Marketing for real estate agents and teams
Most agents buy buyer leads because they are cheap. Listings are where the business is, and seller leads are harder to get, slower to convert, and worth several times as much.
What goes wrong when real estate agents and teams advertise
Cheap buyer leads are cheap because most of them are nine months from doing anything, and almost no agent has a follow-up system that survives nine months.
Listings carry both sides of the commission and far less of the driving, and seller lead generation is a completely different campaign that most agents never run.
Real estate is a special ad category on Meta with restricted targeting, so campaigns built on the usual demographic assumptions simply do not run.
What To The Max builds for real estate agents and teams
Seller-first campaigns built on home valuation and market update offers, because that is the buyer of your time that actually pays.
Follow-up measured in months with actual content, since a seller lead who is six months out is still the best lead you will get this week.
Special ad category compliance from the first build, so campaigns run at all rather than being rejected for targeting.
Local market authority content, since sellers pick the agent who clearly knows their street, not the one with the best headshot.
Buyer campaigns kept as a secondary channel, sized to what your follow-up can actually carry rather than to what is cheap.
The math to run before you spend
Every number below is a planning range or a target, not a claimed result. The only claimed results on this website are dated in the Ledger.
- Average commission per side
- $6,000 to $15,000
- What a seller lead can cost
- $50 to $250
- What a buyer lead can cost
- $10 to $40
- Follow-up window that pays
- 6 to 12 months
- Where the business is
- Listings
A two hundred dollar seller lead that lists in eight months beats fifty ten dollar buyer leads that nobody called twice. This category rewards patience and a system more than any other.
Questions real estate agents and teams ask
Do Facebook ads work for real estate agents?
Yes, particularly for seller lead generation, which is where the commission and the leverage are. Buyer leads are cheap and mostly long-horizon, so they only work for agents with a follow-up system that runs for months. Without one, cheap buyer leads are just a way to spend money.
How much does a real estate seller lead cost?
Fifty to two hundred and fifty dollars, against a commission of several thousand. Even at the top of that range the maths works comfortably at a low conversion rate. Buyer leads cost ten to forty dollars and are worth exactly what your follow-up process makes them worth.
What is the special ad category and how does it affect real estate ads?
Meta classifies housing ads as a special category, which removes most demographic and detailed targeting and restricts radius options. Campaigns built on standard targeting assumptions will not run. The build has to be designed around those limits from the start, using creative and geography to do the filtering.
How long should you follow up with a real estate lead?
Six to twelve months, with real content rather than a check-in every week. Sellers move on their own timeline, and the agent who is still providing useful market information in month seven is the one who gets the listing appointment. Most agents quit in week two.
The receipts behind this
To The Max is a one-operator agency run by Maximus Fayrweather in Huntsville, Alabama. The founder owns Supreme Clean, a pressure washing company doing five thousand dollars a month, and every strategy is funded with his own money on that business before it is sold to anyone. Wins and failures are both recorded with dates in the Ledger.
If you want to see what the leads actually look like when they arrive, there is a walkthrough of the lead feed. If your trade is not this one, the full list of industries has the plan for it.