Inspector reviewing a property with a clipboard
Home inspection

Nobody wakes up needing an inspection. You are buying share, not demand.

Every other trade we run ads for sells against a problem. Home inspection does not. The work exists because a house is changing hands, so the number of inspections available in your market is fixed before you spend a dollar. That single fact should decide how the campaign is built, and it usually does not.

Book a Free Consultation Why this trade is different
$445 to $995 a month, published Month to month, no setup fee The ad account stays in your name
$445Flat monthly Local Services Ads management. Not a percentage of your spend.
$695Google Ads management from, flat tiers by ad spend rather than a cut of it.
$0Custom landing pages built for your campaigns. No design fee.
30 daysMonth to month. No setup fee, no minimum term, and the account stays yours.

As Featured In · Our Research Cited By

The number above every other number

Your market size is set by home sales, not by your ad budget

A plumber can create demand. Run ads in July and more people decide today is the day to deal with the water heater. An inspector cannot. An inspection happens because a property is under contract, and if no contract is signed there is no inspection to win at any price.

3.98 million existing homes sold, annual rate

The National Association of Realtors puts existing-home sales at a 3.98 million unit seasonally adjusted annual rate in its latest release, with a median price of $429,100. Sales were down 2.0 percent on the month and up 1.6 percent year to date through eight months, and pending sales rose 0.3 percent. Your share of the transactions in your own service area is your entire addressable market.

Repeat buyers, 67% First-time, 33%
First-time buyers were 33% of purchases in the latest REALTORS Confidence Index. They are the ones who have never hired an inspector before, so they are the ones who search.

Here is why that matters for the money. If demand is fixed, advertising is not growth spending, it is share spending. You are taking inspections from the inspector down the road, and that is a legitimate thing to do, but it changes what a good result looks like and it changes what you should expect when the housing market slows. Any agency promising to grow demand in your market is either confused or selling.

Existing-home sales, median price and the first-time buyer share are from the National Association of Realtors, read on 18 September 2026.

Where inspections actually come from

Three channels, and advertising only reaches two of them

Most home inspection marketing is sold as though every inspection is winnable with a good ad. It is not, and being honest about which part is reachable is the difference between a budget that works and one that quietly funds nothing.

The agent recommendationFree to you, and already spoken for

Most buyers have never hired an inspector and will not research one. They ask their agent, and the agent hands over a short list of people already trusted. That list is the most valuable asset in this trade and it is not for sale. It is earned through reports that do not blow up deals unnecessarily, availability inside a short inspection window, and turnaround that keeps a contract on schedule.

What advertising can do here: almost nothing directly. What it can do is make you look established when the agent or the buyer looks you up after your name comes up.
Direct buyer searchSmaller, winnable, and where ads actually work

A minority of buyers pick their own inspector, and they search. First-time buyers were 33% of purchases in the latest REALTORS Confidence Index, and they are the group most likely to go looking rather than take the first name offered, because nobody has walked them through this before.

What advertising can do here: everything. This is the entire addressable target for Google Ads and Local Services Ads in this trade, and it is why the campaign has to be built narrow rather than broad.
Repeat and adjacent workThe part most inspectors underprice

Radon, mold, sewer scope, termite, pool and spa, four-point and wind mitigation in the states that use them, plus pre-listing inspections ordered by the seller and new construction phase inspections. These carry their own search demand and their own buyers, and a seller ordering a pre-listing inspection is not in anybody else's referral pipeline.

What advertising can do here: a lot, because these are searched by name and most local competitors only advertise the words "home inspection".
The arithmetic

What share of your market do you actually need?

Since the pool is fixed, the useful question is not how many leads you want, it is what slice of local transactions your revenue target implies. Work that out first and the ad budget tends to answer itself.

Share of transactions calculator

Home sales a year in your service area, your average fee including ancillaries, what you want to earn, and how many enquiries turn into a booked inspection. Nothing is sent anywhere.

