2026 Real Estate Search Advertising Benchmarks (+Tips for the Best Results)

When it comes to real estate advertising, search campaigns on platforms such as Google Ads and Microsoft Ads remain one of the most effective ways to market to potential buyers, sellers, and renters. In fact, the cost of your real estate PPC campaigns is worth the results they’re bringing in.

In fact, search advertising is the channel with the best conversion rate for real estate businesses, and 67% of real estate brands say that Google Ads is their most effective paid strategy.

So, to give you a little insight into how real estate ads typically perform, we’ve dug into our proprietary data. Based on nearly 900 unique real estate search advertising campaigns running from April 2025 to March 2026, this report uncovers the answers to your real estate marketing performance questions.

Let’s take a look at the average search ads click-through rate, cost per click, conversion rate, and cost per lead for real estate ads!

Contents

• Key takeaways
• Real estate search ads benchmarks
  • Average click-through rate
  • Average cost per click
  • Average conversion rate
  • Average cost per lead
• How to improve your real estate business’s search ads campaigns

🚨See how real estate search ads performance compares to other industries in our full 2026 search ads benchmarks report!

Key takeaways: The state of real estate search advertising

Our real estate benchmarks are generally in line with what we saw in our overall 2026 search ads benchmarks: costs are increasing, but customers are still engaging with ads.

For example, high-intent keywords such as “homes for sale Houston” and “sell my house fast” might cost a little more than the average real estate term (roughly $4.00 to $8.00 per click), but they also convert at a higher-than-average rate, at roughly 8-12%. This means that despite higher CPCs, ads matched to these terms are still yielding positive results.

Here’s the big picture of real estate search advertising trends in Google Ads and Microsoft Ads.

• Average click-through rate (CTR) decreased for four out of the five real estate categories we looked at, with an overall average decrease of 9.73% YoY. Over half of businesses in our overall search advertising benchmarks saw a decrease in CTR as well. This could speak more to change in the search engine experience rather than the ads themselves. Increased AI results, a crowded and ad-heavy search results page, and fewer users clicking on organic search results overall could be leading to less engagement with search results, including with ads.
• Cost per click (CPC) increased for three out of the five real estate business types we measured. Homes for Sale by Agent and Real Estate Brokers saw fairly substantial increases in CPC (over 42%). Search ad costs are rising across the board, so it’s not surprising to see this reflected for real estate businesses as well.
• Conversion rate (CVR) increased for all but one of the real estate business categories we looked at, with an overall average increase of 12.8% YoY. This is encouraging; with increased costs and a dip in CTRs, it’s great to see that those clicking on ads are actually taking the next step to become a lead.
• Cost per lead (CPL) increased for three out of five of the real estate business types we measured, with an average increase of 2.02% YoY. This is a departure from our overall search advertising benchmarks, where CPL actually decreased for the first time in five years. But, real estate is an extremely competitive industry and has seen a lot of volatility in the last year, so it’s not a surprise to see costs increasing.

Real estate search ads benchmarks by metric and industry

Check out our real estate search advertising data below.

Click to enlarge

Average click-through rate

Your real estate campaign’s click-through rate is calculated by dividing its total number of impressions by its total number of clicks.

The overall average click-through rate for real estate search ads in 2026 is 7.61%. This is a 9.73% decrease in CTR compared to last year.

There are 13 billion real estate search queries on Google each year, with 97% of all real estate purchases starting with a search engine. So, no doubt your real estate ads will quickly gain impressions, but click-through rate shows how effective those ads are at turning those impressions into clicks to your real estate website.

The real estate industry with the biggest year-over-year improvement in CTR was Real Estate Broker, up 17.77%. Meanwhile, Homes for Sale by Agent had the largest decrease in CTR year over year, down 39.17%.

Average cost per click

While real estate was overall middle-of-the-pack in terms of cost per click compared to 22 other industries in our annual search ads benchmarks report, that doesn’t mean you can sleep on this metric. The lower your cost per click, the better!

The overall average cost per click for real estate search ads in 2026 is $3.22. This CPC is 27.27% higher than last year’s average.

Keeping a low CPC helps you avoid wasting campaign budget spend. However, try not to get so hung up that you’re excluding keywords likely to bring in potential buyers, as those could be worth a slightly pricier CPC.

Real estate businesses in the Property Management category had the biggest decrease in CPC year over year, down 18.09%. Meanwhile, businesses in the Homes for Sale by Agent category saw the biggest CPC increase, up 78.9%.

