What are the best Facebook keywords for "we buy houses" ads?

"Best Facebook keywords for we buy houses" is one of the most common searches that shows this site in Google. The answer is short and a little annoying: Facebook doesn't have keywords.

Here's what it has instead, what Meta takes away from housing ads, and the words that end up doing the work.

Keywords are Google. Facebook is people.

On Google, a seller types "sell my house fast" and you bid to show up next to it. That's a keyword. The seller told you what they want.

On Facebook and Instagram, nobody typed anything. You pick an audience (a place, some interests, a list you upload) and your ad interrupts their scroll. The only "keywords" are the words in your ad, and they work by making the right person stop.

What Meta takes away from housing ads

If your ad is about housing, Meta's rules cut your targeting down hard. On its Business Help Center, Meta says that for advertisers based in or reaching the US, these are limited or unavailable for housing, employment and financial ads:

• Age and gender.
• ZIP or postal code.
• Exclusion targeting.
• Lookalike audiences and saved audiences.
• Some interests.

City or pin-drop locations also "include an expanded radius," so you can't draw a tight circle around one neighborhood. Meta also says ads may be rejected if the right category isn't chosen.

Whether a seller ad counts as housing is Meta's call, not yours, which is why choosing the housing category from the start is the safer bet. Either way, plan as if you'll get a broad audience in a wide circle, and the ad copy has to find your seller inside it.

So the words in the ad do the targeting

An ad that says "We buy houses for cash, any condition" is written about you. Every homeowner in the circle can see it, and none of them is described by it.

An ad that names a situation picks its own reader. A few examples, from the situations county records track:

• Inherited: "Inherited a house you don't want to keep up?"
• Behind on payments: "Missed a few mortgage payments and getting letters from the bank?"
• Tired landlord: "Done being a landlord? Sell the rental with the tenant in it."
• Repairs: "Roof, foundation, or a city notice you can't afford to fix?"
• Expired listing: "Listed it, it didn't sell, and you still need to move?"

Each one is about the seller, and each one is something a seller can say yes to in their head. Use their words, not ours. Nobody describes themselves as a "motivated seller" or "distressed."

Meta's guidance for these categories asks you to broaden your audience, not restrict it. And fair housing rules apply to the words too: nothing that suggests who you won't buy from.

If you do want keywords: Google

When you want to catch a seller at the moment they're searching, that's Google search ads. The phrases are the seller's own: sell my house fast, cash offer for my house, sell my house as is, we buy houses near me.

They aren't cheap. One September 2026 snapshot of Google's US data (DataForSEO, via a third party) put "sell my house fast" at about $115.60 a click, "sell my house" at about $161.20 and "cash offer for my house" at about $167.11. Carrot studied 29,000 investor keywords across 50-plus accounts and kept only the ones that converted at 8.15% or better at $250 a lead or less. WordStream's 2026 benchmark puts real estate's average cost per lead at $102.51, but that mixes agents and brokers in with investors. Here's when PPC is worth it.

The other option: start from the list

Facebook and Google both start with a stranger and try to find the one who's selling. County records start with the owner. A foreclosure filing, a probate case, a lien and an expired listing each name a specific house and a specific owner with a reason to sell.

They also sell. Across the counties we measured, about 13 of every 100 owners with a foreclosure filing and about 12 of every 100 expired listings sold off-market within 12 months. A house picked at random: about 1 to 2. Here's where those records are, free.

Whichever channel you run, judge it on cost per deal, never cost per lead or cost per click. A cheap lead that never closes is the expensive one. Put your real numbers into the calculator and compare channels side by side.