Are your real estate ads performing? Are they adding to your GCI? You might be getting leads, but are you getting potential buyers? Are your real estate ads helping build your brand or just making your phone ring?
To help you answer these questions take a look at this list we’ve pulled together of the best performing ads in the industry. This list is pulled from our social analytics data (yes, we can track every ad from every agent, across the web, and social platforms). So, we’ve included Facebook, Instagram, video, outdoor, and even print.
Here are some of the best real estate ads running today.
Best Performing Real Estate Ads On Facebook & Instagram 2021
When it comes to eyeballs, the number of them you get on your ad matters a lot less than who owns them.
You might get 1,000 eyeballs connected to 500 people on your listing ad, but if none of those people live in or are interested in moving to your farm area … well, you get the idea.
That’s where Facebook comes in. The promise, and often the reality, of Facebook real estate advertising is that you’ll get the RIGHT eyeballs and lots of them.
Before we get started on the ads, we need to talk about something important. If you want your ads to actually convert, they need to look great. Mediocre just doesn’t cut it on social media anymore.
Best Performing Real Estate Ads 2021:
1. Core Real Estate: ‘Work With Me’
Always remember that building brand awareness is just as important as generating leads with your ads. This short neighborhood branding ad from CORE NYC hits the spot.
2. Mark Spain Group: Over $5 Billion Sold
As they say, if you actually did it, it’s not bragging. So if you have impressive stats like Mark Spain, then making your audience aware of them is a no-brainer.
3. Brown Harris Stevens: Listing Ad
At the end of the day, you’re selling homes, so a portion of your ad spend should always be used to promote listings. This ad from BHS has great copy, great imagery, and works great on Instagram.
4. Warburg: Listing Ad
If you have a listing with a standout feature, then you can get a lot of traction promoting it with a video or carousel ad on Facebook. They might come for the views, but will stay with you if you can convince them you have expertise, authority, and trust.
5. Pacific Union Real Estate: Ode to a San Franciscan’s San Francisco
Of course, if you can combine a neighborhood ad with a listing ad like this one from Pacific Union, you’re one step ahead of the competition.
6. Zephyr Real Estate: Listing Ad
Sometimes all it takes is a charming little house to draw in would-be homebuyers to nurture long term.
7. The Corcoran Group: Local Next Door
Loving these Facebook ads from The Corcoran Group that use clever videos to make a personal introduction with a local agent. This is a general ad that will work for branding as well as generating both buyer and seller leads who are looking to work with someone they like and trust.
8. @Properties: The #1 Real Estate Firm in …
A perfect branding ad! If you have any awards or accolades, then flaunt them. It really doesn’t get any simpler than that. Of course, it helps to have awards or accolades in areas where your leads want to buy and sell houses, but any agent can claim to be the “hardest-working” agent in any area as it’s an entirely subjective claim.
9. Warburg Realty: Listing Video
Listing videos can work very well to get leads from your Facebook ads.
Best Performing Real Estate Ads
10. Adam Hergenrother: Buyer Ad
Straightforward, honest, and simple. Great copy here too.
11. Knox & Associates Realtors: 5 Deal Breakers You Need to Know
There’s nothing wrong with mixing a little FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) into your ads as long as you’re offering a compelling solution. After all, educating the public is part of your job as a real estate agent. Some lessons are hard to learn.
12. Miami Realty Solution Group: Rental Ad
Great carousel ad by Miami Realty Solution Group. This ad gives people what they want—the specials! Who doesn’t love a sale?
Best Performing Real Estate Ads: Video – Are You Ready for Your Close-up?
Let’s face it, the intimacy and human touch that comes across in real estate video ads is a natural fit for the industry. After all, every smart agent knows that it’s not location, location, location—it’s relationships, relationships, relationships.
In fact, most wildly successful agents I know are damn near magnetic and captivating in person, but through email … well, let’s just say some of the magic just doesn’t translate well to the written word.
In order to get your creative juices flowing to create your own real estate video ads, check out some of our favorite examples and our key takeaways from each below.
13. Warren Lewis Sotheby’s International Realty: (Agent Intro) ‘An Expert Broker Makes Home Hunting Easy’
We’re loving this gorgeously shot and well-written agent intro ad from Manhattan’s Warren Lewis Sotheby’s Realty.
Featuring agent Aroza Sanjana, the video starts off with her introducing herself and explaining that all clients are unique. She then meets up with actual clients and brings them to her actual listing in Prospect Heights.
