- Real Geeks publishes $599 per package per month and describes what you are buying as Google/Bing Property Search Ads, so the lead package is a Google Ads campaign somebody runs for you.
- None of the four vendor pricing pages we read states whose Google Ads account the campaigns run in, on pages detailed enough to publish the conditions that void a lead guarantee.
- Google’s rule is that whoever creates the account owns it. A vendor who sets it up during onboarding becomes the owner automatically, with nobody deciding anything.
- Remarketing segments carry a 540 day maximum membership and close automatically after 540 days unused, so an account handed back eighteen months later often arrives with its audience gone.
Quick answers:
- How much do Google Ads cost for realtors?
- Is $20 a day good for Google Ads in real estate?
- Who owns the Google Ads account if my lead vendor runs it?
- Can I take my Google Ads account with me when I cancel?
- What happens to my remarketing audience if I stop ads?
- Do Real Geeks and CINC run ads in my own account?
Your lead package is a Google Ads campaign, and the vendor says so
Real Geeks does not hide this. According to its own pricing page, read August 6, 2026, Search Lead Packages cost “$599 per package / per month.” The same page describes them as “Google/Bing Property Search Ads,” targeting “~20-40 Buyer Leads/Mo.” The Seller Lead Packages cost the same and are listed as “Google Property Valuation Ads” at “~10-15 Seller Leads/Mo.”
The add-on is described as “Campaign management to help you attract buyers on Google and Bing” (Real Geeks pricing, read August 6, 2026).
So the monthly fee pays somebody to run Google search ads on your behalf and hand you what comes out of them.
None of that changes the invoice. We have already divided those fees by the guaranteed volume, and covered what voids the guarantee, in our breakdown of what seller leads cost against buyer leads. The question here is the one that outlives the contract: when you stop paying, what is left?
Every vendor prices the leads, and none of them prices the account
| Platform | What it publishes as a price | What the page says the money buys | Does the page say whose Google Ads account? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Real Geeks | “$599 per package / per month” for Search and Seller packages, “$299” for Social | “Google/Bing Property Search Ads,” “Google Property Valuation Ads” | No |
| CINC | “Request Pricing” on all four plan tiers; CINC AI add-on “Starting at $200/mo” | Lead generation products listed by name | No |
| Ylopo | No price shown | “There’s no one-size sticker, because there’s no one-size AI team.” | No |
| Realtor.com Concierge | No percentage shown | “only pay a referral fee on closed transactions” | No |
Sources, all read August 6, 2026: Real Geeks, CINC, Ylopo, Realtor.com Concierge.
Read what that last column is and is not saying. It does not say these companies keep your ad account. None of them says either way. The silence is the finding.
It is a strange silence, because these pages are specific about everything else. Real Geeks publishes the conditions that void its lead guarantee, down to the thirty day window for disputing a lead with a bad phone number and email. A company willing to write that much fine print about lead counts has not written the one sentence about whose account the ads run in.
According to Realtor.com’s Concierge page, you “only pay a referral fee on closed transactions,” and the percentage is never stated. Its headline “3-5x” conversion claim is footnoted to internal data gathered in 2019, according to the Concierge page itself. If you are weighing that model against paying per lead, our pay at closing comparison works the arithmetic through.
Google’s rule is simple: whoever created the account owns it
The default turns entirely on who set the account up. In Google’s words: “If a manager creates a new account, the manager will automatically become the owner of that account. However, if a manager links an existing account, it won’t have ownership of that newly linked client account by default. The client account must enable ownership for the manager account” (Google Ads Help, ownership of client accounts).
Two opposite outcomes, same monthly fee. Set the account up yourself and grant the vendor access, and they do not become owner unless you switch it on. Let the vendor set it up during onboarding, and they are the owner automatically, without anybody deciding anything.
Owning the account is not the same as owning the data, and Google is explicit. Owners “do not take data ownership or administrative rights away from client accounts. The client account still owns its data and has the ability to remove ownership access by unlinking.” Users with administrative access “can terminate the relationship with the manager account at any time by unlinking their account from the manager account” (about manager accounts).
