Spoiler alert: most branding companies that specialize in creating custom logos for Real Estate Agents are charging too much for what they’re providing. When I was working for a Real Estate marketing company, we charged at least $1000 for a simple logo package. Use used the higher profits of these Real Estate Logo packages to help prop up other services of the business that weren’t as profitable like custom website designs or brochure designs. 

The reason why these Real Estate logo packages were so profitable is because they didn’t take us very long to create. Each new brand followed a very similar formula and design process. We’d even use the same logo templates to propose to our clients and simply place their name and slogan into the template. 

What does this mean for you? This is actually great news. It means that you can create a Real Estate brand and logo for a very low price or even free and you’ll have a logo that can look as professional as someone who paid hundreds or potentially thousands of dollars for theirs. In this guide I’m going to teach you the basics of graphic design and walk you through the steps of building the centrepiece of an incredible brand. 

Here’s how to design your own Real Estate logo without hiring an expensive graphic designer:

1. Color

One of the easiest ways to create your own logo for your Real Estate company that will also stand out from the competition is to stay away from colors that are over-used in the Real Estate industry. According to Design Matic, the 5 most common colors used in Real Estate brands are (in order of most commonly used) blue, red, black, green and then orange. 

If possible, I recommend exploring colors that are not one of the most 5 commonly used colors or at most only using one of them. Alternatively, if you do choose to incorporate one these commonly-used colors into your logo design, try choosing a different hue. When you look at most of the Real Estate brands relying heavily on blues and reds for example, they’re most often using the most primary form of those colors. If blue is your signature color and you feel strongly about using it, then I recommend exploring unique hues and tones of blue. 

Color can say so much about your personality as a Real Estate Agent and so you want the colors of your brand to help communicate this to your prospective clients. Take a look at your closet. What colors are repeated often in the clothes you’ve bought recently? Take a look at your home decor and art and see if there are any repeating colors in those items. If there are, then these are colors that you clearly gravitate towards and are worth considering as part of your Realty brand. 

Another way to identify your signature color is to ask your closest friends which color they’d associate with your style. It can be hard to analyze our own style and it might be easier for one of your friends to pick up on a color that works well for your personality. 

A bonus to choosing a brand color that pops up often in your wardrobe is that you’ll frequently show up to open houses and client meetings as a walking embodiment of your brand. Your entire presence from your outfit to your branding will feel intentional and cohesive. 

Consider the psychology of certain colors and what they’ll communicate about you and your brand. Different colors inherently evoke different emotions and instincts. Make sure to research the colors you’re considering for your logo and checking a resource like the image below to see if that color is evoking emotions that align with your brand and how you want to be perceived by your ideal home buyers. 

You can pull brand colors from almost any image. Head over to Pinterest and search “color palette”. When you see an image that has a color you’d like to use in your brand, save the image to your computer. You can definitely save these to a Pinterest branding board, but you’ll ultimately need the image saved on your computer for a later step. 

If you’re looking for some inspiration, I’ve created a color guide specifically for Real Estate brands. The guide includes 8 unique color compilations for your Real Estate logo that will help your brand stand out from the local competition. You can grab the free color guide below.  

2. Font

We’re slowly working our way up in complexity. It’s time to switch gears and turn our attention next element needed to create a strong logo is a font. If you thought that color was personal, then just wait until you start diving into all of the font choices that are available. Here are is a quick breakdown of the two main categories of fonts: 

A. Serif Fonts

What is notable about serif fonts is the little flourishes you see at the ends of each stroke. These flourishes were originally created to help the reader read type more easily. Today, serif fonts stand for timelessness, tradition, elegance and stability. 

B. Sans Serif Fonts

San serif fonts are a slightly more modern invention and don’t have the extra little flourishes built in. But that doesn’t make them plain. Choosing a sans serif font for your Real Estate logo is likely to evoke the impression of modernism, strength and confidence. 