It’s open, honest, and radiates the calm, down-to-earth process working with a true local expert offers buyers and sellers. Even better, Aroza comes across as the absolute antithesis of the stereotypical New York City broker.
Smart. Very, very smart.
14. Compass Real Estate’s Marc Cowan: (Agent Intro)
In this real estate ad video from Compass’ Marc Cowan, we get a professionally shot and well-written introduction to an agent that seems capable and skilled enough to handle even the trickiest international transactions.
15. Golden Gate Sotheby’s International Realty Roh Habibi: (Agent Intro, Branding)
This quick intro video, for Million Dollar Listing San Francisco’s Roh Habibi, does double-duty as a co-branding spot for his recent move to Sotheby’s International. The co-branding works incredibly well here, as Sotheby’s gets to boast that they now have an agent people might recognize from TV, and Roh gets to boast about signing with such a globally prestigious brokerage.
Best Performing Real Estate Ads
16. Hawaii Life: (Branding) 10 Seconds of Hawaii Life
What can you get across to the viewer of your real estate video ad in 10 seconds? Well, if you’re Hawaii Life, then it turns out you can pack quite a bit into 10 seconds! This video includes everything from happy families frolicking on the beach, to happy dogs, to drop-dead gorgeous scenery. Pretty much everything the Islands are famous for except the shaved ice.
P.S. I can personally vouch for Ululani’s on Maui if you’re interested.
17. Berkshire Hathaway Real HomeServices (Branding): The Fountain
https://player.vimeo.com/video/262831260?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0
“The Fountain” Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Blake, Realtors® from BHHS Blake on Vimeo
We love how this creative video real estate ad from Berkshire Hathaway tugs at the heart strings and actually manages to humanize luxury listings. The ad starts with a man reminiscing about visiting an uncle who happened to have a fountain in his courtyard and what that meant to him as a child.
It ends with an absolutely killer tagline, “Are you comfortable, or are you home?”
18. Best Performing Real Estate Ads for Listings: The Boutique Real Estate Group: (Listing) 27112 Highland Dr
OK, let’s switch gears a bit and check out a few listing videos. This killer video from Los Angeles-based The Boutique Real Estate Group seems to tick all the boxes you’d want from a great listing video.
It’s cinematic, hip, professionally shot, and really captures the soul of the property rather than just a boring tour.
19. The Agency Real Estate: (Listing): 600 Rustic Road
https://player.vimeo.com/video/293199868?portrait=0
600 E Rustic Road Santa Monica, CA 90402 – MLS from Berlyn Media on Vimeo
The real estate listing ad from Beverly Hills’ The Agency by Berlyn Media boasts sweeping drone shots of the beach and outdoor and indoor areas of a truly jaw-dropping listing in Santa Monica. OK, sure, maybe your listing won’t be quite so dramatic, but a drone can still be an excellent way to add some life and depth to your real estate listing video ads.
20. Tim Smith: (Branding) $50k ‘Duffy AKA Dougie’ Rap Video Ad
Well, this one’s a bit on the silly side for sure, but like all great parodies, it’s lighthearted, fun, and not afraid to poke fun at itself. Purposefully divisive, this video ad created quite a stir over on the comment sections of a few bigger real estate sites. Personally, I’m on the side of anything camp and fun, especially if it does your promotion for you. As far as recouping that $50,000? I suppose only time will tell.
21. Best Performing Real Estate Ads for Branding: Decker Realty Group (Branding, Broker Intro)
Here’s another great branding and introductory video, in this case introducing Managing Broker Candace Decker. She comes across as down to earth, highly knowledgeable, and best of all, approachable. Exactly what literally every buyer and seller wants from a real estate agent.
22. Mark Spain Group
Here’s another 10-second real estate ad spot. This time, instead of showing how amazing it is to live in Hawaii, the Mark Spain Group just delivers their irresistible offer; if they can’t sell your home, they’ll buy it cash. That’s it. No fluff, no pretty sunsets, just a video of agents showing a home and a very compelling offer.
The takeaway here is pretty obvious. If the pitch is all there is in the video, that’s all you’re going to remember!
Outdoor Real Estate Ads: Catch Your Leads in the Wild
Believe it or not, the outdoors is more than just what you walk through from your car to your listing.
In fact, many people have the free time to go on long walks with their dogs, jog, ride bikes, and all manner of activities unknown to busy real estate agents!
