How To Use Real Estate Hashtags The Right Way In 2024

Hashtags are one of the most commonly known forms of what’s now mainstream internet speak. 

Hashtags have grown from a way to tag tweets to an optimization tool for social media posts. While real estate agents do use hashtags in their social media marketing efforts, they don’t always know how to get the most out of them.

Let’s answer a few common real estate hashtags questions: 

• How many hashtags you should use per post (depending on the social platform).
• Ways to use hashtags to uplift your posts.
• How to choose the most effective hashtags
• What the top 20 hashtags are for real estate marketing in 2024 and beyond.
• How to measure the effectiveness of your hashtags.

How Many Hashtags Should You Use?

As a small real estate brand striving to get traction on Instagram, here’s something you need to know: 3-11 hashtags are a good place to start.

While the ideal hashtags count on Instagram is 11, you should plan to use more hashtags or less depending on audience engagement. You can include up to 30 hashtags in a post and up to 10 hashtags in a story. That being said, don’t stuff hashtags into your caption. It makes your posts look spammy and unprofessional. Plus, you may be attracting attention from the wrong audiences. 

If you’re wondering whether you could penalized (or shadow banned) for using too many hashtags, don’t worry. According to Instagram’s head of product, you won’t.

As for other social media networks, most platform prefer less hashtags. Start with 1-3 hashtags on Twitter and Facebook, 2-3 hashtags on LinkedIn and 2-5 on Pinterest.

This doesn’t mean you should copy and paste the same set of hashtags on a variety of social media platforms. Nor should you use the same hashtags on posts within the same platform.  Instead, you should research hashtags based on some of the tips below and expand your posts’ reach.

According to Hootsuite, If you use the same hashtags for every post, your content will be penalized by the algorithm.”

Why Use Hashtags?

Increase Post Views

When you use a hashtag, your post will appear on a page designated for that hashtag. On platforms such as Instagram, it’s easy for real estate clients to follow hashtags and specifically be notified for posts under that hashtag. For example, a prospect looking for a property in Sacramento may follow #sacramento and see your posts is you use that hashtag.

Connect With Your Audience

Hashtags are also a great way to connect people over a common theme or interest. To get followers further engaged with their content, many social influencers will use customized hashtags to host competitions and allow their audience to witness the entries in real time. Real estate agents can use a similar marketing tactic for free giveaways or real estate-related prizes.

Add Context to a Post

Hashtags are a fun way to add details to your post or make some cheeky commentary. Without a long, run-on caption, hashtags pack information in few words and can provide a ton of context.

Build Brand Authority

Branded hashtags are one of the many ways to promote your business and increase curiosity about it. Your branded hashtag gives your followers a way to catch your attention as a brand and interact with you publicly.

Popular Types of Hashtags

Niche

In every industry, subculture, and niche, there are words that only people within that circle use. A family looking for a single family home likely won’t understand terms related to short stays such as ‘LOS pricing’. Using relevant niche hashtags shows the community that you know what you’re talking about.

Local

When it comes to real estate social media marketing, going local is always a good idea.

Consider using hashtags related to:

1. Neighborhood & city names
2. Community names
3. Sights
4. Local restaurants and shops
5. New developments
6. Local events and traditions

Additionally, geo tag your posts so that they pop up when someone searches for your area.

Acronyms

Acronyms have a way of catching on. Some popular ones most of us are familiar with include, #OOTD (outfit of the day), #FBF (flash back Friday), etc. Sure, many acronym hashtags are used by a large group of people who may not be your desired clientele. However, these hashtags show prospects that you don’t always take yourself so serious, and you are just like them.

Industry-related

Initially, the property buying process is a whole new world for most non-real estate professionals. However, with time and the right agent, buyers and sellers end up with a wide real estate vocabulary they’ve picked up along the way. These people will be familiar with industry terms and using these terms in targeted searches. Don’t be afraid to use some industry-exclusive hashtags in some on your posts.

Special Events

Special events can include the social media contests we mentioned earlier and a variety of other created social media campaigns. Consider all of the local and national holidays that have related hashtags and fun annual trends.

Branded 

Your brand should always use its own hashtag. This shows that you take your original online content seriously. Additionally, it makes it easy for social media users to find your content and related content. For example, a satisfied client that uses their hashtag on their post will draw more viewers to your page.

How to Find the Perfect Hashtags for Your Brand

Monitor Competition

You can follow specific hashtags and check out the posts that are seeing massive engagement. What do these posts have in common? While you don’t want to copy the competition exactly, their posts can give you inspiration for your own content. This is especially useful when doing local hashtags research. 

Follow branded hashtags of leading companies that inspire you and who provide a similar service.

Hashtags can help lift your Instagram profile from obscurity but you’ll need to back them up with engaging posts. 

Use Hashtags that Clients Are Already Using

The easiest way to find your clients is to meet them where they are. Look at the hashtags your ideal clients use in their home search/buy posts and integrate them into your content.

Instagram will give you a clue about what hashtags your followers are using. When you conduct a hashtag search on instagram, it will also tell you which hashtags your follow are already using.

Use a Hashtag Generator

Most digital social media planners have a function that provides related hashtag suggestions or tells you if any time-specific hashtags are gaining traction. This is an easy way to double check that the hashtags you’ve chosen are in line with your field or get some fresh ideas.

Search Within the Social Media Platform

Instagram

If you do a search for real estate in Instagram search, you’ll see a dropdown containing some real estate related hashtags coupled with the number of posts they’ve been used in. You could do the same thing for local market or local event searches. 

However, a good rule of thumb is to use more hashtags with 500,000 posts count or less. Anything above that, you’re dealing with much more competition and your post has a higher probability of dropping way down in searches or attracting the wrong audience. 

