How to advertise your property for sale and save thousands

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There’s a myth that refuses to die in Australian real estate: that you need to spend around 1% of your property’s value on advertising. On a $700,000 home, that’s $7,000 in marketing before you’ve paid a cent of commission.

You don’t need to spend anything like that. Buyers have never been easier to reach, because nearly all of them are looking in the same two or three places. Advertise well in those places, support it with a few cheap extras, and you’re done.

So let’s go through where to advertise your property for sale, what each channel really costs, and where the savings are.

Where buyers actually look

Australian buyers overwhelmingly search for property on the major portals, realestate.com.au and Domain. They set up alerts, they save searches, and when something new matches their criteria, it arrives in their inbox that day. Portal search filters mean the buyers who see your listing are already looking for your suburb, your price range and your number of bedrooms.

That’s the whole game. A buyer who wants a three-bedroom home in your suburb will find your listing within days of it going live, because they’ve told the portal to tell them.

Every other channel is a supporting act. Useful, sometimes surprisingly so, but supporting.

What it costs to advertise a house for sale

Two routes, two very different bills. Through an agent, you’ll pay a commission of roughly 1.5% to 3.5%, and usually a separate marketing bill on top (vendor-paid advertising), which commonly runs into the thousands and is payable whether or not your home sells. Through a flat-fee platform like PropertyNow, the listing on realestate.com.au and Domain is bundled into one $979 fee, licensed agent support included, with no commission at the end. On a $700,000 sale the difference is a five-figure sum, and the full line-by-line numbers are in our guide to the costs of selling a house.

Only an agent or an agent-assisted platform can list on realestate.com.au, which is why “just list it myself directly” isn’t an option, and why the flat-fee model exists.

Here’s how the common channels stack up:

Channel	Typical cost	What it does
Portal listing (realestate.com.au, Domain)	Bundled in a flat fee, or part of agent marketing	Reaches nearly every active buyer; the one channel you can’t skip
For sale signboard	Often included; standalone boards under $100	Catches local and drive-by buyers, neighbours who know a buyer
Organic social media	Free	Spreads the word through your own profile, local groups and notice boards
Paid social media ads	Optional add-on	Puts your listing in front of local buyers who aren’t searching the portals; complements the portal campaign
Portal listing upgrades	Optional add-on	Bigger tile, higher placement in the searches buyers are already running
Professional photography	A few hundred dollars	Lifts every other channel; photos are the first thing buyers judge
Print advertising	Hundreds to thousands	Largely superseded; a nice-to-have for prestige campaigns at best

The free supporting cast: sign, organic social, neighbours

A for sale sign still works hard for the money. It catches buyers driving through the area to get a feel for it, and it tells the neighbours, who are better marketers than you’d think. Plenty of homes sell to a friend or relative of someone in the street who’d been waiting for the suburb to come up. (A professional photo board is included when you list with PropertyNow, so this one needn’t cost you anything.)

Organic social media, meaning posts on your own profile, local community groups and neighbourhood notice boards, won’t sell your home on its own, but it’s free and it travels. A short walk-through video shot on your phone, posted to your own page and the local groups, can reach hundreds of nearby people in a weekend. If someone knows someone who’s been looking in your area, they’ll tag them. We’ve covered this in more detail in our guide to using social media to sell your home.

Word of mouth costs nothing. Tell people you’re selling. It feels almost too simple to count as advertising, and it works anyway.

What you can mostly skip

Print is the main one. Newspaper spreads made sense when buyers found homes in the Saturday paper. They don’t anymore, and print is the most expensive line on a traditional marketing schedule. Unless you’re selling a prestige property with a campaign built around it, the money does more for you almost anywhere else.

Paid extras that can be worth it

Two paid channels genuinely strengthen a portal campaign, and we recommend both in the right circumstances:

Paid social media ads. A different job from posting on your own profile. The portals reach the buyers actively searching; a paid social campaign puts your listing in front of local people who aren’t searching yet, the ones who weren’t planning to move until your home appeared in their feed. It works as a complement to a strong portal listing, not a replacement for one, and it’s one of the optional add-ons you can bolt onto a PropertyNow campaign.

Portal listing upgrades. Larger tiles and higher placement in search results are a genuine lever in a competitive suburb, because they work inside the channel where the buyers already are. See how the realestate.com.au listing upgrades compare, and you can add one mid-campaign if your listing needs a push.

Make the ad itself do the work

Where you advertise gets buyers to the listing. What they find there decides whether they enquire. Three things carry most of the weight:

Photos. Buyers form a view in seconds, and they’re comparing your home against every other listing in the suburb. Shoot in good light, declutter first, lead with your best room. Our real estate photography tips cover what the professionals do differently.
The words. A specific headline and a description that sells the life, not the floor plan. There’s a full guide to writing a real estate ad that sells.
The price. The most beautifully advertised home in the suburb will sit there if it’s priced wrong, because portal filters will hide it from the very buyers who’d pay fairly for it. Do the research before you list; here’s how to go about setting your selling price.

Keep every claim in your ad honest

Australian Consumer Law applies to property advertising no matter who writes the ad, agent or owner. Don’t claim renovations that didn’t happen, don’t advertise a price you wouldn’t accept, and if you’re not sure whether something needs disclosing, ask your conveyancer before you publish. The ACCC’s guidance on false or misleading claims is short and worth a skim. Beyond the legal side, buyers who feel misled at the inspection don’t come back with an offer.

Before your listing goes live: a quick checklist

Photos done in good light, best room first, home decluttered and cleaned.
Headline and description written and read aloud once. If it sounds like every other ad in your suburb, sharpen it.
Price researched against recent comparable sales, not against hope.
Sign ordered and ready for the front fence.
Your phone ready for enquiries. Fast, friendly responses convert; buyers move on quickly from sellers who don’t answer.
A shareable link posted to your own social pages and local groups once the listing is live.

The bottom line

Advertising a home in 2026 is concentrated, not complicated. The portals reach nearly every buyer, a sign and social media mop up the locals, and print can stay in the past. The expensive part of selling was never really the advertising, it’s the commission attached to it. Handle the marketing through a flat-fee service and you keep the campaign, the enquiries and the thousands you’d otherwise hand over. Our step-by-step guide to selling your home online walks through the whole process from here.

Advertise on the big portals for a flat $979

List on realestate.com.au and Domain, keep the enquiries, and skip the commission. Licensed agent support, 7 days a week.

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Frequently asked questions

Where is the best place to advertise a house for sale in Australia? The major property portals, realestate.com.au and Domain. That’s where the overwhelming majority of active buyers search, with alerts set up for new listings that match them. Everything else supports the portal listing.

Can I advertise my house for sale without an agent? Yes. Portals accept listings from licensed agents and agent-assisted platforms, so private sellers use a flat-fee service like PropertyNow ($979, no commission) to get the same portal exposure and manage the sale themselves.

How much should I budget to advertise my property? Far less than the old 1%-of-value rule. A flat-fee portal listing, decent photography and a signboard can come in around $1,500 all up. Compare that with agent marketing schedules that run into the thousands before commission.

Is it worth advertising a house on social media? Yes, in two ways. Organic posts on your profile and local groups are free and spread the word through people who know someone looking in your area. Paid social ads go further, reaching local buyers who aren’t actively searching the portals, and work well as a complement to a portal campaign.

Do newspaper ads still sell houses? Rarely. Print reaches a small fraction of the buyers the portals do, at many times the price. Prestige campaigns aside, the budget works harder on photography or a portal upgrade.