Facebook housing ads: the Special Ad Category explained

If you advertise homes for sale or rent, or your services as an agent, on Facebook or Instagram, Meta requires you to run the campaign in its Housing Special Ad Category. The category limits who you can target, to help prevent housing discrimination. Here's what counts as a housing ad, what the category changes, and how to get good results inside it.

Who has to use it

Meta requires the Housing category if you're an advertiser in the United States, or if your ads reach people in the United States, Canada or certain parts of Europe. If you should have chosen it and didn't, Meta may reject your ad.

What counts as a housing ad

Meta defines a housing ad as one that promotes or directly links to a housing opportunity or related service. Its examples include:

• Homes for sale or rent, including temporary housing
• Real estate and house-hunting services
• Mortgage loans and other home financing
• Homeowners, renters and mortgage insurance offers
• Home equity and appraisal services

Meta's examples of ads that aren't housing include hotels, resorts and retreats, and tips about owning or buying a home. For an agent, almost every ad counts: listings, open houses, “just sold” posts and ads for buyer or seller leads all promote a home or your services.

What the Housing category changes

For ads that reach the United States, choosing Housing limits the audience options:

Meta applies the same limits to Advantage+ catalog ads. Choosing the category doesn't make ad review take longer.

How to set it up

1. In Meta Ads Manager, create a campaign or open an existing one.
2. Select Special Ad Categories.
3. Under Categories, choose Housing.
4. Under Countries, choose where the ads will run.
5. Build the audience in the ad set. Options the category doesn't allow won't be offered.

How to reach the right people anyway

• Pick the city or area buyers are searching in. You can't target one ZIP code, and Meta widens a city, address or pin to at least 15 miles anyway.
• Let the ad do the sorting. The price, the photos and the details of the home tell people whether it's for them, without targeting anyone by age, gender or family.
• Send people somewhere useful, like a lead form or the listing page with more photos.
• Describe the home, not the buyer. Wording like “perfect for young families” can break the Fair Housing Act and Meta's rules against discrimination, even in the right category. You can check your ad's wording free before you publish it.

What about Google?

Google has no housing category to choose. It identifies housing ads itself, from the ad and the page it links to. In the United States and Canada, housing ads can't target by gender, age, parental status, marital status or ZIP code. You can target cities, or a radius of at least 1 km. If Google flags an ad, it asks you to set all demographics to include everyone and remove any ZIP code targeting.