How to choose a multifamily marketing agency in 2026
Most agency pitches sound the same. The differences that decide your results sit in the details: who runs the account, what the fee is charged on, who owns the ad accounts, and what gets counted as a lead. These are the questions that bring those details out.
Start with what you need the agency to do
Write down the job before you take the first call. It keeps every pitch answering the same question.
- Which channels. Paid search and social, organic search and AI visibility, reporting, or all of it.
- Which stage. A lease-up needs volume on a deadline. A stabilized community needs occupancy protected at the lowest spend. Many portfolios need both at once.
- How many communities, and who reads the report. A regional manager, an asset manager and an owner want different things from the same numbers.
The eleven questions that separate agencies
Ask every finalist the same questions, in the same order, and write the answers down. A good answer is specific and checkable. A warning sign is vague, or points to something you would only discover after signing.
| # | Question | A good answer | A warning sign |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Who will actually run our account day to day? | A named person, senior enough to make the changes themselves, who is also on your calls. | "A dedicated team" with no names, or the person in the pitch is not the person doing the work. |
| 2 | Whose name is on the ad accounts? | Yours. The agency works inside Google Ads and Meta accounts you own, with your billing. | Campaigns built in the agency's own accounts, so leaving means starting over. |
| 3 | How is the fee calculated, and on what? | A number you can see before a proposal, charged on a base written into the agreement. | "Custom pricing" only after discovery, or a percentage charged on media plus platform fees plus ILS. |
| 4 | What is the contract term, and what does leaving take? | Month-to-month, or a short term with a clean exit and no penalty. | Twelve months or longer paired with a percentage fee. |
| 5 | What counts as a lead in your reports? | Tours booked, calls that last a minute or more, and applications started. | Every form fill, every call including hang-ups, or website visits. |
| 6 | Can you report cost per lease, not just cost per lead? | Yes, joined to your lead-source or property management data, with the gaps explained. | Reports stop at clicks, impressions and click-through rate. |
| 7 | How fast does a special or price change reach the ads? | The same day it changes on your website. | At the next scheduled update, or whenever someone sends the agency an email. |
| 8 | How do you handle Fair Housing and Meta's housing ad rules? | Specific answers: no targeting by age, gender or ZIP code on Meta, reviewed copy, and creative doing the work targeting can't. | General reassurance with no specifics. |
| 9 | When did you last tell a client to spend less? | A real example, like cutting a stabilized community's budget at 95% occupancy. | They can't name one. |
| 10 | Can we see a live report before we sign? | A working dashboard or a real, anonymized sample you can click through. | A PDF deck and a promise. |
| 11 | What do you do about ChatGPT and Google's AI answers? | They check whether assistants name your community and quote the right rent, and fix the sources behind it. | "SEO covers it." |
Swipe the table sideways →
How to score the answers
Score each answer on the same scale, then add them up. With eleven questions the top score is 22.
Two agencies can land close on the total and still differ where it matters most to you. If contract terms or account ownership are non-negotiable for your team, treat a zero on either as a disqualifier regardless of the total.
Warning signs in the proposal itself
- Setup fees. A charge for work the monthly fee is supposed to cover.
- High monthly minimums. They turn a percentage into a flat fee for smaller communities.
- Guaranteed rankings or guaranteed leads. Nobody controls Google’s results. A guarantee usually means the definition of a lead is loose enough to hit.
- Bundles you can’t take apart. Ads tied to a website, a CRM or a listing package make it expensive to change any one of them.
Run a pilot before you move the portfolio
The cleanest way to compare is to run a short pilot: three to five communities, the same period, measured on the same definition of a lead as your current setup. Agree the scorecard in writing before day one, including which report the numbers come from. Sixty days is long enough to see tours and early leases, and short enough that a poor fit costs little.
How we answer these questions
This is our own site, so here are our answers, for comparison with anyone else you talk to.
- The senior person who audits your account builds it, optimizes it weekly, and is on your calls. No coordinators, no hand-offs.
- Every campaign is built in ad accounts you own.
- Our pricing is published: 18% of managed ad spend, plus SEO and AI visibility tiers per property. Month-to-month.
- We count tours, calls of a minute or more, and applications, and report cost per lease by community.
- Specials and prices reach the ads the same day they change on your website.
- You can click through our live dashboard before you talk to us.
- Our 60-day pilot runs 3 to 5 communities against your current agency. If we don’t beat their cost per lease, you don’t pay.
For more on fees specifically, see what a fair multifamily PPC management fee looks like, and to check an agency you already have, seven things to look at in your own account.
Questions about choosing an agency
How many agencies should we talk to?+
Three is usually enough. Fewer and you have nothing to compare against; more and the pitches blur together. Score all three on the same questions, then run a short pilot with the strongest one before moving the whole portfolio.
Should we hire an agency that only does multifamily?+
It helps. Housing ads carry rules most industries never deal with, from Meta's Special Ad Category to Fair Housing language, and multifamily has its own economics: concessions, lease-ups, occupancy targets and cost per lease. A generalist can learn it, but you pay for the learning.
How long before we judge a new agency?+
Give paid search 60 to 90 days, measured on tours and leases rather than clicks. Google Business Profile changes usually show within 4 to 6 weeks. Organic search and AI answers take 3 to 6 months to move clearly.
30 minutes, your accounts, your properties.
Bring one community's ad account. We'll show you where spend is leaking and what we'd do in the first 30 days. You keep the findings either way.
The person on this call is the person in your ads account. Cameron Day, owner.