You often see brands mix and match fonts within their brand identity. This can be a tricky business unless curated by a professional or someone with a keen sense of design. It is unfortunately quite easy to select a pair of fonts for a logo that look messy, unorganized and unprofessional. With the thousands of fonts that are available to use, it can be so tempting to want to create a wildly unique combination (trust me, I understand this one big time), but for the purposes of getting you on your feet and out into the world with a professional and elegant logo without hiring an expensive graphic designer, my rule is simple: stick with one font only. 

This does not necessarily need to be limiting as many fonts are designed to include a wide variety of styles within the font family. These styles will range in thickness (otherwise known as boldness) and sometimes even spacing. The beauty of choosing a single font that includes a range of styles is that you can mix and match these styles anywhere in your logo, branding and marketing materials as often as you like without fear of your end result looking messy or amateur. 

Here is an example of a fantastic serif font that I like to use in many of my logo designs:

And here is an example of a popular sans serif font that offers 18 styles, all within the same font family. 

My recommendation is to find a font like one of these examples that provides you with at least 5 styles and one italic option. The font you choose can be either a serif or a sans serif font, the choice is totally up to you and based on the brand voice you want to communicate to your potential clients. With a minimum of 5 styles and at least one italic option, you’ll be able to design your brand with ease, mixing and matching the styles in any combination and the final product will always turn out looking really professional. 

A great place to find free fonts it to head to Google Fonts. To browse fonts, I recommend sorting the results by the type of font you’d like to explore using in your logo. In the upper left of your screen, click the “Categories” dropdown and and toggle off all of the options except for either “serif” or “sans serif”. 

Once your results have been narrowed, look in the top right corner of each font card. Like in the examples below, Google Fonts will tell you how many styles are available with each font. If a particular font card says “variable” instead of an actual number, this means that there are many font styles available in this font. These typically a really great choice.

The final step is to choose your font and then download the family. Save the entire folder into a place you will be able to easily find in in the future. 

And there you go! You’re one huge step closer to building your own Real Estate logo. 

If you’d really like to use two different font families in your logo, I recommend checking out this resource I’ve put together that includes examples of font pairings you can use. I’ve chosen these pairings to be clean, professional and timeless type design. And I’ve already downloaded the font files for you so you can just jump right into the next step: choosing an icon for your logo. 

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! Fonts to avoid: 

Font you want to avoid using in your Real Estate logo are fonts that are difficult to read as a passer by. As tempting as they are, and as much as you feel they might be communicating your personality, all of those pretty and delicate script fonts are a no-go for a Real Estate brand. All of those swirls and swashes will make your name too hard to read in many of your marketing situations. Think about when your logo needs to be 2″ wide on a brochure or read really quickly on a bus add. 

The same thing goes for “funky” fonts. You want to make sure that the brand you’re building for your Real Estate Company has longevity and will work for you for a long time. So while something might seem on-trend and super funky right now, think about if you will still want this funky font style to represent you in five years time. 

3. Choosing a Logo Type

There are 4 main categories of logo designs. I’ll briefly describe the difference between each using an example I’ve created below. I’ve created a fictional realtor whose name is Rachel Ross and I’ll use her name to offer more clear context between the different logo types so that you can more easily see why I think only two of them are safe to use in a Real Estate brand. Do you think you can guess which two? (I’ll let you know below). 

Wordmark which uses only stylized text.

Example:

Lettermark which used a stylized acronym of your business name.

Example:

Brand mark which uses only a graphic to represent your brand.

Example:

And finally there’s Iconic Logo which uses a combination of a graphic and stylized text to build the logo. 

Example:

Lettermarks and Brand marks, while very bold and contemporary, only really best serve brands that are nationally, if not internationally recognized. Think the “swoosh” of Nike or the golden arches of a certain fast food chain. Because of their brevity and lack of identifiers, neither of these options will work to get your name recognized by your audience, especially when you’re starting out. But dream big enough and maybe one day you’ll be well-known enough to be recognized by only your Brandmark! 

