Why real estate agents don’t run Facebook ads (and what they are missing)

Heads up: Propa is a property marketing platform, not a real estate agency or a law firm, and we do not give real estate, legal, financial, or tax advice. This article is general information only, based on our own experience and public information. For advice on your situation, speak to a licensed conveyancer or solicitor, a licensed valuer, a registered tax agent, or your state’s real estate regulator.

I have been running Meta ad campaigns (Facebook and Instagram) for clients for nearly two decades. I have spent my career inside the platforms.

In all that time, I have hardly ever seen the real estate industry use them well.

This always seemed strange to me. Property is one of the most emotional, image-driven, lifestyle-led purchases a person ever makes. Meta is one of the most emotional, image-driven, lifestyle-led platforms ever built.

You would think the match would be obvious.

It is not. Here is why, and what changes when you actually run the ads properly.

The main points

Most real estate marketing still pours its budget into REA and Domain listing upgrades.

REA reaches active buyers, but actively looking is only about 10 to 20 percent of the real market.

Facebook and Instagram reach the other 80 to 90 percent, people who would buy if they saw the right home.

$500 of well-targeted Meta ads will reach 30,000 to 60,000 of the right people in your suburb.

Most agents do not run them because they do not know how, and the agency does not earn a percentage on the spend.

The "actively looking" myth

There is a quiet assumption in real estate that the only buyers who matter are the ones already on REA, scrolling listings every night.

The reality is that most people who buy a home in any given year are not actively searching when they first see it. They are open to moving. They might be saving, or sitting on pre-approval, or just waiting for the right house. They would absolutely look at a home that matched what they want, if it landed in front of them.

Marketers call this group "in-market but passive". The closest published research on this dynamic is the B2B Institute's "95-5 rule" (Ehrenberg-Bass / LinkedIn), which found that in any given quarter, only about 5 percent of B2B buyers are actively in-market. Property is consumer not B2B, so the exact ratio is different, but the principle holds. The "actively looking" group is always a fraction of the addressable buyers, and traditional listing portals only reach that fraction.

REA reaches the active group. Meta reaches the rest.

This is one of the first lessons I learned in the early days of running my own marketing agency. You do not just sell to the people putting their hand up. You sell to the people who would put their hand up if you tapped them on the shoulder.

What Meta ads actually let you do

Meta lets you target by suburb radius, age, income proxies, household status, life events (recently engaged, recently relocated, new parent), and a hundred other signals.

A well-set-up campaign for a $900,000 home in a regional Queensland coastal town might be targeted to:

Adults 28 to 55
Within a 40km radius of the suburb (with a separate slice for major capital cities for the tree-change crowd)
With "interested in" signals around home buying, real estate, interior design
Plus a lookalike audience based on people who have already engaged with similar listings

A few hundred dollars of spend over two to three weeks will put your listing in front of tens of thousands of people in your area. Meta's own reach estimator (built into the ad platform) will show you the exact projected reach for any budget and audience combination before you commit.

You cannot buy that audience on REA at any price, because REA does not have those people. Yet.

Why most agents don't do this

I have asked dozens of agents this question over the years. The answers are usually some combination of:

"We don't have anyone in the office who knows how to run them."
"Our agency tried it once and it didn't work." (It rarely works the first time.)
"REA is what buyers expect to see, so that's where the marketing budget goes."
"Meta does not pay us a commission on the ad spend, so it's a hassle."

That last one is the honest answer. Agencies usually mark up the REA listing fees. They cannot mark up Meta ads in the same way, so there is no incentive.

Some agencies are starting to run them. Most still are not.

What works in real estate Meta ads (and what does not)

A few patterns from running these for years.

What works

Lifestyle hero shots, not floor plans. The opening image should make someone want to live there, not understand the layout.
People in the photos. I will write a whole article about this one, but the short version is: humans are wired to stop on other humans.
A short, specific caption. Three or four sentences. The hook from your listing, the differentiator, a clear call to action.
Carousel ads. 5 to 7 photos in a swipeable carousel, walking the buyer through the home. Higher engagement than single-image ads almost every time.
Video. A 30 to 60 second walk-through, vertical format, captions on. Especially powerful on Instagram Reels.

What does not work

Generic agency branding in the ad. Buyers are looking at the home, not the agent.
Floor plans as the first image.
"Don't miss out!" copy with three exclamation marks.
Ads that link to the agent's profile page instead of the listing.
Anything with "discerning buyers" in the caption.

What this looks like in the Propa pricing

I built Boost Packs into Propa because advertising on Meta for property genuinely works, and most sellers cannot run it themselves without a learning curve.

Boost Packs are a separate weekly advertising product (Mini, Power or Mega), with a one-off $99 setup fee at first purchase. A Pro subscription is required, and they are not available on the free Listing. Propa publishes the advertising for your listing; sellers pay a flat weekly fee per tier and never manage an ad account or see a media spend figure.

When a Boost Pack is active, Propa builds the ad creative, sets the audience for your suburb within Meta's housing advertising rules, and publishes the advertising across Meta (Facebook and Instagram) and Propa channels for the week. You keep all the photos and copy afterwards. They are yours.

Frequently asked questions

How much should I spend on Facebook ads for a property?
For a typical Australian suburban home, $300 to $800 across the listing period reaches enough of the right audience. Spending more on a higher-priced home (over $1.5M) makes sense, up to about $1,500-2,000.

Do Facebook ads work for regional properties?
Yes, often better than in capital cities. Less competition for ad space and a higher proportion of "tree-change" buyers from the city who would never see your listing on REA.

Should I run ads myself or pay a specialist?
If you have run Meta ads before for any business, you can do it yourself with the photos and copy from your listing. If you have not, the time you spend learning is not free. Propa Boost Packs (available with a Pro subscription) publish the advertising for you.

Are Instagram ads different to Facebook ads?
Same Meta system. You can run a single campaign that shows on both. Instagram works better for vertical video and younger demographics. Facebook works better for older demographics and longer captions.

Do I need a Facebook page to run ads?
Yes. You need a personal Facebook account plus a "page" (you can set one up in 5 minutes). Or, if you go through Propa, we run the ads from the Propa account.

For Buyers

For Sellers

Proof