Agents commonly spend several hundred to a few thousand a month on ads, with management at ten to twenty percent of spend or a flat monthly fee. Heights quotes ad management separately from the $750 build and $399 a month plan.
Real estate paid search is unusual because you are competing against portals with budgets you cannot match. Searches for homes for sale in a city are dominated by national listing sites, and bidding against them head on is how agents burn money fast. Typical agent spend runs several hundred to a few thousand a month, with management at ten to twenty percent of spend or a flat few hundred to a couple thousand. The question that decides whether any of it works is which searches you choose to buy.
Legitimate cost goes into choosing narrow, high intent targets and building pages for them. Seller intent searches like what is my home worth or sell my house fast in a specific neighborhood are where agents can compete, because portals monetize buyers. Neighborhood and niche searches work too, meaning specific subdivisions, price bands, acreage, waterfront or new construction. Each needs a landing page with real local content and a reason to give you contact information. Then there is follow up, because real estate leads convert over months and nobody buys on first contact.
What is margin: broad buyer keyword campaigns that feed the portals' ad auction and your invoice, lead volume reporting with no contact rate, display and social retargeting bundles sold without tracking, and shared lead products resold as your own ads. The other trap is paying for management on a budget too small for anyone to manage. If your spend is a few hundred a month, a percentage fee buys you almost no human attention, and a flat fee eats most of the budget.
At minimum you should own the ad account, have conversion tracking that captures calls and form fills, run separate campaigns for seller and buyer intent, use landing pages with genuine neighborhood content rather than your homepage, and keep a negative keyword list that blocks rentals, jobs and portal brand searches. A serious program adds call tracking, follow up automation so leads are contacted within minutes, and reporting that shows contact rate and appointments rather than raw lead counts.
To judge a quote, ask which searches they will buy and why, and listen for whether seller intent comes up. Ask what happens to leads after the form submits and who follows up. Ask what a reasonable cost per appointment looks like in your market. If the pitch is lead volume with no mention of follow up, the leads will not turn into closings. Heights builds sites for $750 and runs them for $399 a month, and quotes paid ads management separately on top of your spend.
| What you are buying | What it usually runs per month |
|---|---|
| Running it yourself | Your time, plus spend |
| Percentage of spend management | Usually ten to twenty percent of spend |
| Flat fee management | Several hundred to a couple thousand |
| Typical agent ad spend | Several hundred to a few thousand |
| Heights Digital | Site at $750 and $399 a month, ads quoted separately |
If yours is not here, ask it on the call. You will get a straight answer.
(210) 729-4008Not on broad buyer searches, and trying is the fastest way to waste a budget. You can compete on seller intent, specific neighborhoods, niches like acreage or new construction, and your own brand. Those are searches the portals do not monetize as aggressively and where local knowledge actually wins the click.
Minutes, not hours. Paid leads are shopping right now and often submitted forms to several agents. The agent who calls first usually gets the conversation. If you cannot answer quickly yourself, the follow up system is a bigger priority than the ad account, because unanswered leads make any spend look like a failure.
Send the site over. We will tell you what is broken, what you could rank for, and whether AI search knows you exist. No charge and no pitch deck.