That makes the great outdoors a prime place to reach those pesky leads who aren’t down with the Instachat or Snapgram or whatever latest app is at the top of the iTunes charts.
Here are some of our favorite examples of outdoor real estate ads that pack a punch!
23. Sense of Home Scratch & Sniff Ads
These eye-catching and freshly scented scratch-and-sniff ads, designed by Agency 53 for a new development in Denver, Colorado, are enough to make your average curious resident stop in their tracks.
Once they do, the message behind these ads, that even new developments will become “home” rather than just a place to live, really hits home.
24. Compass: Powering Your Home Search
If you want examples of clever, bleeding-edge real estate ads, you could do worse than check in on tech-based brokerage Compass’ lightning fast expansion across the country.
These slickly designed and clever ads on electric car charging ports send the perfect message to the very kind of hip, upwardly mobile and eco-conscious clientele every brokerage covets.
That said, the (dead dinosaur-powered) Rolls Royce Phantom does seem suspiciously parked. Still, the copy is great, the design is great, and best of all, the idea is great.
25. Stribling Building Listing Signs
As classic as a brownstone facade, these well-made listing ad signs give you everything you need to know and nothing you don’t. Instead of selling the sizzle, Stribling is going with a subtle nod to tradition and selling the steak. In many cases, the location alone will tell most people how much—and how realistic—the home these signs are perched on is.
26. Halstead Outdoor Ads
As part of their killer new rebranding, Manhattan’s Halstead knocks it out of the park yet again with these eye candy outdoor real estate signs.
27. Realtor.com Subway Ad
Making a pun about the subway seems like something of a rite of passage (ha!) for advertising execs cutting their teeth on subway signage. Realtor.com’s ad here, on the other hand, seems to have been well-thought-out and well-conceived. It may not look like it, but that’s an LCD display that alternates between ads like this and upcoming subway departures. Eyeballs get glued to these signs like rats to pizza. 🍕🐀#pizzarat
28. Realtor.com House Wrap Ad
Then there are the hotshot young creatives who come up with ideas like this one. Not only does it show off just how creative the placement is, but it then makes its way online, where it (hopefully) takes on a life of its own.
29. 432 Park Avenue
With prices that soar into the HIGH eight figures, Manhattan’s 432 Park Avenue is no ordinary building. That means even something as pedestrian as a billboard covering up a construction site needs to be something special.
30. Duckin Boat Ads
Did you really think we’d do an entire section of outdoor advertising and NOT mention the (in)famous duck ads in Seattle? I dare you to not whip out your phone for a picture when you see this guy in person!
31. StreetEasy Subway Ads: ‘You’re Dead to Me!’
OK—this one works perfectly in New York City, or any other city with a massive chip on its shoulder. StreetEaasy’s subway ads have always been clever, but these ads take an old-school monster fight from classic movies and inserts humorous things that New Yorkers tend to argue about. In this case, moving to LA!
Print Real Estate Ads: Offline, Antiquated & a Big ROI?
The rumors of real estate print advertising’s death have been wildly exaggerated. In fact, some agents still swear by the persuasive qualities of ink and paper. Are they right? Well, judge for yourself.
Here’s a few examples of killer print ads that we have to think have a great return on investment (ROI)—or at least help grow brands.
32. Douglas Elliman: Ask Elliman
Still one of our favorite real estate ad campaigns of the past few years, Elliman’s “Ask Elliman” campaign hits all the right notes for a real estate ad. It manages to evoke expertise and care at the same time. Perfect.
33. National Association of Realtors (NAR): Most Valuable Square Inch
An old-school classic of the genre, this magazine ad from NAR is pure messaging and persuasion goodness.
34. Lefferts Place Mews
Sleek and appropriate print ad for a new development in an historic Brooklyn neighborhood.
35. Nourmand & Associates: New Hire Announcement
OK, you’re probably wondering why I put a new hire announcement, of all things, on this list. This one is the perfect example of the fact that if you want to get ahead, you need to sweat the small stuff. The typography, layout, and imagery are all pinpoint perfect.
36. Compass: Door Hangers
Well-designed door hangers? Now we’ve seen it all! These just listed and open house door hangers for Compass were designed by I Design Creative and look great!
37. First Mallorca: Taylor Made Houses
How clever are these ads for Mallorca-based luxury real estate firm First Mallorca? One of the first rules of advertising is that simple ideas are generally the best ideas!
