How much should you spend marketing a listing?
Short answer
A common working range is 0.5 to 1.5 percent of expected commission for a standard listing, rising for luxury. Spend it in order: photos first, then video, then a single-property page, then a small paid social budget. Print and staging come after those, if at all.
Most listing marketing budgets are set by habit rather than by decision. A simple framework — a percentage of expected commission, spent in a fixed priority order — beats reacting to whatever the seller asks for.
A working framework
| Sale price | Rough budget | What it typically covers |
|---|---|---|
| Under $300k | $200–$400 | Photos, a walkthrough, a listing page |
| $300k–$700k | $400–$900 | Photos, video, page, small ad budget |
| $700k–$1.5M | $900–$2,500 | Above plus drone, twilight, staging |
| $1.5M+ | 1%+ of commission | Full package, print, larger ad spend |
These are starting points, not rules. A slow market justifies more; a listing that will sell in four days justifies less.
Spend in this order
- Photos — every other asset is built from them
- Video — the difference between travelling on social and not
- A single-property page — the destination that converts
- A small paid budget — $50 to $300, geo-targeted, over one to two weeks
- Staging — high return on vacant homes, low on furnished ones
- Print and signage — brand and neighbourhood, not buyer acquisition
What rarely earns its cost
Glossy full-colour brochures for a $350k listing. Newspaper advertising in most markets. Broad untargeted boosted posts with no destination. Paid placement on portals where you are competing against the portal’s own lead products. All of these feel like marketing and are hard to trace to a single showing.
The spend that is really about sellers
Some of this budget buys buyer attention and some buys seller confidence. Be honest with yourself about which is which. A single-property page and a video are visible marketing you can show at the next listing appointment, and that is a legitimate return even when the specific listing sells from the portal.
Track something
Even a simple record — spend per listing, days on market, where the enquiries came from — will tell you within a dozen listings which line items you can cut. Almost nobody does this, which is why marketing budgets stay at whatever they were three years ago.
Common questions
What percentage of commission should go to marketing?
0.5 to 1.5 percent of expected commission is a common working range for standard listings, higher for luxury where the marketing itself is part of what the seller is buying. The order you spend it in matters more than the exact percentage.
Should the seller pay for listing marketing?
Convention varies by market and brokerage. Most agents absorb it as a cost of doing business, which is also what makes it a selling point in a listing presentation. Seller-funded marketing is more common at luxury price points.
Is paid advertising worth it for a single listing?
A small geo-targeted budget over one to two weeks is a reasonable test, especially before an open house. It rarely sells the house directly; it buys local awareness and gives you something concrete to report to the seller.
PropWalk covers photos, walkthrough video, and a listing page for a fraction of a single shoot — so the budget above stretches across more listings.
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