You can also create your very own hashtags by analyzing direct competitors and some of their posts that have garnered significant engagement. Or you could simply use a hashtag research tool like Hashtagsforlikes or hashtagify.me.

Facebook

It’s easy to search hashtags on Facebook. Just type the hashtag in the search bar and narrow down the results with filters. Facebook suggests that users start with broad terms then continue to narrow it down until they find the content they are looking for.

Twitter

From within your Twitter Dashboard, click into the Explore tab. Then click the “trending” tab to see a list of the topics and hashtags trending in your area.

Alternatively, type the hashtag into the search bar.

How Top Real Estate Brands Use Hashtags

Leading real estate team, Serhant shows how they use hand-picked hashtags for each post. Their posts uses a mix of local hashtags (#Brooklyn, #nycrealestate) and some generic industry hashtags (#realestate, #interiordesign) to maximize views, and has 20+ hashtags strategically placed below the original post. 

The combination of local and general hashtags with top-notch staging in their photos, drive high engagement. 

Local hashtags should be your chief priority if you plan to drive both hyperlocal engagement and relevant views to your listings. 

Jade Mills Estates

Aside from her top-notch branding, Jade uses one or two branded hashtags (#jademillsestates) in an original post and immediately adds in a comment with up to 10 hashtags. 

This works because it makes the post look professional while still accruing views through the right hashtags. 

some agents prefer to place hashtags as a comment on Instagram. If you’ll use this strategy, make sure your hashtags are added immediately after posting your image. Inserting hashtags later on would mean your image has no chance of appearing at the top of Instagram searches. 

Bryan Casella 

Bryan combines about 11-15 relevant hashtags with branded hashtags like #bryanncasella, #teamBC…. Some of his hashtags or posts aren’t real estate focused but they get a lot of views because he uses hashtags that are still relevant to his audience.

Joyce Rey 

Entering her Instagram profile, you get that first taste of luxury looking at high end real estate. Joyce Rey uses a lot of hashtags that would appeal to luxury  home buyers and sellers, e.g #wealth, #dreamhome, #milliondollarlifestyle. 

She uses up to 30 hashtags including branded ones like #joycereyrealestate on most posts, majority of which are listings. Conventionally, listing posts see low engagement yet she uses hashtags to zoom in on what her target audience searches for.  

While hashtags might draw people in, high quality photos give them a reason to stay a while. 

Ian Grossman

With a combination of rich TikTok and educational content, Ian creates a ton of value for first time homebuyers. He uses about 20 hashtags on each post (most of them are local hashtags) e.g. #atx #downtownaustin and some are specific to first time buyers. 

Since Ian has learned which hashtags work with his audience, he repeats them in most posts, only adding or removing a couple. 

The fact that it already works means that you don’t need to spend  much time researching trending hashtags. However, without any variety, you are reaching the same people every time and losing out on the chance to expand your reach. 

Dottie Herman

At the intersection of real estate and leadership, Dottie Herman uses hashtags that display brand authority while tagging as many relevant people as possible.

When you tag people they get a notification; they’re prompted to engage with your posts. This could be a good strategy to combine with hashtags. Tag people who might either have a stake in your post (probably a client you met with) or would be interested in your post (probably engaged with a similar post of yours).

70% of Instagram posts go unseen. What’s even more interesting is that just adding one hashtag to your post can increase your engagement by 12.6%. 

So if you really want some traction with your Instagram real estate marketing, you might need to double down on hashtag use. And you obviously need a way to measure your results, especially when using branded hashtags.

Note: When running an Instagram ad campaign, you need to have an accompanying branded hashtag.

Measuring Hashtag Effectiveness On Instagram

Instagram Insights

One of the major advantages of switching to a business Instagram profile is that it gives you access to post analytics. To see the amount of impressions you receive from hashtags:

Step 1: Use the view insights feature below the post on the left.

Step 2: Swipe up to see more insights including the number of impressions each hashtag in the post generated.

The only downside to using Instagram insights is that you can’t use it on-demand. There are set time frames for analytics – in most cases, 1 week for profiles and 30 days for posts.

2024 Real Estate Hashtags to Get You Started

General Real Estate Hashtags

#realestate

#realtor

#interiordesign

#broker

#realestateinvestor

#FSBO

#ecohome

#housegoals

#homeinspo

#mansion

#foreclosure

#fixandflip

#homesweethome

#luxuryhomes

#properties

#firsttimehomebuyers

#househunting

#buymyhome

#proptech

#realtorlife

#realestatestyle

#fixerupper

#newhome

#homeportrait

#sellmyhome

Listing Specific Hashtags

#justlisted

#empxtynest

#staging

#newlisting

#curbappeal

#petfriendly

#dreamhome

#urbanliving

#starterhome

#openhouse

#moveinready

#familyhome

#adultcommunity

#firsttimebuyer

#luxuryhomes

#farmhouse

#virtualtour

#custombuilt

#sellingproperty

#newlisting

#urbanliving

#singlefamilyhome

#offmarketlisting

#adultcommunity

#moveinready

#farmhouse

#penthouseliving

#houseportrait

#luxuryhomes

#homesearch

#homebuyingtips

#tinyhome

Local Real Estate Hashtags

#neighborsandfriends

#community

#downtown“city”

#walkable

#HOA

#”communityname”realestate

#“communityname”homesforsale

#“city”living

#localrealtor

#suburblife

#explore“neighborhood

#“state”realtor

#uptown

#localattraction

#greattransportation

#onthemetroline

#”city”life

#”city”living

#”neighborhood”living

Conclusion

When used correctly, hashtags can be a powerful tool for engagement, it helps draw more views to your content, and can even help you be perceived as the definite hyperlocal go-to expert in your area of service.

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