That is reassuring, and it is also where people stop reading. Every one of those protections attaches to “the client account.” If the campaigns never ran in a client account with your brokerage on it, there is nothing to unlink from. An agency writing on PPC Hero described that scenario plainly: “It is possible that the previous agency built it in their agency MCC shell.” An MCC is the agency’s own umbrella account, not one in your name.
The consequence, in the same piece, is that “you have to start over and build a brand new history” (Stephanie White, PPC Hero, February 25, 2019).
Run the one minute check now. In your Google Ads account, click the Admin icon, click Access and security, click Managers along the top, then read the Owner column. Google documents that path because it is the same screen where ownership gets switched on.
If no Google Ads account exists in your brokerage’s name at all, you have your answer even faster. Who can log in, as opposed to which company owns the thing, is a separate audit we covered in Google Ads corporate email requirements.
One permission is worth naming while you are on that screen. An admin on an owner manager account can “Turn on remarketing list sharing in the client account.” Google spells out the effect: the client account’s lists “can be shared with other accounts in the manager account.” Your past website visitors can end up shared into a manager account that holds other brokerages too.
Who owns the ad account depends on who created it
Google’s default, and the one screen where you can read the answer
Path 1
The vendor creates the account
Google’s rule is that a manager account creating a new account becomes its owner automatically. Nobody has to decide anything for this to happen.
Owner: the vendor, by default
Path 2
You create it, then grant access
A manager that links an existing account does not get ownership by default. The client account has to switch ownership on before it transfers.
Owner: you, unless you change it
The check
Admin, then Access and security, then Managers
Read the Owner column on that screen. If no Google Ads account exists in your brokerage’s name at all, you have your answer sooner than that.
Takes about a minute
What survives a cancellation, and what it is worth by then
Assume the good case: the account is yours and you unlink cleanly. You still do not keep everything, and what you keep is on a clock.
| What you built | What Google’s own rules say | What actually decides whether you keep it |
|---|---|---|
| The ad account | “A client account can only have one owner” (ownership) | Whether it was created by you or created for you |
| Administrative access | An owner manager admin can “Remove users from the client account” and “Grant or revoke administrative access” (ownership) | Whether you hold admin from day one |
| Granular click and conversion history | From June 1, 2026, hourly, daily and weekly data is “available for 37 months”; monthly and annual data for 11 years (data retention policy) | Whether that history sits in an account you still control |
| Remarketing data segments | 540 day maximum membership on Search and Display; segments unused for 540 days are closed automatically; 100 active users minimum to target (data segments) | How long passes between handover and your next campaign |
| The leads already delivered | Not addressed by Google’s account rules at all | Your contract, the only place this is ever written down |
The 540 day number is the one operators underestimate. A remarketing audience empties itself while it sits. Memberships expire on a fixed clock, and a segment left untargeted for 540 days closes on its own. An account handed back eighteen months after the ads stopped arrives with its audience already gone.
The reporting history is on a shorter clock than it used to be. From June 1, 2026, Google keeps hourly, daily and weekly data for 37 months, down from the eleven years that still applies to monthly and annual figures. Search Engine Land framed the practical consequence for advertisers as export it or lose it (Search Engine Land, Anu Adegbola, May 27, 2026). If you are handed an account back, the granular record of which searches actually produced calls has a shelf life too.
Why the history is worth arguing over is best put by people who rebuild accounts for a living. Matt Chiera of Ice Nine Online wrote about losing account history and rebuilding quality scores from scratch. In his words, “you lose this significant advantage and pay more than you need to for clicks to your ads” (Ice Nine Online, February 3, 2020).
PPC Hero puts a shape on that cost. According to that account, in one rebuilt account the agency “spent $13,390 in 5 days and we had already found $1,004 in negative keywords.” The old account had learned those exclusions years earlier. According to DataForSEO, the average cost per click for “google ads for real estate agents” is $37.47 in the United States, pulled August 6, 2026. Starting over is not a paperwork problem. It is a budget you spend twice.
Three questions to ask before you sign
Ask while you are still a prospect, because that is the only time the answer is cheap. Get each one into the agreement, not into an email from a rep.
