Canva For Real Estate Agents: The Complete Guide To Beautiful Designs

Real estate is highly visual. People fall in love with a house and want to buy it.

But not everyone is a graphic designer.

The answer is Canva. Canva real estate templates are the best tools to quickly and easily design real estate marketing materials.

Flyers, newsletters, and even logos. Canva has everything real estate agents need, from open house listings to business cards.

But you still need to know the fundamentals of building a great visual.

How Canva helps real estate agents sell more listings

Canva is a template-based design tool that lets you create attractive marketing and design elements with zero graphic design experience. You can post Canva images on a social media platform, print them and hand them out, or use them on your website.

All you have to do is drag and drop.

Because Canva is web-based, you can access it–-and all your past designs–-anywhere you have an internet connection. It works on desktop and mobile; you can load it on a tablet or a phone. Creating a Canva account takes a matter of minutes.

Imagine having a listing flyer up before you even leave the property.

Alternatives to Canva are hard to use and expensive. Photoshop, Illustrator, etc; they’re professional utilities made for full-time graphic designers. As a real estate agent, you probably don’t have the time to learn how to become a professional designer to post to your social media channels.

So, you need Canva. A real estate agent can easily customize Canva templates or even create their own Canva designs at a fraction of the cost of hiring a professional.

Do you need a Free or Pro Canva membership?

Go with the Pro. It isn’t that expensive.

It is possible to use free versions of Canva when you’re just getting started. But you’ll save a lot of headaches by springing for Pro immediately. You can sign up for a free trial, explore the site, and decide whether it’s right for you.

The Pro version has additional templates but also a vast archive of images. It also lets you download higher-resolution images in a larger variety of formats. Eventually, you’ll find that you need the Pro version to access marketing materials that other real estate agents aren’t already using.

You should still try the free version to get a feel for it. If you find that you hate Canva, it’s not worth it to buy the Pro version. But Pro is only $12.99 for a single license and $14.99 for up to five people–your entire real estate team.

Tips for designing beautiful images in Canva

Even when using theoretically foolproof design software, there are still a few design principles to keep in mind. While you don’t need to be a professional graphic artist, you still should have a basic understanding of what makes good design.

Start by using templates

Before you create designs, use the templates. Real estate agents need templates for virtually every type of marketing material.

The pre-made templates are already designed to be compelling and easily read. You can comb through templates for everything from Instagram to physical mailers, newsletters, and magazines.

Find a few templates you love for your real estate listings; you can drop in your photos.

Limit the number of fonts and colors

Usually, you want one serif font, one san serif font, and no more than four or five colors. Those colors should complement each other, but for branding purposes, consider just using your brokerage’s brand colors or the brand colors you use for your brand.

Don’t forget about white space

Open spaces between text, images, symbols, and other information give your design space to breathe. White space can make a design look more attractive and improve readability. Don’t try to fill up every section of your design.

Align your images to a grid

Canva allows you to align your images and other items to a grid or each other. For instance, you can make everything line up at the bottom, the top, or the center. Use that if you don’t have an eye for spacing and alignment, it makes your designs feel less chaotic.

Use the library for clipart, photos, and other elements

Canva provides a built-in library of media. Use it to find clipart, photos, and other design elements. You can look up things like “real estate” to better understand what elements in the media library could match your needs.

Go over your writing before you send pictures out

Typos on a copy don’t sell. Make sure you read your copy carefully and have a second person proof it if possible.

Use high-quality photos

Low-resolution, blurry images can make your listings look unprofessional. Invest in good equipment that takes sharp photos and videos so you can use them to create stunning visuals on Canva.

Direct the viewer’s attention

If a photo alone isn’t enough, think outside the box. You can use arrows, circles, lines, and other elements to draw the eye to certain parts of the image or text. Pay attention to where your eyes naturally fall on an image. You want to give the clients something to follow.

Take advantage of your typography

Use exciting fonts that are easy to read, and make sure they’re properly sized. Bold and italicize words for emphasis as needed, but try not to overdo it. If everything is noticeable, then nothing is noticeable.

Finally, remember that design isn’t just about making something look good–it’s also about telling the story of your property or business. Use Canva to create a story rather than just throwing something together.

Time-saving tips for Canva

As with many tools, taking time to explore features and learn more will pay off later. Here are a few tips for using Canva efficiently.

• Connect all your social accounts to Canva. Once you have connected your apps, you can easily export designs and videos to your platform of choice. Posts can be shared right away or scheduled to appear at a later date. Canva has music licensing with YouTube, allowing you to post videos with stock audio already available in Canva’s library.
  
• Schedule your content intelligently. When you schedule content, you can publish it at a reasonable pace. This gives you additional exposure on social media platforms.
  
• Find an inventory of templates for each platform you post to. Canva has many default templates sized for everyday uses. Start with the vertical video project dimensions for Instagram Reels or TikTok videos. Or, use a postcard template to create a mailer for a newly listed home.
  
• Use the same template for multiple document types. You can switch from one document type to another with a couple of clicks. This allows you to create several assets with the same look and feel to share materials throughout the platforms you use as part of your real estate business. 

Most people adopt a few house templates, fonts, and graphics that they go back to again and again. This allows them to create marketing assets with a consistent internal look and feel. This also saves time, as you plug new information into existing templates instead of remaking your work every time.

The best real estate templates on Canva

Canva has several hundred templates created specifically for real estate. At the time of this writing, this includes:

• Over 60 real estate flyers
• Over 140 real estate postcard templates
• Over 30 templates for newsletters
• 60+ real estate business card designs
• …and videos, social media graphics, slide shows, yard signs, and brochures

It is also possible to buy Canva templates from outside designers. These can be customized to fit your branding and imported for you to use repeatedly. 

Editing photos on Canva

Canva includes a basic photo editor to help polish up photos for your listings and other materials. The photo editor can crop, fix lighting issues, and add photo effects. There is also a background remover that works surprisingly well for most images. You upload the image, hit “remove background,” and it does the magic.

Conclusion

There are few design tools as simple as Canva.

If you want to create professional, polished images without learning about graphic design, Canva’s the perfect solution.

Sign up for the free trial and test it out.

FAQs