tokconnect
- "Selling houses" was the top typed real estate search on TikTok, with 298,189 searches in the week to 28 September 2026.
- Buyer questions lead the list: "how to buy a house first time buyer" had 229,922 searches and "mortgage rates" 222,533.
- "First time home buyer mistakes", "rgv realtor" and "ohio realtor" had tens of thousands of searches and 0 matched videos.
- All eight top videos for "selling houses" were walkthroughs of one property for sale; none named a US place in the caption.
- Say the keyword and your city in the first seconds, on screen and in the caption, and keep fair housing and brokerage disclosure rules in every listing video.
The best TikTok keywords for real estate this week are the ones people typed: "selling houses" (about 298,000 searches in 7 days), "realtor real estate" (262,000), "how to buy a house first time buyer" (230,000), "new apartment tour" and "mortgage rates" (about 225,000 each). If you are an agent, broker or property marketer, say one of these phrases and your city out loud in the first seconds of a video, put both on screen, and write them in the caption.
These numbers come from TikTok's own search tool. Numbers checked 28 September 2026. The table below has the top 20 real estate searches with their weekly change and how many videos TikTok has matched to each. Three of them, "first time home buyer mistakes", "rgv realtor" and "ohio realtor", had tens of thousands of searches and no matched videos at all.
What are the top real estate TikTok keywords this week?
We searched nine seeds in Creator Search Insights, TikTok's free tool (in the app and at tiktok.com/csi) that shows what people search: real estate, first time home buyer, house tour, mortgage, home buying, realtor, apartment tour, homes for sale and selling a house. 7-day searches is TikTok's "Search popularity": searches in the last seven days, worldwide. Videos is how many videos TikTok has matched to the search. The search volume guide explains both.
| Keyword people typed | 7-day searches | Change this week | Videos |
|---|---|---|---|
| selling houses | 298,189 | +372% | 2,155 |
| realtor real estate | 262,378 | -6% | 13,454 |
| how to buy a house first time buyer | 229,922 | +88% | 1,000 |
| new apartment tour | 226,486 | -21% | 1,053 |
| mortgage rates | 222,533 | +74% | 1,079 |
| first time home buyer mistakes | 216,834 | up from near zero | 0 |
| first time home buyer tips | 199,400 | -50% | 1,160 |
| realtor outfits | 193,819 | +77% | 851 |
| first time home buyer programs | 189,256 | +2% | 988 |
| paying off mortgage | 180,045 | +8% | 886 |
| realtors near me | 178,882 | -13% | 975 |
| apartment tour | 178,546 | +51% | 1,655 |
| rgv realtor | 147,726 | +62% | 0 |
| realtor day in the life | 133,386 | +16% | 152 |
| first time home buyer | 125,487 | chart starts at 0 | 5,249 |
| ohio realtor | 91,672 | chart starts at 0 | 0 |
| paying mortgage | 87,256 | +55% | 915 |
| for sale homes | 79,423 | +29% | 4,458 |
| mortgages | 77,923 | +118% | 2,992 |
| realtors | 42,212 | -38% | 1,857 |
Data: TikTok Creator Search Insights via TokConnect, pulled 28 September 2026. "Change this week" compares the last day of TikTok's 7-day chart with the first. "Chart starts at 0" and "up from near zero" mark searches whose first day was empty or tiny, so a percentage would mean nothing. Open the snapshot.
Daily numbers for typed searches jump around. "Selling houses" had a few quiet days in the middle of the week and then climbed to its highest point on the last day, which is why its change looks so large. Read the change column as direction, not as a forecast.
TikTok topic labels (not typed searches)
The same seeds also returned topics that TikTok writes itself to group many similar searches. They show which areas are busy, but nobody typed these exact words four million times. Most were built this week. Keep them out of your keyword list and use them as themes.
- down payment tips for first homes: 6,643,506 searches, 0 videos
- AI tools for real estate: 4,808,980 searches, 727 videos
- NYC apartment tour listings: 4,735,326 searches, 575 videos
- houses and home tours in USA: 4,575,026 searches, 651 videos
- vacation homes for sale: 4,552,854 searches, 320 videos
- real estate business and investment: 4,405,096 searches, 1,097 videos
- homes for sale in New York: 3,148,244 searches, 164 videos
Which real estate searches are rising this week?
