Advertising that puts your name on every doorstep.

Real estate ads are not like ads for shoes. Federal law, the ad platforms and your state all have something to say before an ad goes out, and an agency that works with real estate agents should know the rules as well as the tactics. This is general information, not legal advice: for a legal question about your own ads, ask a lawyer.

• The Fair Housing Act. 42 U.S.C. 3604(c) makes it unlawful to publish any advertisement for the sale or rental of a dwelling that indicates a preference, limitation or discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status or national origin.
• Words, pictures and media choices. HUD’s rule at 24 CFR 100.75 covers words, phrases, photographs, illustrations and symbols, and also selecting media or locations for advertising that deny particular segments of the housing market information about housing opportunities. Who sees an ad matters, not only what it says.
• Facebook and Instagram. Housing ads there have limited targeting options because of a 2022 federal fair housing settlement between the Justice Department and Meta.
• Google Ads. Google does not let housing ads target by age, gender, marital or parental status, or ZIP code in the US. Agents can target cities or a radius of at least 1 km.
• Texts and automated calls. Automated calls and texts to leads need the right written consent. Check with a lawyer before a campaign sends them.
• Your state and your brokerage. Your state’s real estate license rules on advertising also apply, and so do your brokerage and MLS rules.

None of this makes advertising harder to do well. It makes the plan clearer. A farm is chosen by streets and home types, never by who lives there. Ad copy talks about the home, the street and the agent, never about who belongs. An audience is a place: a city, a radius around a listing, people who visited your own pages. The Fair Housing rules for real estate ads guide goes through each of these in more depth.

A plan worth reading is specific to you. It names the area it would work, the channels in order, what each one needs from you and how leads would reach your phone. If two agents in different states could swap plans without noticing, it is a brochure, not a plan.

1. The area. The farm or market by geography: the neighborhoods, the streets, the home types and roughly how many doors.
2. The channels, and why those. If it recommends mail and lead ads but not search, it should say why.
3. The first ninety days. What gets built first, what launches when, and what you have to supply: photos, listing details, a headshot, your brokerage’s approval where it is needed.
4. Budgets you set. Ad spend is yours and separate from any agency fee. A good plan shows where each dollar would go and lets you change it.
5. Where leads land. The form, the page or the inbox, and how fast someone on your side can answer.
6. What you own. The ad accounts, the mailing list, the pages and the leads stay with you.
7. What you see each month. Which numbers come back to you, in what form, and what each one means.

The costliest surprise in real estate agent ads is rarely a bad postcard. It is finding out later that the ad account, the audience lists or the landing pages belong to someone else. Ask, before anything starts, that every account is opened in your name or your brokerage’s, with the agency added as a user.

A few facts from the platforms help you read any proposal. On Google Ads the actual cost per click is the final amount you are charged, often less than the most you said you would pay, and you can change your average daily budget at any time. Whether and where your ad shows is set by Ad Rank, which Google says uses several factors, including your competition, the context of the person’s search and your ad quality at that moment. Google’s Local Services Ads also have a category for real estate agents and brokers: they charge per lead rather than per click and run license checks for each agent in the firm before the Google Verified badge shows.

That last answer matters. On search, Google itself says no one can promise a top ranking and that it does not accept payment to rank a site higher. An agency that promises a position, or a set number of closings, is promising something nobody controls. If a plan also covers a website or your Google Business Profile, Google counts real estate agents as individual practitioners who can have a profile of their own alongside the office’s profile.