Setting up
Once, before your first listing.
Get the app
PropAds runs on your phone, and that is where it is meant to be used.
Download PropAds from the App Store or Google Play and sign up with Apple, Google or your email address. You can also sign up at propads.ai from a laptop or an iPad — the account is the same one either way. On Starter and above, a listing you start on the web is waiting on your phone; on Free and Lite, your listings, ads and reels are kept on your phone.
PropAds is available to agents in United States and Canada today.
Set up your brand
Do this once. Everything you make afterwards comes out already branded.
Open the Brand tab and add your logo, your headshot and your accent colour — those three are on Pro and above. Your brokerage is named on every plan: if you leave the wordmark empty, we fall back to the brokerage on your profile so the ad still names it.
If you do not have a logo file to hand, type your brokerage instead — PropAds sets it as a wordmark and it looks deliberate rather than missing. Many states require the ad to name your brokerage, not just you, so this line is worth filling even without a logo. The headshot slot takes your initials the same way.
The accent colour is the one thing worth getting right. It is what tints the price pill, the badges and the end card, so it is the part of your brand a buyer scrolling past actually registers.
Add a listing
Price, beds, baths, address — the details that appear on the creative.
From the Listings tab, add a listing and fill in the price, bedrooms, bathrooms and address. Only the price and address show up on most creatives; on Starter and above, the rest feeds the copy PropAds writes.
Photos come straight from your camera roll, or from the camera if you are shooting right now. On Starter and above, with Cloud sync, they go directly from your phone to storage, which is why a twelve-photo listing uploads at the speed of your connection rather than the speed of our servers. On Free and Lite, they stay on your phone.
Photos you did not take are usually licensed, not owned — check what your photographer’s agreement allows before using them in ads. It is worth knowing that paying a photographer usually buys a licence rather than the copyright, and that licence often ends when the listing does.
Standing at the property with no listing yet? Tap the camera button in the middle of the tab bar and shoot first — PropAds reads the address from where you are standing and builds the listing around the photos.
Making an ad
Every listing, from here on.
Generate the ads
Pick the listing, pick the moment, and let it write and lay out the set.
Open a listing and tap Generate. PropAds writes the headline and caption for the stage the listing is at — its Listing type: Just Listed, Open House, Price Improved, Price Reduced or Just Sold — then picks which photo suits which line and lays out every format at once.
On Free and Lite, you write the headline and the button yourself and PropAds lays out every format from your words — ad copy written for you is part of Starter and above.
You get the vertical 9:16 frame plus Feed Square (1080×1080), Feed 4:5 (1080×1350), Facebook Landscape (1200×628). Tweak the text on any of them — or, on Starter and above, regenerate if the copy is not the angle you wanted.
Every AI-written headline is screened against a fair-housing phrase checklist before it is saved — PropAds describes the property, never who might live there. Copy you edit yourself, and the features you type, get the same check as a non-blocking warning: you keep the final say. What we cannot check is who you target when you pay to promote a post.
Make a reel
One vertical video for Instagram Reels, Facebook Reels, TikTok and YouTube Shorts.
From a listing, tap Reels. AI edit is on to start: it picks the photos, their order, their pacing and the look, and PropAds animates them into a 9:16 video with camera motion, crossfades and a branded end card. A reel takes up to 6 photos on Lite, 6 on Starter, 10 on Pro and 12 on Pro+. If AI edit leaves a photo out, it shows you which one and why, and Put back adds it again. Turn AI edit off to choose all of it yourself. On Free and Lite, AI edit is part of Starter and above: you choose the photos, their order and the look yourself, up to 6 photos.
With AI edit off you can also choose between the smallest file and jumping around your reel without a pause while you preview it; AI edit picks the balance between the two.
You choose what the first frame says — the address, a line from your ad, your own words or no line at all — and the button on the closing card, which you can write yourself too. No ad copy is needed to make one.
Reels are silent by default. On a paid plan you can add your own music track, and on Pro and above you can also put a walkthrough clip you shot yourself into the reel, and keep its own sound. On the free plan, add music when you post — Instagram and TikTok have their own libraries.
Your track plays exactly as you upload it, from the first second — trim off any long intro first. PropAds never picks a section for you, so the file you choose is the whole of the decision — and the better the clip you upload, the better the reel sounds. Use only music you have the rights to, including for paid ads.
Choose Cut to the beat and PropAds finds the tempo in your track and changes photos on it. Or turn AI edit off and set each photo's hold yourself — the reel is yours to adjust, photo by photo.
On Pro+ and above, Depth motion gives a shot real depth as the camera moves — the near part of the room travels differently from the far part, so a push reads like walking in rather than a photo growing. It adds nothing to the photograph.
End where it started makes the last frame match the first, so a reel that auto-replays has no visible seam — worth having for a listing you expect people to watch twice. While AI edit is on it decides this for you; turn it off to set it yourself.
On Pro and above, a reel made from photos taken in HDR comes out in HDR where your device supports HDR video; otherwise you get the standard version.
Already have a video of the property? On Starter and above, Brand my video takes your own walkthrough clip and gives it the same branded treatment.
Text and logos are laid out to clear both TikTok's and Instagram's on-screen buttons at once, so the same file posts to either without your branding ending up behind their interface.
Put it on your MLS
A second copy with your branding taken off, for the field your MLS keeps for it.
