrals alone provide.
You want sellers to find you when they first wonder what the house would fetch, before a friend recommends someone else. A focused seller campaign with a valuation offer suits a single agent who answers the phone personally.
When one person's whole job is calling leads back within minutes, broader buyer campaigns start to make sense, and offline conversion imports let bidding learn which inquiries became showings.
Separate accounts or clearly divided campaigns keep recruiting searches from muddying consumer lead data, and shared negative lists stop agents in the same office from bidding against each other.
Out-of-town buyers search differently and over longer periods. Remarketing and content around moving to an area help keep your name in front of them until they're ready to tour homes.
Checklist
A short list makes the first conversation about your market instead of about logins.
Checklist
How it works
Everything happens online. The specialist works inside your account and logs every search term review and bid change, and you meet the project manager on video at a time that fits around showings. You never need to chase several people. The project manager holds the scope, flags policy notices, and brings a plain summary to the monthly review so you can decide where to push harder next season, for example before spring listings or ahead of a slow winter.
The account, the conversion data and the audience lists always stay yours. To see how the whole service works first, read about our Google Ads management or the steps on how it works. Agents who also need listing presentations, email nurture or social content can add them through a fractional marketing team, and the full list of industries we serve is on its own page.
FAQ
Short answers. The free analysis call covers anything specific to your company.
It can bring both, but sellers need their own campaign. People thinking about selling search for home values, commission questions and agent comparisons. Targeting those phrases with a valuation page and a clear call option tends to produce fewer inquiries than buyer campaigns, yet each one is usually worth far more of your time.
Google applies its housing ad rules in the United States, which removes demographic targeting and restricts postal-code targeting. Accounts that were built on those settings lose reach. The fix is a structure based on keywords, cities or a radius, and ads that describe properties and services clearly.
For buyer campaigns an IDX search page can work if it loads quickly on phones and asks for contact details at a sensible moment. For sellers, a separate page with a valuation request and your phone number almost always converts better than dropping people into a property search.
We connect lead forms and calls to your CRM and, where your system allows, import status changes such as appointment set or listing signed back into Google Ads. The senior project manager with 15+ years in marketing reviews those outcomes with you monthly, so decisions rest on appointments rather than click counts.
Many agents start with Search alone because intent is clearer and fair housing review of copy is simpler. Performance Max can help later, once conversion tracking reports real appointments and you have enough listing photos and videos to feed it. The specialist tests it only after Search is producing steady leads.
Free analysis
Send us your website. Within 24 hours, you'll get a written analysis comparing your channels with your competitors', plus a call with a senior project manager who has run marketing for 15+ years.
Free marketing analysis
Your analysis is prepared by a senior project manager with 15+ years of experience in marketing.
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