- Will the campaigns run in a Google Ads account created in my brokerage’s name, and will I hold administrative access from day one? Google’s default hands ownership to whoever creates the account, so this answer decides everything else here.
- If your manager account is made owner, will remarketing list sharing be switched on? Name the setting. It is a specific permission an owner manager admin holds, and a general reassurance about data privacy does not answer it.
- At cancellation, will you unlink rather than simply stop, and does anything in the contract restrict my use of the account afterwards? Google lets a client account unlink at will. Your contract is a separate document that can say whatever both parties signed.
There is no universally right answer, and anyone who gives you one is selling something. If you have nobody to run ads and no intention of learning, then a vendor owning the account costs you nothing you were going to use. Judge the deal on lead quality and price, the way you would judge any supplier, which is where exclusive versus shared leads and verifying a lead before you bid do the real work.
If you expect to bring advertising in house, run your own remarketing, or change vendors without starting from zero, the account in your name is not a detail. It is the asset. The advice from the people who clean up afterwards is consistent: “you should have Admin access to your own account and grant Standard access to the agency,” so “if any point you decided to part ways, you can revoke access to that agency” (PPC Hero).
Either way, that answer belongs in the contract. None of the four pricing pages we read puts it there, which means the only person who is going to ask is you.
If you would rather buy calls and leads on terms that are written down, see how we work in real estate lead generation.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much do Google Ads cost for realtors?
There is no single number, because you pay per click and the price depends on the query. According to DataForSEO, using Google Ads data pulled August 6, 2026, the term “google ads for real estate agents” carries an average cost per click of $37.47 in the United States. Consumer-facing search terms vary far more than that, and we publish the per-click figures for seller and buyer queries separately. If you buy packaged leads instead of running the ads yourself, Real Geeks publishes $599 per package per month for both its Search and its Seller lead packages.
Is $20 a day good for Google Ads in real estate?
It depends which terms you bid on, and according to the click prices below it is often not enough. According to DataForSEO, the average cost per click on “google ads for real estate agents,” the research phrase agents type, not a buyer or seller search, is $37.47, pulled August 6, 2026. On that research phrase, a daily budget of $20 will not reliably buy even one click a day. Cheaper long-tail and neighborhood terms exist and can work at small budgets. The real test is not the daily figure, it is whether your monthly spend buys enough clicks to produce data you can decide from.
Who owns the Google Ads account if my lead vendor runs it?
It depends on who created it. Google’s rule is explicit: “If a manager creates a new account, the manager will automatically become the owner of that account. However, if a manager links an existing account, it won’t have ownership of that newly linked client account by default” (Google Ads Help). So if a vendor set the account up for you during onboarding, the default is that the vendor owns it. If you created it and then granted access, the default is that they do not. No vendor pricing page we read states which of these they do, so ask.
Can I take my Google Ads account with me when I cancel?
If the campaigns run in a client account that belongs to you, yes. Google states that an owner manager account does “not take data ownership or administrative rights away from client accounts,” and that “the client account still owns its data.” Users with administrative access “can terminate the relationship with the manager account at any time by unlinking” (Google Ads Help). The other case is different. If the campaigns ran inside the vendor’s own account rather than a client account in your name, there is no account of yours to take, and what happens next is governed by your contract rather than by Google’s rules.
What happens to my remarketing audience if I stop ads?
It drains, then it closes. Google sets a maximum membership duration of 540 days for data segments on Search and Display, so visitors age out on a fixed clock whether or not you are advertising. Separately, a segment not used in your targeting for 540 days is automatically set to closed, although it can be reopened (Google Ads Help). A segment also needs at least 100 active users in the last 30 days to stay eligible for targeting. An audience recovered eighteen months later is often not an audience any more.
Do Real Geeks and CINC run ads in my own account?
We do not know, because neither page says. Real Geeks names the products “Google/Bing Property Search Ads” and “Google Property Valuation Ads” and publishes detailed lead guarantee conditions, yet never states whose Google Ads account those campaigns run in. CINC’s pricing page shows “Request Pricing” on all four plan tiers and does not address account ownership either. Both were read on August 6, 2026. Put this to the sales rep and get it answered in the contract, rather than inferring it from a pricing page.