Average conversion rate

Conversion rate is a crucial metric for any real estate business because it indicates how effective your ads are at turning clicks into leads for your listings.

The overall average conversion rate for real estate search ads in 2026 is 3.70%. This is a 12.8% increase compared to last year’s overall CVR average.

The Apartments and Rentals category had the highest jump in CVR year over year, as this subindustry’s CVR increased by 16.22%. In contrast, the Residential Real Estate Agent category was the only one we analyzed with a downturn in CVR, and it decreased by only 1.23%.

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Average cost per lead

When it comes to real estate advertising on search engines, you know that it can often take a higher budget to get good results. Real estate has a longer buying cycle and is obviously an investment, so it makes sense that you’re going to be spending more than a business that provides less expensive—and less personal—products and solutions.

The overall average cost per lead for real estate search ads in 2026 is $102.51. This is 2.02% higher than last year’s average.

The real estate businesses in the Property Management category had the biggest decrease in CPL year over year, down 13.92%. The Real Estate Broker category had the biggest increase in CPL year over year, up 53.72%.

Expert tips to improve real estate search ads campaigns

Now that you have this real estate search advertising data, here’s how you can work towards the best campaign results possible for your business.

1. A/B test your PPC ads

A/B testing is always a good idea when running online advertising because it can help you determine how searchers are responding (or not responding) to certain aspects of your ads.

By making simple tweaks to your ad copy, keywords, or bid strategy, you can improve the CTR for your real estate advertising on search engines and get more people to visit your landing page (and hopefully convert).

2. Refine your landing page

If you’re finding that your conversion rate isn’t where you’d like it to be, you might take another look at your landing page. Make sure that your landing page is optimized for conversions, meaning it has a clear call to action on the page that drives users to take an action such as leaving their contact information or contacting you directly.

This landing page has a CTA for visitors to find their community.

High-converting landing pages also should relate closely to your ad copy. If your PPC ad highlights new home sales in Denver, your landing page should include relevant content and a contact form to “tour new homes in Denver.”

3. Use platform automation to expand your ad creative and reach

Supplement your real estate business’s search ad strategy with automated campaigns, such as Performance Max campaigns, to showcase media-rich ads across multiple Google placements. After all, real estate listings that include a video receive 403% more inquiries, so leaning into Google’s automation to help you publish ads beyond just the text-based search results page can be a huge performance win for your account.

Performance Max can help you build your reach beyond just standard search ads. 

4. Use remarketing

Remarketing is a type of advertising that allows you to target users who have previously searched for your business or visited your website. By remarketing to those who are already familiar with your real estate agency, you can increase the chances of them clicking your ad and converting to a client.

Just remember, though, remarketing will limit your campaigns to only reaching those in your audience list, so you’ll want the other parts of your campaign to be set up to reach a relatively broad audience. This will balance out your targeting. For instance, if you have a large enough list of website visitors for remarketing, you might use more broad-match keywords in the campaign targeting that list. That way, you’ll catch as many interested users as possible, even if they’re searching for something only semi-related to your main offer.

5. Run Local Services Ads

Real estate agents have access to Google Local Services Ads, which are a subset of Google Ads that allow users to contact a real estate agent or book an appointment directly from Google Ads without ever leaving the platform.

Make your real estate search advertising a success

By understanding the average click-through rate, conversion rate, and cost per lead for your real estate search advertising efforts, you can benchmark your results and implement some simple optimizations to improve your advertising, increase awareness for your real estate agency, and reach your marketing goals.

Not in real estate and want to see search advertising benchmarks for your industry? We created search advertising benchmarks for 23 industries here.

About the data

This report is based on a sample of 894 US-based search advertising campaigns running between Apr 1, 2025, and March 31, 2026. Each subcategory includes at minimum 11 unique active campaigns. “Averages” are technically median figures to account for outliers. All currency values are posted in USD.

Meet The Author

Susie Marino

Susie is a Senior Content Marketing Specialist for LocaliQ and WordStream, where she uses her experience as a PPC consultant to share tips, tactics, and best practices in the ever-evolving marketing and advertising space. Susie's work has been featured in publications such as Search Engine Land, MediaPost, Social Media Today, and others. Outside of work, Susie loves to get outside for some snowboarding or (once the cold weather melts away) hiking!

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