These typed searches grew by half or more across the week, or came from nothing:
- selling houses: 298,189 searches, +372%
- mortgages: 77,923 searches, +118%
- how to buy a house first time buyer: 229,922 searches, +88%
- realtor outfits: 193,819 searches, +77%
- mortgage rates: 222,533 searches, +74%
- rgv realtor: 147,726 searches, +62%
- paying mortgage: 87,256 searches, +55%
- apartment tour: 178,546 searches, +51%
- first time home buyer mistakes, first time home buyer and ohio realtor: started the week at or near zero
Money questions lead. Three of the rising searches are about mortgages, and the biggest first-time buyer search nearly doubled. A short video that explains one mortgage term for your market answers several of them at once.
Which real estate keywords have low competition?
A search with plenty of people and few matched videos is the easiest place to show up. Four typed searches had fewer than 200 matched videos:
- first time home buyer mistakes: 216,834 searches, 0 videos
- rgv realtor: 147,726 searches, 0 videos
- ohio realtor: 91,672 searches, 0 videos
- realtor day in the life: 133,386 searches, 152 videos (about 880 searches per video)
Compare "realtor real estate": 262,378 searches but 13,454 videos, about 20 searches per video. Zero videos is common on searches TikTok has only just started tracking, so check it again next week before you plan a series around it. Two of the four are a place plus "realtor", which tells you how people look for an agent.
Real estate TikTok keywords by intent
Group the keywords by who is searching. Each group needs a different video, and each video should say the keyword and your city in the first two or three seconds, show them as on-screen text, and repeat them in the caption. TikTok reads all three, and hashtags only add to them. The hashtags vs keywords guide shows why.
Buyers
Keywords: how to buy a house first time buyer (229,922), mortgage rates (222,533), first time home buyer mistakes (216,834), first time home buyer tips (199,400), first time home buyer programs (189,256). This is the biggest group. Film one question per video: "Three first time home buyer mistakes I see in Tampa" or "First time home buyer programs in Ohio, explained in a minute". Say the phrase as your opening line.
Sellers
Keywords: selling houses (298,189), for sale homes (79,423). The topic label "stories about selling a house" (1,990,404) shows sellers also watch other people's stories. Two videos work: a walkthrough of a listing with the price and town in the caption, and a short story of one sale you handled, with the town named and the client's permission.
Renters
Keywords: new apartment tour (226,486), apartment tour (178,546, up 51%). The label "NYC apartment tour listings" (4.7 million) shows renters search by city. Film the tour from the front door, say the rent, the neighbourhood and the city in the first line, and put the rent on screen.
Investors
None of our seeds returned a typed investor search in the top results. What came back were TikTok labels: "real estate business and investment" (4,405,096 searches, 1,097 videos) and "real estate business and investing" (3,947,294). Treat investing as a theme, not a keyword, and test your own phrases ("rental property [city]", "house hacking") with the prompt at the end of this page.
Local and city searches
Keywords: realtors near me (178,882), rgv realtor (147,726, short for the Rio Grande Valley in Texas), ohio realtor (91,672). TikTok's autocomplete for "homes for sale in" suggested ten places, from California and Canada to Nairobi and Manchester. People add a place, so you should too. Use the name locals type, including short forms like rgv, and say it early in the video.
Luxury
TikTok's autocomplete for "luxury homes" gave "luxury homes tour", "luxury homes usa" and "luxury homes design", and seven of the ten suggestions named a place. The labels "vacation homes for sale" (4,552,854 searches, 320 videos) and "house and mansion tours" (3,958,186) show the demand. Lead with the tour, name the area and the price band, and keep the first shot on the best room.
One more group sits in the table: searches about agents themselves, such as "realtor outfits" (193,819, up 77%) and "realtor day in the life" (133,386). These bring in people who may later need an agent, and new agents looking for tips.
How to use these keywords in a video
TikTok matches a search to a video using what it can read and hear: the words you say, the text on screen and the caption. The guide to how TikTok search works covers what TikTok has published about this. In practice:
- First seconds: say the keyword and the city, for example "If you're a first time home buyer in Ohio, here are three programs to check."
- On-screen text: put the same words in the first frame, big enough to read on a phone.
- Caption: start with the keyword and city, then add the price, size or neighbourhood if it is a listing.
- Hashtags: two or three that match the keyword, such as the city and #realestate (TikTok caps a post at five). They support the words above; they don't replace them.
For the full method, from choosing a keyword to checking results, see the TikTok SEO guide and the TikTok keyword research guide.
What does the top video for "selling houses" do?
The first result for "selling houses" on 28 September 2026 was a 3-minute walkthrough of a five-bedroom duplex in Lagos, posted in October 2025. It had about 1 million plays and 9,830 saves. Its caption leads with the price, the number of bedrooms, the estate and city and the land size, and ends with how to get in touch.
