Solved: Meta Ads Spending Budget Too Fast for Real Estate

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out!

Honestly, what you're describing is a classic, and incredibly frustrating, Meta ads problem. I've seen it loads of times. Your budget getting torched in an hour feels like a technical glitch, but it almost never is. It's actually a symptom of a much deeper strategic issue with how the campaign is set up. Meta is doing exactly what you've told it to do, just with brutal efficiency.

The good news is that this is entirely fixable. The solution isn’t about trying to artificially slow down the ad spend, but about completely re-engineering who your ads are shown to and what you're asking them to do. It's about making every pound spent work much, much harder to find you actual, qualified leads, not just tyre-kickers. I'm happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance on how we'd approach this.

We'll need to look at *why* Meta is spending so fast...

Right, let's get one thing straight. Meta's algorithm is a monster of efficiency. When you give it a budget and an audience, its single-minded goal is to spend that budget by showing your ad to people in that audience as quickly as it can. If the audience is massive and easy to reach (which I suspect yours is), it will absolutely burn through the cash.

This brings me to the first likely culprit: your campaign objective. I have a hunch you might be running this campaign with a 'Reach' or 'Brand Awareness' objective. This is probably the most common and costly mistake I see people make. When you select 'Awareness', you are giving the algorithm a very specific, and very unhelpful, command: "Find me the largest number of eyeballs for the lowest possible price."

And the algorithm does exactly what you asked. It scours your audience to find the users who are least likely to click, least likely to engage, and absolutely, positively least likely to ever fill out a form or pick up the phone. Why? Because those users aren't in demand. Their attention is cheap. You are, quite literally, paying the world's most powerful advertising machine to find you the worst possible audience for your client's services. It's like going fishing in a puddle because the fishing permit is free. You'll get your line wet, but you won't catch anything worthwhile.

The only way to fix this is to change your objective to one that aligns with a real business outcome. For a real estate agent, that means 'Leads'. By choosing 'Leads' and setting up your conversion events properly (e.g., a form fill for a valuation or a viewing request), you change the algorithm's instructions entirely. Now the command is: "Find me people within this audience who are most similar to those who have previously become a lead."

This is a completely different task. The algorithm now ignores the passive scrollers and cheap impressions. It starts hunting for users who exhibit behaviours associated with genuine interest – people who click on similar ads, who fill out forms, who engage with real estate content. Yes, the cost per impression (CPM) will go up. But you're no longer paying for empty views; you're paying for the chance to find a genuine, motivated seller or buyer. The quality skyrockets, and the speed of spend naturally regulates itself because finding these high-quality users takes more work.

I'd say you need to redefine your ideal customer...

Before you even touch the audience targeting settings in Ads Manager, you need to do some work. The reason most ad targeting fails is because it’s based on sterile, useless demographics. "Homeowners aged 35-55 in Manchester" tells you absolutely nothing of value. It's a description, not an insight.

To stop burning cash, you have to define your customer by their pain. Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) isn't a demographic; it's a specific, urgent, and expensive nightmare. For real estate, this is everything. You aren't selling a house; you're selling a solution to a life-altering problem.

Who are they, *really*?

• The Expanding Family: They've just had their second child. Their two-bedroom flat feels like a prison. They're terrified about school catchment areas and lie awake at night scrolling through Rightmove, dreaming of a garden. Their pain is claustrophobia and parental anxiety.
• The 'Downsizing' Couple: The kids have finally left for university. They're rattling around a four-bedroom house they can't manage, haunted by empty rooms and a massive heating bill. Their pain is loneliness and the burden of unneeded space. They want simplicity and freedom.
• The Reluctant Landlord: They inherited a property or became an 'accidental landlord' and now they're drowning in regulations, dealing with difficult tenants, and facing a huge tax bill. Their pain is stress and financial confusion. They just want it gone.