So for the purposes of this guide, which was primarily designed to helping you build a strong foundation for your growing personal brand as a Real Estate agent, I highly recommend that you focus on creating either a Wordmark or an Iconic Logo. Not only are they simple enough for you to create on your own, but they contain enough identifiers for your local market to get to know you, your name and your brand. 

If you choose a Lettermark logo, then you can skip the next step. 

4. Design Icons

This is the one step in this logo-building guide that will require a small investment. But not to worry, you should need to spend more than $20, which is certainly a lot less than paying to have a logo designed for you. In this step we’re choosing your graphic, otherwise known as your icon. If you refer back to step three and look at the example I created for the Iconic Logo, I’m referring to the graphic that looks like two simplified house outlines overlapping each other. 

The graphic that you choose to incorporate into your Real Estate brand doesn’t been to be related to a house. Although it is a good idea when you’re in your early days of selling Real Estate so that your network immediately know exactly what it is that you do. So while I do recommend that you choose some form of a stylized building that represents the specific type of Real Estate that you specialize in (detached single family, condos, luxury…), you can absolutely choose different iconography if you feel it represents you and your brand better. 

But for this guide, I’m focusing on providing you with resources to find building-based imagery to use as your icon. 

This is where the small investment comes in. While there are many sites like Flaticon and The Noun Project that will let you download an icon for free, if you are using the icon for any sort of commercial purposes (you are!), you need to give attribution to the icon creator whenever/wherever you use it. So it’s just not worth the risk to your business to use of these icons without paying for them. 

So instead, I’d like to introduce you to my go-to marketplace for amazing graphics at very affordable prices. Head over to Creative Market and in the search bar enter “house vector” (or any other style of icon you’d like to find + “vector”).

Browse the listings that your search produces and pick one that looks interesting to you. Often listings are for sets of icons and graphics so click into the listing and you’ll be shown a sample of everything that is included in the pack. Keep in mind that you only need to consider the shape of the icons at this point. You’ll be able to change the color later. When you find a listing that includes an icon you want to use in your logo, you need to confirm that it contains the type of file we need.

Lower on the listing page, underneath the main images is a section called “About this product”. Look for language that indicates that the icons are provided in “.eps” format  and that they are separate files (very important). If you find this language in the listing description, the “Product Specs” section to the right will also confirm this. 

Before making your purchase, select the “Commercial Use” option. You are using your this for business purposes and indirectly to generate income so paying for the commercial license is highly recommended. This should usually only cost a few dollars extra. 

Make your purchase and download your files! Save the entire folder in a place you’ll be able to access easily. 

5. Slogan

It is quite common for real estate brands to include their slogan or tagline. I’m not going to go over creating a tagline in this guide and will save that tutorial for another day. 

My notes on incorporating a logo have more to do with introducing you to the idea that it’s a good idea to become comfortable with using different logo layouts for different purposes. Back when I was working 1:1 with Realtors and creating brand packages for them, we’d settle on all of the things we’ve created so far in this guide: font, colors, icon, slogan… Then I’d create their branding suite and show them the multiple layouts we had created for them. It wasn’t uncommon for me to hear “oh, that’s ok. I’m only going to use the main one so that people are sure to recognize me.”

While not a crazy idea, it’s just a fact that flexible, long-lasting brands need to have assets prepared that are perfectly suited to the wide range of applications that are needed throughout your business’ lifetime. And this brings me back to your slogan. 

Let’s consider the difference between a bus bench add and a promotional pen. One add is 6′ wide and the other is 6″ long. Using a version of your logo that includes your slogan is perfect for the buss bench add, but if you were to scale that exact same logo down to fit on the pen, your slogan would be illegible. The type would be so small that it would just look like a fuzzy mess. 

