Don't bid where the portals live
Listing-intent keywords are contested by companies with budgets built on charging you for the same leads. There are cheaper rooms in the same building.
What's different here
Real estate paid search fails when it fights portals head-on for property-search terms. Those auctions are expensive because portals monetize the click several times over and can pay accordingly. What they bid far less aggressively on is the seller and landlord side (valuation intent, letting inquiries, management switching) which is where the margin actually is for an operator and where a local advertiser can win.
Trusted by teams at
What paid ads looks like for brokerages, property managers and proptech platforms.
These are the plays that wouldn't appear on a generic paid ads page. They only make sense in real estate & proptech.
Buy the supply side, not the demand side
Valuation, letting and management-switching intent is less contested, converts to a higher-value relationship, and is the side of the business portals compete with you least on. For most brokerages this reallocation alone changes account economics more than any bidding change.
Pace against viewing capacity, not against budget
Leads arriving faster than the team can call them don't become transactions, they become slow responses. We set delivery against realistic call capacity, including day-parting to the hours somebody actually answers. That sounds obvious and is almost never done.
Segment by area, not by property type
Value per lead varies enormously between postcodes and barely at all between flats and houses. Structuring campaigns geographically lets you bid to what an area is actually worth, which is the difference between a blended target that overspends everywhere and one that reflects the business.
Optimize to qualified inquiry, not form fills
A form fill from someone with no property to sell and no ability to buy is a cost. Feeding back the qualification outcome (even manually at first) lets the platform learn toward people who can proceed, and it's worth the operational friction of collecting it.
What holds brokerages, property managers and proptech platforms back
Portals own your demand
A large share of inquiry arrives through listing portals that charge for access to customers who are, in effect, theirs. Every year that dependency deepens, the negotiating position weakens, and the cost per lead rises regardless of what you do.
Vacancy cost is invisible
The cost of an empty unit (vacant days, turnover, re-leasing fees and the discount to fill it fast) sits in operations, while the marketing budget sits in acquisition. The two numbers rarely appear on the same page, so retention never wins the argument.
Local search across many locations
Multi-office brokerages and multi-site managers compete in dozens of local results simultaneously. Most run one generic site and a set of near-identical location pages that rank for nothing, which is a structural problem, not a content problem.
The transaction cycle outlasts the attribution window
Someone browsing today may transact in eighteen months. Any measurement built on a ninety-day window will conclude that brand and content do nothing, and the budget will move accordingly.
Same rigor, applied here.
The full paid ads scope and process are identical whoever the client is. What changes for real estate & proptech is the tactics above, not the delivery model.
What's included
How it runs
- 01Audit & diagnose — Week 1
- 02Fix measurement — Weeks 1–2
- 03Rebuild & launch — Weeks 2–4
- 04Test & iterate — Ongoing
- 05Scale profitably — Month 2+
Real Estate & PropTech results, in detail.
Full case studies with the numbers, the mistakes, and the recommendations clients didn't want to hear.
Scoped like the core service, no surcharge.
Every engagement is quoted from your actual brief. There's no vertical surcharge for this combination. Request a quote and we'll scope it properly.
Single Channel
One platform, managed properly.
Scoped to your brief
- 1 platform (Google or Meta)
- Server-side tracking setup
- 8 creative assets/month
- Bi-weekly optimization
- Up to $40k/mo ad spend
Multi-Channel
Brands running paid across search and social.
Scoped to your brief
- Up to 4 platforms
- Full server-side + CAPI setup
- 20 creative assets/month
- Landing page builds & testing
- Weekly optimization calls
- Dedicated media buyer
- Up to $200k/mo ad spend
Performance
High-spend accounts wanting aligned incentives.
Scoped to your brief
- Unlimited platforms & markets
- Percentage-of-spend model
- Dedicated buying squad
- Incrementality testing
- 40+ creative assets/month
- Custom attribution modeling
All engagements start with a free audit. Prices exclude media spend, which you pay directly to the platforms on accounts you own.
Real Estate & PropTech questions, answered straight.
Usually yes, and grudgingly. Defending your brand terms is close to a cost of doing business in this category: the clicks are cheap and letting a competitor sit above you on your own name costs more than the defense does. What matters isn't confusing that with growth: brand defense is a tax line, it should be sized and reported separately, and its return should never be blended into the numbers you use to judge whether paid search is working.
Other services for brokerages, property managers and proptech platforms
Let's talk about your growth constraint.
Listing-intent keywords are contested by companies with budgets built on charging you for the same leads. There are cheaper rooms in the same building.
Our commitment: Free account audit with no obligation. If we can't find at least 20% waste in your current spend, we'll tell you to stay where you are.