Meta lead ads vs Google ads for realtors: which one should you start with?

Most realtors asking this question are hoping for a verdict. The useful answer is that the two platforms catch people at completely different moments, and which one fits depends on whether your buyers are already looking.

The difference in one line

Google catches demand. Meta creates it.

Someone typing "Brampton homes for sale under 900k" into Google has already decided to buy. You are competing for a person who exists whether or not you advertise. Someone scrolling Instagram at 11pm has not decided anything. Your ad is what puts the idea in front of them.

Where Meta wins for realtors

Cost. You are reaching people before they enter the expensive part of the funnel, so the leads are cheaper. Our best real estate campaigns run under CA$3 per lead. Google search leads in the same market cost multiples of that.

Creative leverage. On Google search you get a headline and two lines of text, and everyone's ad looks the same. On Meta you get video, which is the one place a small agent can out-compete a brokerage with a bigger budget. If your creative is genuinely better, you pay less per lead. That advantage does not exist on search.

Language. You can run Punjabi, Gujarati or Hinglish creative and reach an audience nobody else is speaking to properly. On search, people type in English regardless.

Lead forms. Meta's instant forms prefill from the user's profile, so the friction is close to zero.

Where Google wins

Intent. A search lead is further along. They are looking now, which usually means a shorter path to a conversation.

Predictability. Search volume for "realtor in Oakville" does not swing much month to month. Meta performance depends on creative that fatigues and has to be replaced.

Local Service Ads. For agents who want the Google Guaranteed badge and pay-per-lead pricing, LSAs sit outside the usual auction and are worth a look.

What we tell most Canadian realtors

Start with Meta. Three reasons.

The demand you can capture on Google is limited by how many people are searching in your specific area this month, and for most individual agents that is a small number that established brokerages are already bidding on hard.

Meta rewards the thing you can actually control. Better video means lower cost per lead, and video is buildable. Bid strategy is not really a competitive advantage.

And if you are already posting organic content, the creative work is largely done. The scripts, the shoot days, the editing standard all transfer directly, including how much the background behind you costs you in views. That is why we treat Meta lead ads for realtors as an extension of the organic work rather than a separate discipline.

Running both

Most realtors do not need both on day one. Adding a second platform doubles the management overhead and halves the budget on each, which usually means neither gets enough data to optimise.

When you do add Google, treat it as capture rather than discovery. Meta builds awareness and fills the top; Google catches the people who later search your name or your area because they saw you.

Whichever you run, the number that matters is qualified conversations per dollar. We wrote about what a real estate lead should actually cost, including why the cheapest number on the report is not always the best one.

What we can prove, and what we cannot

We should be straight about the limits of our own evidence here. We run Meta campaigns for realtors and we have detailed data on them. We do not run Google search campaigns at the same volume, so anything we say about Google pricing comes from the market rather than from our own account.

What we can show is the Meta side. On 19 August 2026 we had ten campaigns live across six clients. They spent CA$2,779 that month for 469 leads, a blended CA$5.93. The median campaign was CA$10.69 and the range ran from CA$1.53 to CA$34.50. Six of the ten were flagged by our own dashboard as costing too much.

That range matters for this comparison. If a Meta lead can cost you anywhere between CA$1.53 and CA$34.50 depending on the creative, then comparing "Meta CPL" against "Google CPL" as two fixed numbers is the wrong exercise. The variance inside one channel is wider than the gap most people assume between the channels.

How to test it properly on your own account

Run Meta first, for at least six weeks, with creative that has already earned organic attention. Record the cost per lead weekly and keep the median, not the average. Then put a small Google search budget on your three highest-intent terms, the ones with your city and a transaction word in them, and measure booked appointments rather than form fills.

Compare on appointments, not leads. A Meta lead and a Google search lead are not the same object: one was interrupted, one was already looking. The only number that makes them comparable is how many turned into a conversation you would have paid for.

One more caution on our own figures: they are a single month. Cost per lead in Canadian real estate moves with the season, and August is not February. Take the shape of the range as the finding, not the specific dollar amounts, and rebuild it from your own account before you decide where the next budget goes.

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