Facebook Ads for Real Estate: How I Got 66 Leads at $11.65 Each

If you have tried Facebook ads for your real estate business before, you may know how it goes: the ads get rejected, the leads never pick up the phone, or the budget goes on likes and comments that never turn into a conversation.

It doesn’t have to go that way. For 724 Enterprises, a real estate business in Texas, I ran four Meta lead campaigns that brought in 66 leads at an average of $11.65 each. The best month delivered 39 leads at $8.74 each.

This guide shows how I set up Facebook ads for real estate to get numbers like those: the rules you have to follow, the offers that get people to fill in a form, how to build a form that filters out time-wasters, and what to do in the first five minutes after a lead comes in.

Do Facebook ads work for real estate?

Yes, when they are built for leads instead of likes. Facebook and Instagram are where homeowners and future buyers spend time every day, often months before they call an agent. A good lead ad reaches them early, with an offer that is worth their name and phone number.

They don’t work when they are treated like a billboard. A boosted listing photo with “Call me today!” gets likes from neighbors and other agents, not leads. Facebook leads are also usually earlier in their journey than someone searching “sell my house fast” on Google, so they need quick, persistent follow-up.

The Housing rules most agents get wrong

If your ad is about buying, selling or renting a home, Meta requires you to choose the Housing special ad category when you create the campaign. That includes listings, open houses, home value offers and “we buy houses” ads. The rules exist to stop housing ads from discriminating, in line with US fair housing law. If you skip the category, Meta can reject your ads or restrict your ad account.

When you choose Housing, some targeting options change or disappear (see Meta’s guide to housing audiences):

These limits apply to every agent in your market, so they don’t put you behind. The 724 Enterprises campaigns ran under these exact rules.

How to set up Facebook ads for real estate, step by step

1. Pick one clear offer per campaign

Nobody gives their phone number for “Contact me for all your real estate needs”. People will give it for something specific and useful to them. Match the offer to the person you want to hear from:

Run a separate campaign for each offer. Sellers and buyers need different ads, different forms and different follow-up.

2. Use the Leads objective with an instant form

Create the campaign in Ads Manager with the Leads objective and choose Instant forms. The form opens inside Facebook or Instagram with the person’s name, email and phone number already filled in, so it takes seconds on a phone.

A landing page on your website usually brings fewer but warmer leads. Start with instant forms to get volume and data, then test a landing page against them once you have numbers to compare.

3. Build the form to filter out time-wasters

When Facebook leads are poor, the form is often the cause, not the ad. A few settings make a big difference:

• Choose the Higher intent form type. It adds a review screen, so people confirm their details before they send them.
• Ask two or three short multiple-choice questions, such as “When are you planning to sell?” and “Do you own the home?”. Every question lowers the number of leads but raises their quality, and two or three is a good balance.
• Write a short intro that says exactly what happens next, for example: “I’ll send your home value report within one business day.”
• Add your privacy policy link. Meta requires one for every instant form.

4. Set your location and audience inside the rules

Choose your city or county, or drop a pin with at least a 15-mile radius. Then leave the audience broad. Under the Housing rules, your offer and your ad do the targeting: a headline like “Selling your home in Katy this year?” speaks to Katy homeowners, and Meta learns from the people who respond.

If you have your own list of past clients or leads, you can upload it as a custom audience, for example for a “What is your home worth now?” campaign. Meta asks you to confirm that the list follows its non-discrimination policy before you use it.

5. Make ads that look local and real

• Use real photos and short videos: a listing walk-through, a “just sold” sign, or you explaining the local market in 30 seconds. Stock photos of smiling families look like every other ad.
• Put the place name in the first line and in the headline. Local names stop the right people from scrolling.
• Show your face. People hire agents they feel they already know.
• Run two or three versions of the ad in each campaign and keep the ones with the lowest cost per lead.

6. Set a budget you can measure

Choose a daily budget you can keep running for at least two to three weeks, because Meta needs time to learn who responds to your ads. A simple way to plan it: if your leads cost around $12 each, $20 a day is about $600 a month, or roughly 50 leads.

Judge the campaign on appointments and signed clients, not just cost per lead. A $15 lead that books a listing appointment beats five $5 leads who never answer.

7. Contact every lead within five minutes

This is where Facebook ads for real estate succeed or fail. A study published in Harvard Business Review found that companies that contacted online leads within an hour were nearly seven times more likely to have a meaningful conversation with them than companies that waited longer, and more than 60 times more likely than those that waited 24 hours or more.

• Send every new lead straight to your phone and your CRM with a CRM integration or a tool like Zapier, instead of downloading them from Ads Manager. Meta only keeps leads available to download for 90 days.
• Call first. If they don’t answer, send a text right away, then try again later that day and over the next few days.
• Start with their timeline, not your pitch: “When are you hoping to move?”

How much do Facebook real estate leads cost?

It depends on your market, your offer and the time of year, so be careful with anyone who promises a fixed price. As a reference point, the 724 Enterprises campaigns in Texas averaged $11.65 per lead across four campaigns, and the best month came in at $8.74 per lead.

The more useful question is what a lead is worth to you. Work it out with your own numbers. Here is an example:

In this example, a lead that costs $10 to $15 pays for itself many times over, as long as you follow up properly. That is why speed and persistence matter more than shaving a dollar off your cost per lead.

On top of ad spend, which you pay to Meta directly, my Meta ads management is $300 to $400 a month. All prices are on the pricing page.

Real results: 66 leads at $11.65 each

724 Enterprises is a Texas real estate business run by Tevin Sterling Johnson. I ran four Meta lead campaigns for the business under the Housing special ad category. Together they brought in 66 leads at an average cost of $11.65 each, and the best month produced 39 leads at $8.74 each.

The same approach works beyond real estate. I use it for RV parks and self storage facilities, and pair it with Google Ads when a business needs people who are ready to act today.

6 mistakes that waste real estate ad budgets

1. Skipping the Housing category. Ads get rejected, and repeated violations can restrict your ad account.
2. Boosting listing posts. Boosted posts collect likes from neighbors and other agents. Lead campaigns collect names and phone numbers.
3. One ad for everyone. A single “buy or sell with me” ad speaks to nobody. Separate sellers, buyers and investors.
4. A form with no questions. You get volume, but you can’t tell a serious seller from someone who tapped by accident.
5. Slow follow-up. Calling the next morning can waste most of what you paid for the lead.
6. Judging by cost per lead alone. The real numbers are appointments, signed listings and closed deals.