Facebook ads for estate agents work best when they are aimed at the people an agency is short of: homeowners who will sell in the next year, landlords ready to hand over management, and buyers for a development that has not launched yet. Below I set out where Meta advertising earns its place, the housing and listing rules that shape every ad, how I run a property campaign and the problems I find most often in agency ad accounts.
How buyers, sellers and landlords use Facebook and Instagram
Buyers and tenants who are actively looking already spend their time on Rightmove, Zoopla and OnTheMarket. Paying Meta to reach them again rarely adds much, because the portals hold almost every live listing and the alerts that go with them. For most agents, buyers are not the scarce resource. Instructions are.
That is where Facebook and Instagram are useful. A homeowner who might sell next spring is not searching for an estate agent yet, but they are scrolling, and they notice the agent whose name keeps appearing beside homes sold on their street. The same applies to landlords with one or two properties who are tired of managing them, and to people a year away from buying a new-build home. Meta ads reach these people before they shortlist anyone, which is a different job from Google Ads for estate agents and developers, where you answer someone already asking for a valuation.
What is different about property advertising
Meta’s housing rules
Ads for homes to buy or rent, and often ads for the agents selling them, usually fall into Meta’s housing special ad category. Declaring it removes age and gender targeting, rules out lookalike audiences, and limits how tightly you can draw a map around your patch. An undeclared housing ad can be rejected, and repeated rejections put the whole ad account at risk. Meta’s rules here have changed several times, so I check what currently applies to the campaign and the places it will run before building any audience.
The practical effect is that the ad has to do the targeting. A video that names the streets you cover and shows homes you have sold there will be watched by people who live nearby and skipped by everyone else, however wide the audience setting.
Material information and the CAP Code
National Trading Standards guidance on material information expects a property listing to show details such as the price or rent, the tenure and the council tax band, and an ad for a specific home is a listing like any other. The CAP Code adds its own expectations: a “from” price on a development should be one buyers can realistically get, computer-generated images should not show views, finishes or landscaping that will not exist, and an offer such as “stamp duty paid” needs its conditions stated where people will see them.
Lettings
Rental ads carry extra risk. Wording such as “no DSS” or “professionals only” can amount to discrimination, and in England the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 requires a rental advert to state the rent and makes it unlawful to turn tenants away because they have children or receive benefits. I read every lettings ad with that in mind, including the captions agents write themselves.
Tracking and consent
The Meta Pixel may only fire after a visitor accepts marketing cookies, because PECR applies to UK websites. I set it to load on consent and add the Conversions API so that valuation requests are still counted reliably. The part most agencies miss comes later: whether a valuation enquiry turned into an instruction. I send that back as offline conversions from your CRM, using hashed contact details only, so the campaign learns which enquiries were worth having.
How I run a property campaign
- Pick one goal. Valuation requests, landlord enquiries, or registrations for a development launch. Each needs its own campaign, creative and follow-up, and mixing them makes every one harder to judge.
- Build creative from your own patch. Short vertical videos filmed on a phone: a valuer walking a street you know well, a recent sale explained in under a minute, a show home tour. These run across Reels, Stories and Feed, and each one is cut to suit the placement it runs in.
- Choose how people get in touch. Facebook lead ads work for valuation requests when a negotiator can call back the same day. One qualifying question, such as when they expect to move, filters out people who only want a number. For a development, a landing page built for the campaign can carry floor plans, prices and the material information the guidance expects.
- Agree follow-up before launch. Who calls each lead, how quickly, and how the outcome is recorded in the CRM. A valuation lead left for two days is usually a valuation booked with someone else.
- Judge on booked valuations, then instructions. Cost per lead is a starting point only. Instructions can arrive months after the first enquiry, long after Meta’s attribution window has closed, so I track them by source in your own records.
Mistakes I see in property accounts
- Boosting every new listing from the Facebook page. It pleases vendors, but it spends money reaching buyers the portals already reach and rarely brings an instruction.
- Housing ads not declared in the special ad category, followed by a run of rejections and a restricted ad account.
- “Instant online valuation” forms that collect hundreds of curious browsers and swamp the negotiators.
- Stock photos of keys and front doors. In a local market, a recognisable street and a real valuer give people a reason to stop that a generic image never does.
- The same three ads running for months to a small local audience, long after creative fatigue has set in.
- No link between the ad account and the CRM, so nobody can say which campaign produced an instruction.
What you receive
- A short plan stating the goal, the audience settings the housing rules allow, the budget and how success will be measured.
- Ad copy and video scripts checked against Meta’s policies, the CAP Code and the material information guidance.
- Pixel and Conversions API set up behind your cookie banner, plus an agreed routine for uploading booked valuations and instructions.
- A monthly report in plain English: what was spent, which leads came in, what became of them and what I will change next.
How Meta ads fit with search and SEO
Meta builds awareness in your patch months before people need you. Search catches them when they are ready, so the agents and developers who do best usually pair it with SEO for estate agents and property businesses and a Google Ads campaign for valuation searches. If you want one person to look at the whole picture, my page on digital marketing for estate agents and property explains how I plan it.
Next step
Tell me whether you want more valuations, more landlords or more interest in a development, which areas you cover, and how quickly your team follows up an enquiry. If you already run Meta ads, I will go through the account and tell you what I would change first. Book a call about your agency or development to get started.