See the difference? We've gone from "homeowners" to specific, emotionally charged scenarios. Once you have this level of clarity, your ad creative and targeting can become laser-focused. You don't write an ad that says "We sell houses in Manchester." You write an ad that says, "Is your home feeling a little too crowded? Find out how much more space you could afford in the best school catchments."

This is the work that has to happen first. You need to become an expert in their nightmare. What property portals do they use (Rightmove, Zoopla)? What mortgage calculators are they plugging numbers into? What local parenting groups are they in on Facebook? What newspapers do they read? This intelligence is the blueprint for your entire targeting strategy. Without it, you're just guessing.

You probably should overhaul your audience targeting...

Armed with a proper understanding of your ICP's pain, you can now build audiences that actually work. Your current issue is almost certainly a reliance on one or two massive, broad interest audiences. Targeting an interest like "Real Estate" or "Property" on Meta is a recipie for disaster. This audience includes: current homeowners, renters, estate agents, mortgage brokers, property developers, investors, and people who just like watching 'Grand Designs'. Maybe 5% of them are your actual target market.

You need to get much more granular and structure your campaigns to reflect the customer journey. Here’s how I would prioritise audiences for a real estate client, moving from coldest to warmest.

This is where you find people who don't know your client yet. The goal is to be hyper-specific.

• Detailed Targeting (Interests & Behaviours): Instead of "Property," you layer interests. For example:
  • People who have an interest in Rightmove AND Zoopla.
  • People who have an interest in specific mortgage lenders (e.g., Halifax, Nationwide) AND are listed as 'Likely to Move'.
  • People interested in competitor estate agent pages in the local area.
  • For the 'Expanding Family' ICP, you could target people interested in NCT (National Childbirth Trust) AND Mumsnet, layered with a location and age demographic. This is how you find people in a specific life stage.
• Broad Targeting: This should ONLY be used once your Meta Pixel has thousands of conversion events (Leads). At that point, you can create a campaign with no interest targeting at all, and the algorithm will use your pixel data to find people similar to your past converters. Don't even think about this until you've got a steady stream of leads coming in.

This is where the real results come from. These are people who have already shown some interest. Your budget spend here will be much more efficient, and the leads will be far warmer. This is non-negotiable.

• Website Visitors: Anyone who has visited your client's website in the last 90 days. You should show them ads featuring testimonials or recent sales.
• Specific Property Viewers: People who viewed specific property pages on the website but didn't enquire. Retarget them with a carousel ad showing that property again, along with similar ones. "Still thinking about 123 Oak Street? Here are a few others you might love..."
• Video Viewers: Anyone who watched 50% or more of a property tour video on Facebook or Instagram. These people are engaged. Show them an ad prompting them to book a viewing for that exact property.
• Lead Form Starters: People who opened your Meta Lead Form but didn't submit it. This is a red-hot audience. Hit them again with a simple ad: "Still need that valuation? Finish your request in just 10 seconds."

Once you have enough data (at least 100 people in a source audience, but ideally 1,000+), you can ask Meta to find more people just like them.

• Lookalike of Past Clients: This is the holy grail. Upload a customer list (names, emails, phone numbers) of everyone who has successfully sold or bought a house with your client in the last 2 years. Create a 1% Lookalike audience from this. This is your highest-quality cold audience, period.
• Lookalike of All Leads: Create a lookalike of everyone who has submitted a lead form. This is also powerful for finding more potential sellers and buyers.

You'll need a better offer than just 'view our listings'...

Now we get to the final piece of the puzzle. Even with the perfect objective and targeting, your campaign will fail if your offer is weak. The most common failure point I see is an ad that just says "We sell houses, click here to see our listings." This is the equivalent of a "Request a Demo" button for SaaS. It’s an arrogant Call to Action. It presumes the prospect is ready to browse and has already decided they might want to work with you. For cold traffic, this is a massive leap.

Your offer's only job is to provide a moment of undeniable value. It must solve a small, real problem for free to earn you the right to solve their whole problem later. You need to create a 'lead magnet' – an irresistible, high-value asset they get in exchange for their contact details.

