- "Selling houses" was the top typed real estate search on TikTok, with 298,189 searches in the 7 days 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" (216,834), "rgv realtor" (147,726) and "ohio realtor" (91,672) had 0 matched videos. Zero is common for newly tracked searches, so re-check a week later before you plan a series.
- 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.
In the week to 28 September, the top TikTok keywords for real estate, by what people typed into search, 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). "First time home buyer mistakes" had 216,834 searches and no matched videos at all.
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. The table below has the 19 typed real estate searches we found, with their change over the week and how many videos TikTok has matched to each.
What are the top real estate TikTok keywords?
The numbers come from Creator Search Insights, TikTok's own search tool, across nine seeds: 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 count of 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 over the 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 |
| 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 |
"Change over the week" compares the last day of TikTok's 7-day chart with the first; "chart starts at 0" marks searches whose first day was empty. TikTok's own search counts · week to 28 Sep
These counts are worldwide. For a US city, run the prompt further down: it keeps the city in the search.
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 groups for real estate (not typed searches)
The same seeds also returned topics TikTok writes itself. Each is TikTok's topic group for a theme, a figure that pools many related searches, and most went from under 10,000 on the first day to millions by the last. They show which areas are busy, but nobody typed these exact words. Keep them out of your keyword list, use them as themes, and don't compare their figures with the typed searches above.
| TikTok topic group (pools many searches) | Pooled 7-day figure | Videos |
|---|---|---|
| down payment tips for first homes | 6.6M pooled | 0 |
| AI tools for real estate | 4.8M pooled | 727 |
| NYC apartment tour listings | 4.7M pooled | 575 |
| houses and home tours in USA | 4.6M pooled | 651 |
| vacation homes for sale | 4.6M pooled | 320 |
| real estate business and investment | 4.4M pooled | 1,097 |
| homes for sale in New York | 3.1M pooled | 164 |
Topic groups pool many related searches; the rule that separates them from typed searches is in the notes at the end. TikTok's own search counts · week to 28 Sep
Which real estate searches rose in the week to 28 September?
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 rose 88% across the week. 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. Three typed searches had no matched videos at all:
- "first time home buyer mistakes": 216,834 searches, 0 videos
- "rgv realtor": 147,726 searches, 0 videos
- "ohio realtor": 91,672 searches, 0 videos
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 again a week later before you plan a series around it. Two of the three are a place plus "realtor", which tells you how people look for an agent. Our content gap guide explains how to read a zero.
Try it for a city: Austin first, then yours
Which real estate TikTok keywords match each 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). TikTok also has a topic group for stories about selling a house, so sellers watch other people's stories too. 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%). TikTok's topic group for NYC apartment tour listings shows renters search by city. Film the tour from the front door, say the rent, the neighborhood and the city in the first line, and put the rent on screen.
Investors
None of our seeds returned a typed investor search. What came back were TikTok topic groups such as "real estate business and investment" and "real estate business and investing". 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. TikTok also has topic groups for vacation homes for sale and for house and mansion tours. 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 "realtors near me". These bring in people who may later need an agent, and new agents looking for tips.
How do you 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 neighborhood if it is a listing.
- Hashtags: two or three that match the keyword, such as the city and #realestate. TikTok has capped posts at five hashtags since August 2025 (MediaPost, 21 August 2025). 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. If you also run ads, TikTok's Keyword Planner shows the bidding side of the same searches.
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 1,025,306 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.
Style and length judged from each caption. TikTok video search, relevance order · 28 Sep
In the US, a listing video is an advertisement. The Fair Housing Act bans housing ads that show a preference based on race, color, 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 April 2024 guidance on digital housing ads in a notice dated 6 April 2026 (NAA), 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 license 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. TokConnect pulls the same table for your city in one go, and the free TikTok keyword research tool checks one phrase at a time:
Ask 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. Keep typed searches apart from TikTok's topic groups: treat as a group anything at 5,000,000 or more, anything at 1,000,000 or more whose first day was under 5% of its last, anything filed as Featured Content, and anything that reads like a theme. Then get autocomplete suggestions for "homes for sale in [city]" and the top 10 videos for the strongest typed 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.
Run this for your city In ChatGPT or Claude? Connect TokConnect once: ChatGPT → Claude →
Agencies can run the prompt once per client city and paste the table into a report. Run it again each week. The rising and zero-video searches change fastest, and those are the ones worth a quick video.
How we got these numbers
We pulled everything through TokConnect's MCP server on 28 September 2026: topic search for nine real estate seeds (10 topics each, 88 unique), autocomplete for "homes for sale in" and "luxury homes", and video search for "selling houses" sorted by relevance. Searches are TikTok's 7-day global search popularity from Creator Search Insights. "Change over the week" compares the first and last day of TikTok's daily series. "Videos" is how many videos TikTok matches to the topic.
A record counts as a topic group if its 7-day figure is 5,000,000 or more, or 1,000,000 or more with the first day under 5% of the last, or TikTok files it as Featured Content, or its wording describes a theme; one off-topic record ("what to buy at a home opening sale") was dropped. TikTok samples and rounds these counts, and video results can differ by the country you search from. Legal facts were checked against NAR and NAA on 5 October 2026. Data: topics, suggestions and videos snapshot.
Key statistics
"selling houses" was searched 298,189 times on TikTok in the 7 days to 28 September 2026, the most of any typed search across nine real estate seeds, and TikTok matched 2,155 videos to it.
"first time home buyer mistakes" was searched 216,834 times on TikTok in the 7 days to 28 September 2026, and TikTok matched 0 videos to it.
Daily TikTok searches for "mortgage rates" rose 74%, from 127,761 to 222,533, between 22 and 28 September 2026, worldwide.
All 5 statistics
All 8 videos TikTok returned for "selling houses" on 28 September 2026 were walkthroughs of one property for sale, and none named a US place in its caption.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best TikTok keywords for real estate?
The phrases people actually type. In the 7 days 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 all 19 typed searches.
What do homebuyers search on TikTok?
Mostly first-time buyer and money questions: how to buy a first house (229,922 searches), first time home buyer mistakes (216,834), tips (199,400) and programs (189,256), and mortgage rates (222,533), all in the 7 days 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 has capped posts at five hashtags since August 2025, according to MediaPost. 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) for its 7-day searches and video count. The prompt on this page pulls the whole list for your city at once, and the free TikTok keyword research tool checks one phrase at a time.
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 license 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)
- TikTok limits hashtags as algorithms become more sophisticated (MediaPost, 21 August 2025)
- Creator Search Insights (TikTok Help Center)
- How TikTok recommends content (TikTok Help Center)
