How to choose an estate agent marketing agency: follow your money to what it should own

One rule shapes how a US buyer's agent gets paid. NAR's consumer guide tells home buyers they will be asked to sign a written buyer agreement before touring a home with an agent, in person or virtually, and that the requirement went into effect on August 17, 2024 as part of NAR's settlement of commission litigation. It is a trade body's practice rule, not a statute, and the guide adds that the pay in that agreement must be clearly defined and not open-ended. NAR's settlement FAQ also refers to the prohibition of offers of compensation on an MLS (multiple listing service, the listings system brokers in one area share), effective under the MLS policy changes that went into effect on August 17, 2024.

An agency that skips this rule plans around a pay offer that no longer sits on the listing. It judges buyer-side marketing by tours booked, when the agent's pay now depends on an agreement signed before the tour. And it reports leads to you without asking which rule decides whether those leads can ever become commission.

Stop one: the agency's own fee

Estate agency has an awkward gap between spending and being paid: the fee a valuation campaign helps win usually arrives months later, on completion or at closing. So follow one pound, or one dollar for a US team, from the day it is spent to the day that fee lands, noting at each stop where UK and US rules part. The first stop is the agency's fee, which pays for people's time. Ask to see that fee and every pass-through charge as separate lines, so media and portal costs never hide inside it.

Two sourced rules sit at the far ends of this trail. Google limits where US housing ads can be aimed (stop three), and NAR's practice rules now tie a buyer's agent's pay to a written buyer agreement (stop six). Both move the points where spend has to show a result, so judge any agency at those points.

An agency fee earns its place when there is a job to manage. If nearly all your spend is one portal package and you run no ads, a freelancer or a part-time hire may cost less until there is more to run. A property specialist may know these rules already and a generalist may have to learn them, so test either kind on the questions below.

Which stop to press hardest depends on your business. A UK sales branch that pays Rightmove or another portal should press hardest on stops two and six, because portal spend and completion sit at opposite ends of the trail. A UK lettings agency in England should add stop four, because the asking-price rule bears on its adverts. A US buyer-led team should press on stop six, because its first countable result is now a signed agreement. A US team running Google ads for listings should press on stop three, because the targeting limit changes how those ads are built. Wherever you sit, stop five applies, because it decides whether you can leave.

Stop two: the portal and lead-platform bill

In the UK, Rightmove's own results for 2025 gave agency average revenue per advertiser of £1,530, calculated monthly and averaged over the year across its agency advertisers. That is an average, not a price list for your branch. The same announcement says that figure rose by £90 on 2024, with 62% of the increase coming from product growth, and credits higher discretionary product spend and package upgrades. So find out what your branch pays, and make any agency justify each portal upgrade against the valuation requests and instructions it produced, by source.

In the US, a deal that starts from a Zillow Preferred seller connection carries a 40% success fee, according to Zillow's pricing page as read on 5 October 2026. It describes the fee as a share of the full commission the agent expects for their side of the deal, and says that buyer-originated fees may vary by market, transaction price and delivery date. Zillow also says it may change the success fee at any time with 15 days' notice. So the cost of that lead arrives at closing, as a share of commission, and it belongs in the same reconciliation as stop six below. Ask the agency for cost per closed side, meaning each completed transaction on your side, with that fee counted.

Ask also whether the agency earns anything from a portal or tool vendor it recommends.

Stop three: paid ads and the housing limits

Google's advertising policy lists real estate agents or brokers among the housing advertisers whose targeting is restricted. Its restricted-targeting page says ZIP code location targeting cannot be used for housing ads in the United States and Canada, and that radius, city and country-based targeting is allowed. This is a platform policy, not law, and Google's FAQ gave advertisers 19 October 2020 as the date to comply.

So a US agency cannot promise to aim your Google housing ads at ZIP codes. Ask how it will reach your patch (your local area) with radius or city settings, and ask to see that setup in the account. The housing targeting limits on that page are written for the US and Canada, so ask the agency to name the rules it applies to campaigns in the UK or anywhere else. Other platforms may have housing rules of their own, so ask where each campaign declares a housing category.

