The short answer
Google Ads brings estate agents seller enquiries when the campaign is built on intent to sell rather than reach: keywords like "sell house" plus neighbourhood, a dedicated landing page per neighbourhood with a valuation request, and measurement that follows enquiries through to appointment and mandate in the CRM. With a monthly budget of €750 to €1,500 you can realistically reach 8 to 20 qualified owner enquiries in a major city. What does not work: Performance Max without goals, campaigns on your own brand name and ads aimed at buyers.
I managed Google Ads budgets for Engel & Völkers and Evernest and today build campaigns for owner-run estate agencies, most recently for Hamburg Sotheby's International Realty and Schwanenwik. The experience is almost always the same: the agent tried Google Ads, the budget was gone, the enquiries came from buyers, and the campaign was switched off. The disappointment is justified, the conclusion is not. The channel works very well for seller leads, just not with the campaign Google suggests when you set it up.
Why most agency campaigns fail
I see three mistakes in almost every account:
- The campaign targets buyers. "Buy flat Hamburg" has plenty of search volume but brings buyers you already get through the portals. Sole mandates only come from owners.
- There is no landing page. The ad leads to the homepage. The owner sees listings, no answer to their question, and is gone after eight seconds.
- Clicks are what gets measured. Google optimises for whatever you give it. If clicks or page views are the goal, you get cheap clicks from people with no intent to sell.
The campaign that brings sellers
Keywords with intent to sell
The core is a handful of clear terms: "sell house", "sell flat", "sell property", "property valuation", "get house valued", each combined with city or neighbourhood, plus occasions such as "sell inherited house" or "sell house divorce". Everything around "buy", "rent", "rental flat" and "property portal" goes on the negative keyword list, otherwise you pay for buyers.
One landing page per neighbourhood
Someone searching "sell house Blankenese" has to land on a page about exactly that: the price range from your sales in Blankenese, two sale stories from the neighbourhood, your face and your number, and a short valuation form with two questions about the occasion. No navigation, no listings, no distractions. The neighbourhood pages from content marketing for estate agents are the foundation; the landing page is the sharpened version.
Measurement into the CRM
This is the part most people skip, and it decides between success and failure. Three stages:
- Enquiry: form submitted or call from the ad. This is the goal Google optimises for.
- Appointment: the enquiry became a valuation appointment. That lives in the CRM, for example Propstack or onOffice, with the source "Google Ads" on the contact.
- Mandate: the appointment became a sole mandate. Only this number tells you whether the campaign makes money.
If the source travels all the way into the CRM, after three months you can say: this ad in this neighbourhood brought two mandates, that one none. Then you know where the budget belongs. How CRM and marketing work together is covered in the post on connecting your real estate CRM to marketing.
Budget and expectations
A click on a seller keyword costs €3 to €8 in most German cities. Out of 100 clicks, a good landing page turns 8 to 15 into enquiries, and about half of those into appointments. A rough calculation:
| Monthly budget | Clicks | Enquiries | Valuation appointments | Cost per appointment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| €750 | 100 to 150 | 8 to 15 | 4 to 8 | €90 to €190 |
| €1,500 | 200 to 300 | 16 to 30 | 8 to 15 | €100 to €190 |
| €3,000 | 400 to 600 | 30 to 60 | 15 to 30 | €100 to €200 |
Swipe sideways for all columns →
A valuation appointment for €100 to €200 is good business at an average commission, even if only one in four appointments becomes a mandate. The numbers vary with city, season and competition. So the rule is: run it for three months, then decide based on mandates, not on click prices.
Three campaigns that only cost money
- Performance Max without conversion goals. Google suggests it first. Without clean enquiry tracking it optimises for anything, and the budget spreads across Display, YouTube and Gmail, where nobody is about to sell their house.
- The brand campaign on your own name. Anyone who already knows you finds you without an ad. You pay for clicks you would have got for free. Exception: a competitor is bidding on your name.
- Ads for buyers. "Buy flat", "buy house", listings with prices. That brings buyers you get through the portals anyway, and not a single sole mandate.
Google Ads or rather Meta?
For sellers with concrete intent Google is the right channel, because the intent is in the search. Meta suits owners who are not searching yet but live in the neighbourhood: awareness, sale stories, valuation offers. The distinction is covered in Google Ads or Meta Ads. If you start with one channel, start with Google, because success is faster to measure there.
Checklist before you start
- One landing page per neighbourhood with a valuation request, no navigation and no listings.
- Enquiry goals in Google Ads: form and call, nothing else.
- Source "Google Ads" lands on the contact in the CRM; appointment and mandate are recorded there.
- Negative keyword list with all buyer and rental terms.
- Budget approved for three months, decision only afterwards based on mandates.
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