The main thing to take from this part of the guide is that you’re building a brand, not just a logo. The combination of your fonts, colors, iconography, the language you use, how you present yourself and how you interact with your clients are all components that make up your brand. This allows for a lot of flexibility when creating your marketing materials, promotional materials, clients gifts, social media posts… etc. You can explore yourself creatively by mixing and matching the different components that we’ve developed for this exercise and your brand will be, not the whole, a consistent and professional way to engage with your ideal client base. 

So if you’ve got a slogan, perfect! If you don’t, not to worry. This isn’t absolutely necessary and you can certainly come back to this guide and add one in later. 

6. Bringing it all together

Upload your color images from the Color step to this color picker here. Click on the part of the image that contains the color you want to use in your brand and write down the HEX code.

Now it’s time to bring all of the pieces together. Head over to Canva and create an account if you don’t already have one. Canva is an easy-to-use design tool that allows for fast customization of your graphic designs and it’s not scary to learn like the design software the pros use. There is no need to upgrade to their paid plan for this step. You’ll be able to create a great logo using their free account. Start a new design and set your custom dimensions to 2000 px wide by 1000 px tall. 

Next, you’ll hed to your “Brand Kit” on the left side of the screen and add your colors using the HEX codes you just gathered. Also import your custom fonts. If you chose a font family with multiple styles (I hope you did!), upload all of the styles so that you can experiment with which styles work best for you. 

Head back over to your new document with custom dimensions and upload the icons you’ve chosen, bought and downloaded. You’ll be able to upload either the .EPS version. To use an icon or to change the color of it, simply add it to your document and using the color picker, apply your brand color. 

7. Main Logo Layout

Now it’s time to play! This is where you get to play around with all of the components you’ve collected. Experiment with different layouts for your name, in your font. Try changing the justification from left, centre and right. Which option feels right to you or grabs your attention? Try placing your first and last name on different lines, the same line, with a spacer. The images below shows examples of these experimentations.

Now try bringing in your icon. Try it in different colors and placement next to the text for your name. Try it stacked on top, in line horizontally, tucked in. The options are endless. This step is all about no rules and trying new things. Here are some examples of layouts you can try to get the hang of things. 

Once you’ve settled on a logo that feels balanced, and is something that lights you up when you look at it, this is a great place to stop experimenting. Trust me, you can stay in this phase for an eternity and never leave it. But at a certain point, you’ve just got to get back to work so I’d recommend experimenting with the layout for about an hour, and then choosing your favorite logo version.

Being able to take control of the layout of your Real Estate logo is another significant benefit over using a free logo maker online. Typically logo maker software simply spits out a bunch of image files for you to choose from, but the image is static. You can no control over changing the individual components down the road which can leave you feeling quite limited. 

8. File formats

Resize your Canva document page to fit more closely to the dimensions of your logo with a little bit of a white border.

Next, click on the download button in the top right, make sure your format is set to PNG and turn on the option for a transparent background and that the size is set to 1:1. Now download your logo! You did it! 

Well done, friend. You just put yourself in the driver’s seat of your business and took control. You’ve accomplished something huge today. You’ve taken a major step forward in building your business and now have a gorgeous logo. This is fantastic! 

Your brand is usually the first point of contact between your business and your customers, so why would you want a robot to create your logo? Hint: you don’t. If you were at one point considering using free logo maker software, I hope this guide showed you that you can create something so much better and more personal on your own. 

Creating your Main Layout Logo is just the first step. If you want more guides on creating alternative versions of your layouts (remember that not all of our logos for for all marketing purposes) or a guide on how to use your newly created logo in your other marketing materials such as brochures and business cards, make sure to join our email community and let me know if you want these resources so that I can create them for you. 

If you liked using Canva and want to take your social media game to the next level, be sure to check out our pack of social media graphics, specifically designed for the modern Realtor. All of our design templates are editable in your free Canva account. This kit also includes 101 content posts ideas to that you’ll again never feel stuck on what to post.