Instead of "View Listings," your ads should be driving traffic to a dedicated landing page (not the website homepage!) offering one of these:

• For Sellers: "Get a Free, Instant Online Valuation." This is the classic, and it works. People are always curious about their home's value. You can use a simple tool that gives them a ballpark figure in exchange for their address and email. You now have a lead.
• For Sellers: "Download Our Free Guide: The 7 Costly Mistakes to Avoid When Selling Your Home in [Client's Area]." This positions your client as the expert. You provide genuine value, build trust, and capture their details.
• For Buyers: "Get Access to Our Exclusive 'Off-Market' Property List." This creates scarcity and exclusivity. People love feeling like they have an inside track.
• For Buyers: "The Ultimate First-Time Buyer's Checklist for [Client's Area]." Again, this solves a real problem, builds authority, and gets you a lead you can nurture.

When you run ads for an offer like this, everything changes. The click-through rate improves because the ad is genuinely helpful, not just self-promotional. The conversion rate on the landing page is higher because you're offering a clear, tangible benefit. And the leads you get are more qualified because they've actively sought out information related to buying or selling. This is how you stop wasting money and start building a predictable pipeline of clients.

Let's talk about what success actually looks like...

This brings me to the final point, and it’s how you should frame this with your client. The conversation needs to change from "Why did we spend $200 in an hour?" to "How much can we afford to spend to acquire a new instruction that could be worth £10,000 in commission?"

The real question isn't "How low can my cost per lead (CPL) go?" but "How high a CPL can I afford to acquire a truly great client?" The answer lies in simple maths. You need to calculate the maximum you can afford to pay for a lead and still be wildly profitable. This metric is your 'Allowable CPL'.

Let's break it down:

1. Average Commission Value (ACV): What is the average commission your client makes from one sale? Let's say the average house price is £400,000 and their commission is 1.5%. That's £6,000.
2. Lead-to-Instruction Rate: How many leads do they need to get one new property instruction? Let's say they're decent and can convert 1 in 20 leads.
3. Instruction-to-Sale Rate: How many of their instructions actually go on to sell? Let's say it's 80%.

Now, we can calculate the value of a single lead:

Value Per Lead = (ACV * Instruction-to-Sale Rate) / Leads Per Instruction
Value Per Lead = (£6,000 * 0.80) / 20
Value Per Lead = £4,800 / 20 = £240

In this example, every single lead you generate is worth £240 to your client's business. Now, you need a healthy profit margin. A good rule of thumb for ad spend is a 3:1 return. So, you can afford to spend up to £80 to acquire a lead (£240 / 3).

Suddenly, a £50 CPL from a highly-targeted Facebook campaign doesn't look expensive, does it? It looks like an absolute bargain. This is the maths that unlocks aggressive, intelligent growth. When you can present this to your client, it completely reframes the discussion away from the speed of spend and onto the only thing that matters: profitable client acquisition.

To make this easier, I've built a simple calculator for you below. Adjust the sliders with your client's real numbers to find out what your target Cost Per Lead should be.

I hope you can see now that the problem isn't the speed of the spend, but the entire strategy underpinning the campaign. It's a common mistake, but one that can be fixed by shifting your focus from vanity metrics to real business drivers. I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:

Implementing this kind of strategic shift isn't just about flicking a few switches in Ads Manager. It requires a deep understanding of audience psychology, technical setup of tracking and conversion events, compelling ad creative, and high-converting landing pages. It's a complex system with many moving parts, and getting it right is what seperates agencies that burn cash from those that build predictable client pipelines.

If you feel this is a bit overwhelming or you'd simply prefer an expert to handle this transformation for you and your client, we offer a completely free, no-obligation consultation call. We can take a direct look at your ad account, pinpoint the exact issues, and lay out a clear, actionable roadmap for you to follow. It's a chance to get a second pair of expert eyes on the problem and walk away with a solid plan.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh