How should you promote an open house on social media?

You know the routine. The open house graphic goes on your Facebook Page midweek, the same image goes to Instagram, and maybe it gets dropped into a neighborhood group. By Saturday it has a handful of likes, and you can't tell whether any of them are coming.

The graphic isn't the problem. Each platform does a different job in the days before an open house, and one post can't do all of them.

This guide takes them one at a time, with the account each post should come from and a day-by-day schedule for the five days before.

Where should you post an open house on social media?

On Facebook as an Event from your business Page, on Instagram as a post and then Stories, and on Nextdoor as a Business Post. A paid ad is the fourth option, for reaching people outside all three.

Everything off social, from inviting the neighbors to the signs on Saturday morning, is in our open house marketing ideas.

How do you promote an open house on Facebook?

Create an Event from your business Page about five days before, then share it to your Page and to your personal profile, where friends and past clients will see it. People who tap Interested or Going get updates from the event, so a reminder you post inside the Event reaches them as an update, not just as another post in the feed.

Two details decide whether the Event works:

1. Get the date and time right when you create it. Facebook lets you change them only up to a couple of days before the event, and the help page doesn't say exactly when the lock starts. If you catch a mistake late, post the correction inside the Event, where everyone who responded gets it.
2. Share it into local groups only where the rules allow it. Read a group's rules before you post. Where open houses are welcome, share the Event rather than a fresh post, so everyone who responds lands in the same place.

The posts that go in and around the Event, from the invitation to the "missed it?" post the evening after, are in our open house Facebook post ideas.

How do you promote an open house on Instagram?

Post the open house to your feed five days out, with the date, time and street in the image as well as the caption. Then use Stories for the reminders. A Story disappears after 24 hours unless you add it to a highlight, which makes it the right place for "tomorrow, 1 to 3" and the wrong place for the announcement.

The rest of the week on Instagram:

1. Two days out, the promo video goes up as a Reel. What goes in it: one feature worth the trip, then the date, time and address.
2. The day before, a Story with the time, the street and where to park.
3. Saturday morning, a last Story with the time and address, posted before you leave for the house.

For the captions themselves, with the full date and address written in, see our 12 open house social media post examples.

Can you post an open house on Nextdoor?

Yes, from a free Business Page rather than your personal account. In 2026, Nextdoor changed its rules so that promoting a business must come from a free Business Page, not a personal account. A post that breaks the rule stays up, but it's flagged and shown to fewer neighbors.

From the Business Page, the open house goes out as a Business Post in the neighborhood feed. Nextdoor's own guide for real estate agents suggests exactly that post: invite neighbors to the open house with the address, and add a video tour if you have one. Claiming the page and posting from it are both free.

Nextdoor Groups work differently. The policy doesn't cover them, and each group's admins decide what promotion they allow, so read the group's rules first, as you would on Facebook.

Neighbors know who has been wanting to move onto the street, which is why our open house marketing ideas has you invite them three days out.

Should you pay for an open house ad on social media?

Pay only when you need people who don't follow you, and keep the ad short: run it Wednesday to Friday and end it the day before, as in our real estate Facebook ads guide. Once you pay to promote it, the post becomes an ad, and Meta counts an ad for a home for sale as an ad for housing, which changes who you can reach.

In the US, a housing ad can't target a ZIP code, an age range or one gender, and an address or a dropped pin widens to a 15-mile radius. That's a far bigger circle than the street.

The one audience you can still aim precisely is people who watched one of your videos, because Meta lets you build an audience from your video viewers, including viewers of your past ads. If you ran a just-listed video ad, everyone who watched it, follower or not, can be the audience for the open house ad. If you didn't, the open house ad goes to the wide 15-mile audience, so make it a video and it builds that audience for the price change or the just sold.

We don't give a budget figure, because the per-day numbers that circulate online don't come with a source. Our Facebook ads guide sets a fixed three-day window instead and compares what the ad reached with what the free post reached.

How far in advance should you advertise an open house?

Start five days out. That gives the Facebook Event five days to collect responses, leaves room for the promo video midweek, and puts the reminders where people will see them on Friday and Saturday morning.

Have an open house video ready for every feed

Post one short clip as your Instagram Reel, on your Facebook Page and in your Nextdoor Business Post. Dunphy makes it from the listing photos you already have.

Make your open house video →