The ad copy has its own rule. Section 3604(c) of the federal Fair Housing Act reaches whoever makes, prints or publishes a housing advert showing a preference, limitation or discrimination on grounds such as race, religion or sex, and whoever causes one to be published. Ask who reviews your ad copy and images against it before they run.

Stop four: the page the click lands on

A click is only worth paying for if the page behind it holds up. In the UK, Propertymark, the trade body, reported in May 2025 that NTSELAT's material information guidance had been withdrawn, a change that coincided with enforcement of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act (DMCC Act) from 6 April 2025. Its FAQ adds that omitting this information is now automatically considered an unfair commercial practice.

So ask who signs off listing copy and landing pages for missing material information, and which dated source the agency's checklist rests on. For lettings in England, GOV.UK's landlord guidance says that if you want to advertise your property, you will need to publish an asking price, with 'to let' signs left out, and the changes took effect on 1 May 2026. Any other England lettings advert therefore needs its rent on show.

In US copy, NAR's Membership Marks Manual treats REALTOR as a registered collective membership mark that identifies a member of NAR, so an agency should not use the word realtor as a job title for a non-member.

Stop five: what the money leaves behind

Every pound spent leaves something behind: ad accounts, analytics, call tracking, enquiry data, a past-client list, photographs and listing copy. Whoever holds these controls the exit when the contract ends. Ask that the ad accounts and analytics sit in your own name, with the agency added as a user. Ask that enquiry data and your past-client list live in a system you control and can export. Ask what licence covers any photography, video and copy made for you.

Portals add a trade-specific case. Zillow's pricing page speaks of your Zillow Preferred and/or Seller Connections contract, which suggests the agreement is with you, not the agency. Keep the portal login and contract with you, even where the agency manages the listings.

Stop six: the commission, and who counts it

The trail ends where the commission arrives, and the UK and US differ on when that is. In the UK, Rightmove's seller guide, a portal's own advice, says fees are usually due on completion and are often handled directly by your solicitor. So a pound spent on a valuation campaign usually returns only after completion, and a monthly enquiries report cannot show it.

In the US, NAR's guide says buyers do not need to sign a written buyer agreement just to visit an open house on their own or to ask an agent about their services, so the agreement arrives at the first tour, not the first enquiry. That makes the signed agreement the first countable result of buyer-side marketing.

Here is how stops two and six meet, for example, in a UK sales branch (an illustration with no real figures). A portal upgrade paid in March brings a valuation request in April. The instruction follows in May, a sale is agreed in July, and the fee is paid on completion in October. On a monthly enquiries report, March looks like pure cost and October looks like free money. A reconciliation puts the March portal line and the October fee on the same row, tagged to the vendor's first source, and keeps the sale on a pending list in between in case it falls through.

That tells you what the report must contain. For a UK sales branch, each valuation held and each instruction won should carry the source that first brought the vendor in, beside the pending list. For US buyer work, the figure to watch is signed buyer agreements, set beside the consultations that led to them; for listing work, it is listings taken against appointments held. Clicks and impressions sit months upstream of any of these, and the attribution explainer covers how to trace a source that far. Ask for a monthly report in these counts, then check it each quarter against completed commission.

The trail follows each pound to the fee it helps win; it does not cover what a seller sees while deciding which agents to invite to value. The Social Target covers that earlier stage, from portal listings to the agent's own name, on its estate agent marketing page.

Three things to do this week

1. List every sale agreed but not yet completed, or every US deal under contract, with the fee still due and the source that first brought the client in. This is money your past spend has already earned but not yet paid.
2. Beside that list, build one sheet of the last twelve months: every portal fee, lead-platform fee, Zillow success fee, ad charge and agency fee, each tagged to the instructions or signed buyer agreements it produced. Where a fee will only be known at completion or closing, enter it as pending.
3. Send that sheet, client details removed, to each shortlisted agency and ask it to say which rows it would change first and how its report would fill the pending column. An agency that can only answer with clicks and impressions has told you where its counting stops.

If this trail looks like your business, tell us about your business and we will say whether we can help.