Real estate PR covers brokerages, developers, proptech platforms, REITs and mortgage companies. The category splits sharply in two, and conflating them is why most programmes underperform. Local property press covers transactions, developments and market conditions in a specific city. National business and technology press covers what changes for buyers, renters and the industry at large. These need different lists, different stories and different spokespeople.
The two different jobs inside real estate PR
Local market coverage. Business journals, city dailies, regional property titles. Interested in: what sold, what is being built, what rents are doing, who moved. Highly receptive to specific local data, uninterested in national narrative.
National coverage. Business, technology and personal finance press. Interested in: affordability, rates, inventory, what technology changes for a consumer. Almost entirely uninterested in an individual transaction unless it is very large or very strange.
Most real estate companies pitch national outlets with local news, or local outlets with generic commentary. Both fail.
What reply rate should you expect?
Responses to our outreach between December 2025 and August 2026, by company type:
| Company shape | Contacted | Open rate | Response rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Established name, category past its news cycle | 269 | 54.5% | 11.4% |
| Pre-revenue, launching into a category the press doesn't cover yet | 351 | 54.3% | 10.6% |
| Late stage, recognised founder, crowded category | 700 | 48.3% | 8.5% |
| Market leader in a vertical with specialist trade press | 494 | 47.9% | 8.2% |
Every response, auto-replies included, across the four programmes we could classify this way.
Real estate usually behaves like the bottom row: a large market served by specialist trade press with a thin mainstream beat. Expect 8–11%. Local business journals typically respond better than that, because they need the story more than a national desk does.
How far the funnel actually gets
Of every 100 pitches delivered, 51 register as opened. That understates it — a tracking pixel only fires if the recipient's client loads remote images. So we work on roughly 7 in 10 rather than 51%. That is our estimate and not a measurement — every blocked pixel is a read nobody counted, which makes the recorded rate a floor. We would rather say where the number comes from than dress it up as measured.
"Our recorded open rate is 51%. The real number is closer to 7 in 10, because a big share of reporters read mail in clients that block tracking pixels. We know it happens because we get replies from people our system says never opened the email. Treat any open rate you're quoted as a floor, including ours."
Justin Mauldin, Founder, Salient PR
Follow-ups do less than you think
| Sequence step | Delivered | Open rate | Reply rate | Replies |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First email | 2,063 | 47.6% | 6.0% | 124 |
| Follow-up 1 | 1,576 | 37.4% | 3.7% | 59 |
| Follow-up 2 | 69 | 40.6% | 4.3% | 3 |
Two-thirds of every reply came from the first email.
What gets covered in real estate
Your own transaction data. You see pricing, days on market, concessions, inventory and buyer behaviour before it appears in any public index. Aggregated and published with a stated method, this is the strongest asset in the category and the fastest route to becoming a standing source.
Affordability, from the buyer's side. Consistently the most-read real estate coverage and consistently under-served by industry pitches, which tend to be optimistic in a way readers do not recognise.
A named development with numbers. Cost, timeline, unit count, what it replaces, who objected. Local press covers this reliably.
Someone who will say the market is difficult. Real estate commentary is relentlessly positive, so a credible voice describing a genuine problem stands out enormously.
"The pitches that get answered give the reporter something they can't get from the press release. A number, a customer who'll talk, a person who'll say the uncomfortable thing on record."
Lindsey Ranger, Account Lead, Salient PR
What does not get covered
Agent recruitment and personnel moves, outside trade press. Brokerage rankings. Award wins. "Luxury listing" announcements without a genuine hook. Anything phrased as a market being "resilient" or "poised for growth".
Proptech is a different pitch
If you sell software to the industry rather than property itself, you are running a B2B technology programme that happens to be in real estate. Pitch technology and business reporters on what changes operationally, and pitch trade press on adoption. Do not pitch property reporters on your product — they cover the market, not vendors.
How Salient engages
We ask for a six-month commitment to start, because the first two months are relationship building and judging the work before then tells you nothing. After that there is a 30-day exit, no questions asked, either side. If it is not working we would both rather know.
How to judge a real estate PR firm
Ask whether they are pitching local or national, and why. A firm that cannot articulate the difference will do both badly.
Ask which property reporters they placed in the last six months, by name.
Ask what they will do with your transaction data. If they do not immediately see it as your best asset, they are planning a programme built on announcements.
"Ask for the last 20 pitches they sent in your category and what came back. Not case studies, not a logo wall. The actual sends. If they can't produce that, they aren't measuring, and you'll find out in month four."
Justin Mauldin, Founder, Salient PR
Does AI search change real estate PR?
It raises the value of publishing original market data. Buyers, renters and investors increasingly ask AI systems about market conditions, and those answers are assembled from published sources. A peer-reviewed study of generative-engine optimisation (KDD 2024) found that adding direct quotations, statistics and cited sources measurably improved how often a page was surfaced in generative answers — by up to 40% on the authors' benchmark, with the size of the effect varying by subject area.
A brokerage that publishes its own inventory and pricing data with a stated method becomes a source those systems draw on. One that publishes market commentary does not.
The short version
- Local and national real estate PR are different jobs. Pick one per story.
- Expect 8–11% reply rates.
- Roughly 7 in 10 actually read it once you adjust for pixel blocking.
- Two-thirds of replies come from the first email.
- Your transaction data is the best asset you have and most firms never publish it.
- Proptech is a B2B technology programme, not a property programme.
Salient PR runs technology and B2B PR programmes including proptech. All outreach figures come from our own database covering December 2025 to August 2026 and are updated quarterly.
Sources
- Salient PR outreach database, Dec 2025 – Aug 2026
- Aggarwal et al., GEO: Generative Engine Optimization, KDD
If you want this run by people who do it every day — Salient PR is a technology PR agency working with technology companies. See how we work or start a conversation.
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How real estate PR works, which stories property reporters actually cover, and the outreach data behind it.
