Restrictions for Housing Ads: What You Need to Know

Housing search ads have specific guidelines and restrictions due to Fair Housing laws. Here’s what you need to know to ensure your campaign is compliant and set up to succeed.

In the years since 2020, the housing market has been a buzzworthy topic, to say the least.

From skyrocketing prices creating a dearth of affordable options to fluctuating mortgage rates and the rise of investors snapping up single-family homes, the road to buying or selling your home can be rocky.

That’s why, for companies in this industry, it’s as important as ever that they get their message across to the right people.

Paid search ads are one of the most effective digital marketing formats. But these ads also have guidelines set by search engines and even the federal government.

This means, if you want your ad to be approved, you’ve got to play by the rules.

For help parsing out all the details, we chatted with Abigail Beene, a lead strategist here at HawkSEM.

Housing advertising restrictions, particularly the ZIP code aspect, have created an added hurdle for housing ad marketers when it comes to targeting. (Image: Unsplash)

How to create housing ads that adhere to search engine guidelines

As with all algorithm updates and policy changes, it’s important to remember that these are created for a good reason. The aim is to better connect searchers with the content they’re seeking.

At the same time, you want to ensure equity practices are in place to prevent bias and unfair advantages or disadvantages.

Marketers in the housing industry can still target based on in-marketing (those actively shopping or searching) and affinity interests (signals based on hobbies or interests).

Someone searching for a home loan would be in-market while being a dog lover would be considered an affinity.

These signals may not be as specific or granular as something like age or ZIP code. But they can still tell you plenty about your audience.

They can also inform how you create your ads — like putting a photo of a dog next to a home in your ad, for example.

Beene’s suggestions for creating successful housing paid search campaigns that follow proper guidelines and restrictions include:

• Get creative with your audiences and get specific with your keywords: “Just because you can’t narrow your audience by age, gender, or the typical demographics that first come to mind, doesn’t mean you can’t hone in on your target customers through other tactics,” she explains.
• Select interest-based audiences or other groups: This is a great way to filter out those unqualified leads you don’t want clicking your ads. “For example,” Beene says, “if you have a housing development close to hiking trails, you could select ‘outdoor enthusiasts’ as an audience.”
• Select or exclude certain groups like current homeowners: If you’re advertising for rental properties, this would be a perfect example of when to exclude that audience and ensure you’re only spending ad dollars on those who are potential renters.
• Consider starting by setting these audiences to observation: Beene says this is a great way to preview what your performance would look like if you were only targeting those groups and allows you to test out certain audiences before fully committing all your efforts to them.

Pro tip: You can also use affinity interests (such as shopping for baby clothes or searching for areas with good elementary schools) as an “observation” setting vs. a targeting parameter. Monitor the campaign performance, then reconfigure your targeting or create new campaigns as needed based on the results.

Results for “top Atlanta real estate agent” on the Google search engine results page. (Image: Screenshot)

What company types fall under the “housing” umbrella?

It can be tricky to know which companies need to adhere to housing-related advertising guidelines.

In general, these include:

• Residential real estate companies, agents, and brokers
• An individual selling or renting a residential property (including apartments, mobile homes, and houseboats)
• Any other ad related to a residential property where a person would reside

On the other hand, these companies do not fall under the restricted targeting category, according to Google:

• Hotels or vacation rentals
• Property management services
• Property inspection or escrow services
• Home design services
• Office building or office space rentals

The Fair Housing Act and related ad policies

Back in the fall of 2020, Google Ads updated its personalized advertising policies for housing, employment, and credit.

They focused on these industries to prevent discriminatory advertising and, in their words, “to improve inclusivity for users disproportionately affected by societal biases.”

Then, in 2023, The Fair Housing Act was officially enacted in the U.S.

This act expressly “prohibits discrimination by direct providers of housing, such as landlords and real estate companies as well as other entities, such as municipalities, banks or other lending institutions and homeowners insurance companies whose discriminatory practices make housing unavailable to persons because of race or color, religion, sex, national origin, familial status, or disability.”

As Beene explains, “[These guidelines are] in place to ensure that advertisers are not able to discriminate based on age, gender, race, and other demographics when it comes to housing.”

Google also has similar restrictions in place for other industries, such as banking and employment.

Basically, these are some of the top industries where people can be turned away or denied simply based on things like their age, gender, race, or sexual orientation.

Ads featuring these products or services cannot be targeted to audience members based on gender, age, parental status, marital status, or ZIP code.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has also laid out guidelines for acceptable housing advertising practices. Along with prohibiting discrimination and certain ad targeting options, these include elements like language access (outside of English) and inclusive imagery (like diverse human models on a landing page, for example).

While this is an important and necessary step to ensure equal housing opportunities, these restrictions, particularly the ZIP code aspect, have created an added hurdle for housing ad marketers when it comes to targeting.

Whether you’re a big-name brand or an independent property business, not being able to target via ZIP code can be potentially spendy.

It can also make it more difficult to attract qualified leads, since housing searches are usually contingent on location.

Pro tip: Along with Google, these targeting restrictions are also in place for Facebook ads (aka Meta) and Instagram ads.

Someone searching for a home loan would be in-market, while being a dog lover would be considered an affinity. (Image: Rawpixel)

What happens if your housing ad is denied

If you create a PPC (aka paid search) ad that doesn’t adhere to your local laws as well as the search engine’s policies, you’ll be notified that your content was denied.

From there, you’ll be tasked with updating your ad or its targeting until it falls within the acceptable guidelines. After that, you can resubmit your ad for review.

“First, you’ll want to ensure that you are following all fair housing regulations in your ads,” says Beene.

“If you find that you have accidentally gone against these guidelines, you can update your ad and resubmit it. This will typically resolve the problem, and you’ll be up and running in no time.”

However, she adds that sometimes there are trickier situations where your ad is following all regulations but Google’s approval systems are still flagging it.

If this is the case, you’ll want to get in contact with a Google rep or submit a ticket to the support team. This will get you a manual review to either figure out what needs to be corrected or override the disapproval status.

Pro tip: When it comes to age and parental status, you can target the “Unknown” category to see what results arise.

Benefits of partnering with an agency for housing campaigns

“I would absolutely recommend housing advertisers to partner with an agency when launching their search campaigns,” says Beene.

Color us biased, but when your company’s reputation is on the line, it’s a pretty big risk to gamble on your campaign’s compliance.

Beene recommends working with an agency team that is well-versed in the housing industry and can navigate some of the challenges that come with these restrictions that’re in place.

“Not only is it important to work within these guidelines to ensure your ads remain eligible, [but] your agency should also be implementing creative ways to reach your target audience while maintaining fair housing standards,” she adds.

The takeaway

We don’t need a crystal ball to predict that search algorithms will continue advancing just as people will continue using the internet.

With that in mind, it’s wise for marketers to zoom out and think creatively about their audiences, based on things outside of generic demographics.

These policy changes provide an opportunity to dig into your audiences rather than taking the more black-and-white info you’ve gathered about them at face value.

Put yourself in your audience’s shoes. Think about what they’re looking for in a home, where they are in life, what else may be going on in their lives, and what values they hold.

This adds a healthy dose of empathy to your ad campaign creation processes. It’ll also add a level of personalization that is sure to bring about positive effects.

“While there are restrictions when advertising in this industry that can make reaching your target audience a little tougher, search advertising is still a key piece of any marketing strategy for housing,” Beene adds.

“All it takes is getting creative with your targeting strategy and focusing on your ideal customer.”

This article has been updated and was originally published in April 2022.