On the free plan, videos carry a PropAds mark, so they can't go in an MLS listing. MLS-ready copies come with any paid plan, and the MLS description with Starter and above.
Most MLSs want the media on a listing unbranded — no name, headshot, logo, phone number or closing card — and keep a separate field for the branded version you use everywhere else. Turn on Unbranded copy before you render and PropAds makes that cut: the same edit, with nothing drawn over the photographs.
Turn on Landscape copy and the reel is made in 16:9 instead, at 1920x1080 — the shape an MLS virtual-tour link, a YouTube listing video and a brokerage website expect. Leave it off for the 9:16 reel you post to social.
A 16:9 video can only show part of a portrait photo, so AI edit leaves portrait photos out of a landscape reel. Put back adds one again, and before rendering PropAds asks whether to leave out the portrait photos you chose or render anyway.
Your MLS takes a link rather than a file, so host the unbranded copy first — an unlisted YouTube upload is what most agents use — and paste that link into the unbranded tour field. That field is also what syndicates on to Zillow, Realtor.com, Trulia and Redfin, so it is worth filling.
Saved and shared files say which is which: the unbranded one is named for it, and its tile is chipped Unbranded so two reels of the same listing never get mixed up.
The description goes in too. On the phone, open the listing's Details and tap MLS description; on the web, it is on the listing's edit page. PropAds writes the public remarks from the listing's details and the rooms its photos show — with no names, phone numbers or links — at the length your board allows. Edit it, check every fact, then copy it into your MLS.
Branding rules differ by MLS — a few now allow branded tours outright, and some restrict music or on-screen text as well. PropAds renders the unbranded file; whether it satisfies your board is your MLS's rule and worth a check before you post.
Post it
Share straight from the phone you shot it on.
Tap share on any ad or reel and the phone's own share sheet opens — Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Messages, anywhere. The caption copies with it, so you can paste it rather than retype it.
Add the music when you post: in Instagram or TikTok, pick a trending track before you publish. Those tracks can only be added inside their apps, and a reel with a current sound is shown to more people than one with a silent or unknown one.
Ads also export as PNG if you want the file itself.
PropAds does not post on your behalf. You keep the final say on what goes out and when — and the platforms treat a post you made yourself better than one an app made for you.
Common questions
- Is there a free plan?
- Yes. On the free plan you get 1 new listing a month, your ad in your own words, reels from up to 6 photos (the most recent one is saved per listing) and your brokerage name on every ad, all kept on your phone. Free ads and reels carry "Made with PropAds", and one phone can be signed in at a time. The paid plans leave the mark off: Lite keeps everything on your phone with more listings and your own music; Starter and above add ad copy written for you, AI edit for your reels, Cloud sync and the web app.
- Are the photos AI-generated?
- No. PropAds does not invent or retouch what is in your photographs — it crops, scales and brands the ones you supply, and the rooms stay as you shot them. In a reel it can also even out the light and straighten the walls — never what is in the room — and your originals are never changed. Virtual staging is not a shipped feature; if it ships it will be opt-in per photo and will always carry a "Virtually Staged" label, so nothing is ever added to a listing photo without you choosing it.
- How many reels can I keep?
- Each listing keeps its 3 most recent reels on Lite, 3 on Starter, 5 on Pro and 8 on Pro+, and older ones drop off as you make new ones. Pin the ones you want to keep — up to 3 on Lite, 3 on Starter, 10 on Pro and 20 on Pro+ — and pinned reels are never pruned. Making reels is not capped on any plan. On the free plan, each listing keeps its most recent reel, and pinning comes with the paid plans.
- Do I need a laptop for any of it?
- No. Shooting, uploading, generating and posting all happen on the phone, in one session at the property. On Starter and above, the web app is there for when you would rather work at a desk, not because anything requires it.
- Which formats do I get?
- Every generation produces the full set at once — Story / Reels / TikTok at 1080×1920, Feed Square at 1080×1080, Feed 4:5 at 1080×1350, Facebook Landscape at 1200×628. The 9:16 image posts to Instagram Stories and Facebook Stories; the 9:16 reel video is the one that serves all of Instagram Reels, Instagram Stories, Facebook Reels, Facebook Stories, TikTok, YouTube Shorts. You also get a print-ready listing flyer at 8.5×11 in @ 300dpi for open-house handouts.
- Who owns the listing photos I upload?
- Usually the photographer, unless your agreement says otherwise in writing — paying for a shoot normally buys a licence to use the photos, not the copyright itself. Two things follow that catch agents out: a listing-photo licence is often limited to the time the listing is active, so a "Just Sold" post can fall outside it; and if you were the buyer's agent, the photos belong to the listing brokerage and most MLSs want their written permission before you use them on social media. Check your agreement — PropAds cannot know what it says.
- Can I change the wording?
- Yes. Every headline and caption is editable. On Starter and above you can also regenerate for a different angle, and your plan sets how many regenerations each listing gets.
- Why is there no music library?
- Because the sound that gets a reel shown is a trending track, and those can only be added inside Instagram or TikTok — no outside tool is allowed to attach them. Add one there when you post; it takes a tap. On a paid plan, if you have a track you are licensed to use, you can also put it on the reel in PropAds before you export.
- Something looks wrong. What do I do?
- Open Support from the menu. In the app, if it is a video that failed or came out wrong, use Video issues — it sends us what we need to look into it, and nothing about your listings or your clients.