How to Make Real Estate Video for Instagram and TikTok: Specs, Cadence

A real estate video for Instagram and TikTok is a vertical 9:16 clip that opens on motion in the first second, shows one camera move through one space, carries a short text overlay with price, beds and baths, and ends before the viewer has a reason to swipe. The specs come straight from the platforms: Instagram’s help center says a reel should have an aspect ratio between 1.91:1 and 9:16, a minimum resolution of 720 pixels and a minimum frame rate of 30 FPS, according to its reel size and aspect ratio page, and TikTok’s video ad specifications recommend 9:16 at 540 × 960 pixels or larger. One 1080 × 1920 MP4 satisfies both, and a 7 to 15 second clip is long enough for one room and short enough to loop.

You do not need to film any of it. If you have listing photos, TwoFrame turns two shots of the same room into a 3 to 15 second camera-move clip, crops it to 9:16 and adds the text overlay — the exact steps are below. As for how often to post listing videos: Instagram’s own creator FAQ says that, on average, creators with the greatest net follower growth post 10 or more reels a month, and TikTok’s Creator Academy suggests setting a daily post target you can consistently hit. For an agent with a pipeline to run, our recommendation is two to three listing clips a week on each platform, made in one sitting from one set of photos.

Instagram and TikTok video specs for listing clips

Every number in this table comes from a page the platform itself publishes. The ad-spec pages describe the same players your organic clips run in, which is why they are the best source for resolution and safe-zone guidance.

Safe zones: where the text can go

Both apps draw their interface over your video — the caption, the sound name, the like-and-share column. Meta’s Reels ad spec recommends leaving at least 14% of the top, 35% of the bottom and 6% of each side free of text, logos or other important elements, and its Stories spec gives the same proportions. TikTok’s ad spec page says the safe zone depends on the format and the caption length and offers downloadable templates instead of one percentage. The practical rule that satisfies both: put the price and bed-bath line in the upper-middle of the frame, keep it clear of the right edge, and put nothing in the bottom third.

Caption limits

Instagram’s Graph API reference caps a caption at 2,200 characters, 30 hashtags and 20 @ tags, and TikTok’s Content Posting API caps the title at 2,200 characters as well. You will never need that much. Put the neighborhood, price and the one detail that makes the listing different in the first line, because the first line is what a viewer sees before tapping to expand.

What a listing reel needs

A hook in the first second

Meta’s own guidance for advertisers, The Science of the Hook, puts it plainly: great reels nail the hook within the first few seconds, which is the moment viewers instinctively decide whether the reel is worth watching. For a listing clip that means the camera is already moving on frame one. No logo sting, no fade from black, no still photo that turns into video two seconds later. Open on the strongest room, mid-glide, with the overlay already on screen.

One camera move per clip

The mistake most agent-made real estate reels share is trying to show the whole house in one clip. Show one space with one move, then cut. A dolly through the entry, an orbit around the kitchen island, a slow pan across the great room, a pull-back from the primary bedroom window — each is its own post. A house becomes six to ten clips, which is your week of content, not one crowded video. If you want a primer on which move suits which room, our guide to camera movements in real estate video covers each one.

Text overlay: price, beds, baths, location

Three to five words per line, large enough to read on a phone held at arm’s length, on screen from the first frame. A typical stack is the neighborhood or city on line one, price on line two, and beds, baths and square footage on line three. Describe the property, never the buyer: the Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. § 3604(c), makes it unlawful to publish any advertisement for the sale or rental of a dwelling that indicates a preference, limitation or discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status or national origin. “Perfect for young families” is the classic overlay that crosses that line; “3 bed, 2 bath, fenced yard” does not.

Address rules

Three sets of rules decide whether the address, your name and your logo belong in the clip. First, MLS media rules. Bright MLS, for example, allows unbranded virtual tours — without broker or agent information such as branding and contact info — in the listing, and says the video itself should include no brokerage or agent branding, while Doorify MLS’s listing video guide requires all video content to be unbranded and free of personal or promotional contact information. So the social version and the MLS version are two different exports. Second, state advertising law. California’s Business and Professions Code § 10140.6 requires a licensee’s name, license identification number and responsible broker’s identity on solicitation materials, and it defines those materials to include advertisements in electronic media. Many states have similar rules and they differ, so ask your broker what your profile and captions must carry. Third, the seller. Rules differ by MLS and state, and this is not legal advice — but posting the street address of an occupied home to a public feed is a decision the seller should make with you, not discover.