379inspections needed a year
9.5%of every home sale in your area
$63most you can pay per enquiry at a 3 to 1 return

The 3 to 1 figure is a choice, not a benchmark. It means spending at most a third of the fee to win the job, before your own costs. Change the close rate and watch the affordable enquiry price move, because that is the lever most inspectors have more control over than the ad auction.

What we would run

How the campaign should be built for a fixed pool

Six decisions that separate a home inspection account from a generic home services account. Most of them follow directly from the transaction window.

Separate the ancillary services into their own campaigns

Radon, sewer scope, mold and pre-listing each get their own campaign rather than sitting as an afterthought under one home inspection budget. They convert differently, they are worth different amounts, and in most markets almost nobody is bidding on them by name.

Bid the buyer-search window, not the whole month

An inspection is ordered in a narrow window after a contract is signed, and it has to happen inside the option or due diligence period. That makes weekday daytime search the moment that matters and makes slow response fatal in a way it is not for a trade that can call back tomorrow.

Turn on the Local Services Ads category

Home inspector is a Local Services Ads category nationally. Most inspectors do not know it exists, and a fair number of agencies selling home inspection marketing do not either.

Target the geography that generates transactions, not your drive radius

Inspection demand tracks where homes are actually selling. Two neighbouring zip codes can differ several times over in transaction volume, and the campaign should follow the sales, not the map.

Build the pages an agent will judge you on

A sample report, your certifications, your turnaround time and your scheduling link. When an agent is deciding whether to add you to the list, this is what gets looked at.

Track booked inspections, not form fills

Small ticket, short decision window and a scheduling step in the middle. A campaign that looks fine on leads and thin on booked inspections is normally a scheduling problem rather than a traffic problem.

Home inspector is a Local Services Ads category, nationally

Google lists "Home inspector" among its US Local Services Ads categories, and it is not one of the seven restricted to California and Florida. Those seven are architect, drain expert, home insulation, insurance agency, interior designer, piercing studio and tattoo studio. Local Services Ads charge per lead rather than per click and sit above the map pack, and passing the checks gets you the Google Verified badge, which matters in a trade where the buyer has never met you.

What inspectors search for

The search demand behind this page, published in full

These are the terms inspectors use when they go looking for marketing help, pulled from Google Keyword Planner for the United States. They size the market for a page like this one, not the consumer demand for inspections, and we publish them because most agencies will not show you what they are actually targeting.

Search termMonthly searchesCompetition
home inspector advertising210Low
home inspection ads210Low
home inspector marketing140Medium
home inspector website110Medium
home inspection business marketing90Low
home inspector seo70Low
digital marketing for home inspectors50Low
home inspector digital marketing agency50Unknown
home inspection lead generation40High
home inspector leads20Low
home inspector marketing to realtors10Low
home inspector email marketing to realtors10Unknown

Run on 18 September 2026, United States, English. One trap worth naming: a plain pull on "home inspection leads" returns "lead based paint inspectors near me" at 390 searches a month and "cost of lead inspection" at 210. That is lead the metal, not leads the customer, and both are excluded above. An agency that skips that filter will show you a demand figure roughly twice the real one.

Before you sign anything

Four things that should end the conversation

An agency that promises to "grow demand" in your market

Nobody can. The number of inspections available is set by the number of homes changing hands. An honest plan targets share, not demand.

A published cost per lead for home inspection

There is no credible published figure, including from us. Anyone quoting one has either borrowed it from another trade or invented it.

One campaign covering inspections, radon, mold and sewer scope together

Four different buyers, four different values, one budget that funds whichever is cheapest to serve.

A lead volume guarantee

In a trade capped by transaction volume, a volume guarantee is either padded with leads you cannot book or written loosely enough to mean nothing.

What it costs

Our pricing, published, same as every other page on this site

$445 a month for Local Services Ads management. From $695 for Google Ads. $995 for both. No setup fee, no contract, month to month. Ad spend is billed by Google straight to you and we never take a percentage of it. Custom landing pages for your campaigns are included at no charge.