TikTok returned eight videos for the search, and all eight were walkthroughs of one property for sale. Half ran 36 seconds or less, and five of the eight were under a minute. Four captions named the city or area and three stated the price. None named a place in the US. For a US agent, the plain phrase mostly surfaced listings from other countries, so adding your city is what makes the search yours. Results can differ by where you search from.
Data: TikTok video search for "selling houses", sorted by relevance, pulled 28 September 2026. Video style and length tagged by us from each caption. Open the snapshot.
In the US, a listing video is an advertisement. The Fair Housing Act bans housing ads that show a preference based on race, colour, religion, sex, disability, familial status or national origin (42 U.S.C. 3604(c)), and that covers captions and what you say on camera. Describe the home, not the buyer you imagine for it. HUD withdrew its 2024 guidance on digital housing ads in a notice dated 6 April 2026 (NAA, April 2026), but the law itself did not change. REALTORS must also show their firm's name in any ad, or link to a page that does, under Standard of Practice 12-5 of the NAR Code of Ethics, effective 1 January 2026. State licence rules add their own disclosure requirements, so check your state commission's advertising rules.
How do I find real estate TikTok keywords for my city?
Search your city the way locals write it in TikTok's search bar and note the suggestions, then open each topic in Creator Search Insights for its 7-day searches. It takes a while by hand, because the tool has no export. An AI agent connected to TikTok's search data can pull the same table for your city in one go:
Using TokConnect, search TikTok topics for "[city] realtor", "homes for sale in [city]", "[city] apartment tour", "first time home buyer [state]" and "selling a house in [city]". Show each result's 7-day searches, change over the week and matched videos, and mark TikTok-generated labels (popularity 85 or more) separately from typed searches. Then get autocomplete suggestions for "homes for sale in [city]" and the top 10 videos for the strongest search, with each video's length and whether the caption names the city and price. Finish with five video ideas for an agent in [city], each with a first line that says the keyword and the city.
Works in Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and Gemini once TokConnect is connected. Get a free key (50 credits, no card) or see the setup guides.
Run it again each week. The rising and zero-video searches change fastest, and those are the ones worth a quick video.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best TikTok keywords for real estate?
The phrases people actually type. In the week to 28 September 2026 the biggest were "selling houses" (298,189 searches), "realtor real estate" (262,378), "how to buy a house first time buyer" (229,922), "new apartment tour" (226,486) and "mortgage rates" (222,533). Add your city to any of them. The full table has 20.
What do homebuyers search on TikTok?
Mostly first-time buyer and money questions: how to buy a first house, first time home buyer mistakes, tips and programs, and mortgage rates. Each had between about 190,000 and 230,000 searches in the week to 28 September 2026. Buyers also search by place, such as "homes for sale in" followed by a city or country.
What hashtags should realtors use on TikTok?
Two or three that match what the video says, such as your city and #realestate. TikTok caps a post at five hashtags. Hashtags help less than the words you say, the on-screen text and the caption, so put the keyword there first. See hashtags vs keywords.
How do I find real estate TikTok keywords for my city?
Type "homes for sale in", "[city] realtor" or "[city] apartment tour" into TikTok search and note the suggestions. Then open each one in Creator Search Insights (in the app or at tiktok.com/csi) to see its 7-day searches. Or paste the prompt on this page into an AI agent connected to TikTok search data.
What real estate videos do well on TikTok?
In our 28 September 2026 check, all eight top videos for "selling houses" were walkthroughs of one property for sale. Five of the eight ran under a minute, and the first result was a 3-minute tour with the price, city and land size in the caption. Buyer explainers and apartment tours match the other big searches.
Do real estate agents have to follow advertising rules on TikTok?
Yes. In the US a listing video is an advertisement, so the Fair Housing Act ban on ads showing a preference for or against protected groups applies. REALTORS must show their firm's name or link to it under Standard of Practice 12-5 of the 2026 NAR Code of Ethics, and state licence rules add their own requirements.
Sources and data
- 42 U.S. Code 3604, discrimination in the sale or rental of housing (Cornell LII)
- HUD withdraws fair housing-related guidance documents (National Apartment Association, April 2026)
- Notification of withdrawal of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity guidance documents (Federal Register, 6 April 2026)
- 2026 Code of Ethics and Standards of Practice (National Association of REALTORS)
- Real estate searches, suggestions and ranking videos, pulled 28 September 2026 (snapshot)