How to make a listing video for TikTok and Instagram from photos

The fastest way to make a listing video for TikTok and Instagram is to skip filming and generate the motion from the photos you already ordered. Here is the workflow in TwoFrame:

1. Pick two photos of the same space. A wide shot from the doorway as the start frame and a second angle deeper in the room as the end frame. Phone photos, DSLR shots or 3D renders all work; the photos should come from the same session with the same light. Our guide to turning listing photos into a walkthrough video shows what a good pair looks like.
2. Choose the camera move. Dolly, orbit, pan, crane, pull back, turn around or free flight. The AI reads the room’s depth and generates the camera path between your two frames.
3. Generate. You get a 3 to 15 second MP4 at 720p or 1080p, usually in two to five minutes. Watch it once full screen and check that verticals stay straight.
4. Crop to 9:16. TwoFrame’s edit tools crop the clip to 9:16 for Reels, TikTok, Stories and Shorts, 1:1 for the feed, or 16:9 for a listing page — from the same render.
5. Add the text overlay. Price, beds, baths and location go on in the same edit tool, or in the platform’s own editor if you want the native fonts. Keep one clean export for your MLS and tour hosts.
6. Add music in the app, not the file. Business accounts have different music rules than personal ones; our guide on how to add music to a real estate video explains what each platform lets you use.
7. Upload natively to each platform. Post the file from your camera roll inside each app rather than sharing one platform’s watermarked export into another.

Free renders are available after you verify an eligible email — no card — and they carry a watermark. Paid plans remove it and allow commercial use, and a 5 to 10 second clip costs a few dollars in credits; the current plans are on the pricing page.

How often to post listing videos

Start with what the platforms actually say, because most cadence advice online is invented. Instagram’s creator FAQ says posting frequency is one factor among many, but that creators with the greatest net follower growth rates post, on average, 10 or more reels per month. The same page says Instagram recommends videos to unconnected audiences that are 3 minutes or less. TikTok’s Creator Academy, in its posting-cadence article for publishers, says publishers who post multiple times a day see higher video views and exposure on the For You feed, and suggests setting a daily post target you can consistently hit. Its posting-routine article adds that consistency matters more than perfection and recommends dedicating one or two days in your schedule to producing content.

Neither platform publishes a number for real estate accounts specifically, so what follows is a recommendation, not a statistic. A cadence an agent can keep for a year beats a burst that lasts a month:

• Monday: the hero clip of your newest listing — the best room, the best move — posted to Reels and TikTok, with the address and price in the first line of the caption.
• Wednesday: a feature-room clip from the same listing, or from a listing that is still active and needs a second push.
• Friday: a Story with the open-house time over the same clip, plus the clip as a YouTube Short so it keeps working after the weekend.
• Once a month, batch: generate six to ten clips per listing in one sitting, so that a slow week still has something to post and a busy week costs you nothing.

Weeks with no new listing are where most agents go quiet. They do not have to — there is a whole list of real estate video ideas that need no filming, from just-sold recaps to neighborhood features, and short-term-rental hosts can run the same weekly rhythm with the property they already own using our Airbnb listing video guide.

Repurpose one clip into Reels, TikTok, Stories and Shorts

One 9:16 master serves all four surfaces; what changes is what you do inside each app. On Instagram, post the clip as a reel and share it to your Story with a sticker or the open-house time; a clip under 60 seconds stays a single Story, since Instagram’s Stories tips send anything longer to the trimmer. On YouTube, upload the same file and it is treated as a Short: YouTube’s three-minute Shorts page says any square or vertical upload up to three minutes is categorized as a Short, and Shorts upload at a maximum of 1080p, so a 1080p render loses nothing.

TikTok is the platform with a rule that changes your workflow. Its sounds help page states that a Business account cannot use music that is not licensed for commercial use, and Meta’s Business Help Center says certain business accounts do not have access to Instagram’s licensed music library, which is intended for personal, non-commercial use. That is the reason to keep the master silent: add sound inside each app from the library that app clears for business use, and the same clip is compliant everywhere. Add the overlay in the app too if you want each platform’s native text style, or burn it in once with TwoFrame’s overlay tool if you want the clip to look identical on every feed.

Two things should not be repurposed. Do not repost one app’s watermarked download into another app — upload the clean file from your camera roll each time. And do not reuse the social version, with its price overlay and your name, as your MLS media; that is what the second, clean export is for.

So, how do you make a real estate video for Instagram and TikTok?

Make one vertical 9:16 clip per room, 7 to 15 seconds, that starts moving on the first frame, carries price, beds, baths and location in the upper-middle of the frame, and stays clear of the bottom third where the apps draw their interface. Generate it from two listing photos instead of filming, crop it to 9:16, keep a clean export for the MLS, and add music from each platform’s business-cleared library inside the app. Post two or three of these a week on both platforms, batch them from each new listing, and send the same file to Stories and Shorts. That is how to make real estate video for Instagram and TikTok that gets finished every week instead of planned every month.