The Google Ads account is opened in your name and stays there, along with the landing pages, the call tracking numbers and the conversion history. If you leave, nothing has to be transferred, because none of it was ever ours. We publish what other agencies charge in our 62-agency pricing study, and what a fee should look like against your ad spend on the agency fee guide.

Straight answers

Home inspection marketing questions

Is home inspector a Google Local Services Ads category?

Yes, and nationally. Google lists "Home inspector" in its US Local Services Ads categories, and it is not one of the seven categories restricted to California and Florida, which are architect, drain expert, home insulation, insurance agency, interior designer, piercing studio and tattoo studio. Local Services Ads sit above the map pack and charge per lead rather than per click, and you carry the Google Verified badge once you pass the checks.

How much does home inspection marketing cost?

We charge $445 a month for Local Services Ads management, from $695 for Google Ads and $995 for both, with no setup fee and no contract. Ad spend is billed by Google directly to you and we never take a percentage of it. What the ad budget itself should be depends on how many transactions happen in your service area, which is the number this page is built around.

What is the cost per lead for home inspection?

We do not publish one, because no credible figure exists. Local Services Ads cost per lead is published by trade for plumbing, HVAC, roofing and the other large verticals, and home inspector is not among them. Rather than borrow a number from a different trade, we price the management flat and let your own account produce the figure over the first few months.

Can advertising get me on an agent referral list?

Not directly, and any agency saying otherwise is selling you something. The referral list is earned through turnaround, availability and reports agents trust. What advertising does is make you credible when somebody looks you up, and win the buyers who choose their own inspector instead of taking the name they were handed.

Is it worth advertising when home sales are slow?

It changes what you are buying. When transaction volume falls, the pool shrinks for everyone, so advertising is buying share from competitors rather than buying growth. That can be the right move, because share won in a slow market tends to persist, but it should be a deliberate decision rather than a surprise. Existing-home sales were running at a 3.98 million unit annual rate in the latest NAR figures, down 2.0 percent on the month and up 1.6 percent year to date.

Should I advertise radon, mold and sewer scope separately?

Yes, and it is the single biggest miss we see. They are searched by name, they carry different values, and in most markets the competition on those terms is a fraction of the competition on "home inspection". Running them inside one campaign means the cheapest clicks take the budget.

Do you work with one-inspector operations?

Yes. There is no minimum size and no contract. The thing to check first is whether you have capacity to take more inspections in the window buyers need them, because in this trade scheduling is usually the constraint before traffic is.

Who owns the ad account?

You do. We open it in your name and it stays there, along with the landing pages, the call tracking numbers and the conversion history. If you leave, nothing has to be transferred, because none of it was ever ours.

Websites and landing pages

The page an agent checks before recommending you

Home inspection is bought on trust by people who have never met you, and the first thing an agent or a buyer does with your name is look it up. A sample report, your certifications and a scheduling link on a page that loads fast do more of the selling here than the ad does.

Fast and mobile first

Most contractor searches happen on a phone, so the page is built to load fast there. Faster pages convert more of the clicks you have already paid for.

Call and form tracking wired in

Every call and form is connected to tracking from day one, so you can see which ads and which pages actually produce booked work rather than just traffic.

Local SEO and schema

On-page SEO and local schema markup so the site earns map and organic visibility over time instead of only working while the ads are switched on.

$497 one-timeWebsite on its own. Design, copy, mobile, forms and tracking. You own it and the domain.
$299 one-timeThe same build when we also run your Google Ads or Local Services Ads. One time, not monthly.
$10 /moHosting, updates and backups. That is the only recurring cost.
24hr to liveLive in 24 hours, no contract and no lock-in.
Landing pages stay free. Campaign landing pages are included with ad management at no design fee, the same as they always have been. The pricing above is for a full website build, which is a separate thing you may or may not need.
See website design and pricing Book a free consultation

Want the transaction numbers for your own county?

Bring your service area and your average fee. We will work out what share of local sales your revenue target implies and whether paid search is the cheapest way to get there, including when the answer is no.

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