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Should I manage Google Ads for a real estate client?
Posted by on May 13, 2026 at 2:15 pmHey!
I recently built a fairly complex website for a client who buys buildings, renovates the apartments, and then sells them.
He currently has an agency managing his ads, but he’s not happy. He’s spending around 750€/month on Meta Ads, not running Google Ads, and says he’s not getting leads. He also pays around 175€–225€/month for management and feels like they just set up the campaign and barely touch it afterwards.
Since he trusts me, he asked if I could manage Google Ads for him. I’m a developer, I understand the basics of Ads, I’m used to analyzing data, and I’m willing to learn it properly, but I don’t have real experience managing campaigns.
The goal would be to find buyers for properties on one specific island, targeting people with higher purchasing power. He was told that doctors or similar profiles might be a good audience.
My question is: does it make sense for me to take this on? How many hours per month would an account like this usually require if done properly? And what would be a reasonable monthly fee to manage Google Ads with a budget of around 750€-1,500€/month?
Thanks
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1 Reply
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Only if you are comfortable owning the results side too. Building the site is one thing, managing spend and lead quality becomes a different relationship fast.
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real state is level HARD. I’ve been working on Google Ads for 10 years and I run away from real state clients. But since is really niche, it might work. I hope you get some insights here since I don’t know your market.
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I’d be cautious taking this on as your first real Google Ads management role, especially for a high-value real estate lead gen account where tracking and lead quality matter a lot. Even at 750€–1,500€/month, it still needs consistent optimization, search term control, and proper conversion tracking, not just setup and monitoring. If you do accept it, I’d treat it as a learning-first engagement with clear expectations that results will be iterative, not immediate, and make sure you’re not being set up as a full replacement for an agency without the experience buffer.
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It’s not a great idea to take over a disgruntled account when you have no experience. Most of the time they are exhausted and will expect results that you might have a hard time providing.
Why not start by looking into the existing Meta campaign and recommend incremental opportunities?
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Google Ads for real estate is not light work
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There are two ways of looking at this.
1. This might be a profitable add-on for you if you build a site from the ground up and offer performance marketing as an additional step. You already have the trust of the client but you would need to up your game when it comes to paid advertising. Can you find someone that will atleast walk you through their methodology for your first client and understand that side of the business?2. Do you want or even have time to take on this (ppc is a constant monitoring and changing sphere – do not be that person that sets campaigns and forgets it).
It all depends on what you want your portfolio to look like. Real estate it a tough industry and the specific side of your client (is he B2B?), sometimes Google Ads isn’t the right channel to pump money in to. Depending on the market (city), I would say that $750-1500 is on the low side. Google is a pay to play and generally works exponentially (well maybe not quite) better when there is more budget to play around with and the automated bidding systems can find those perfect searches.
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