VA Home Loan Searches Cost $83.63 per Google Ads Click vs $10.58 for the Average Mortgage Keyword

Two people search for mortgages on the same afternoon. One types "mortgage calculator" to see what a house might cost them each month. The other, a veteran ready to buy, types "va home loan". To a lender advertising on Google, the first click costs $1.89 and the second $83.63.

Cost per click, or CPC, is what an advertiser pays each time someone clicks its ad, whether or not that person applies. It decides how many borrowers a monthly budget reaches. In mortgage lending, the gap between research searches and application searches is wide, so where a lender spends matters more than how much.

On average, mortgage clicks are moderately priced. A click on a mortgage keyword costs $10.58, close to the $10.82 average across 18,477 keywords in 23 industries, and half cost $6.86 or less. The expensive exceptions are the searches lenders want most: VA loans, quotes, refinancing and home equity, where clicks cost $50 to $84.

In September 2026 we collected Google Ads Keyword Planner prices for mortgage keywords, each searched at least 2,900 times a month in the US, and analyzed the 676 mortgage keywords with a price above zero. For those we calculated the average, median and spread of cost per click and compared them with 18,477 keywords across 23 industries. We also collected state-level prices for the 25 largest states and Microsoft Ads prices for the 467 keywords priced on both platforms.

Cost per click is Google's estimate of the average price an advertiser pays for one click on an ad shown for that search. The median is the middle keyword: half cost less, half cost more. The volume-weighted average counts each keyword by how often it is searched. Each state is compared with the national price of the same keywords, so its percentage shows how much more or less a local lender pays for identical searches.

Mortgage sits 11th of 23 industries, just under the $10.82 cross-industry average. The median mortgage keyword costs $6.86, and the middle half cost between $4.06 and $12.06. The most common price band is $5 to $10, holding 231 keywords, 34% of the total, and 33% of mortgage keywords cost $10 or more.

Weighted by how often each keyword is searched, the average falls to $7.13, because the most searched terms are cheap tool searches. "mortgage calculator" is searched 2,740,000 times a month and costs $1.89 a click. The people behind those searches are still doing the math, and few lenders pay much to reach them.

The top of the list is steep. The most expensive 10% of mortgage keywords cost $23.05 or more, and the priciest, "va home loan", costs $83.63, almost eight times the mortgage average. "mortgage quote" follows at $80.86 and "home equity loans" at $67.96, with refinance and home equity searches filling much of the rest of the top 12.

These are the searches of borrowers close to applying: asking for a quote, a preapproval letter or an application, or looking for a lender for a specific loan. VA loans appear three times in the top 12, so lenders that serve veterans compete in one of the most expensive corners of the market.

Location changes the price, though less than in many industries. Among the 25 largest states, Colorado is the most expensive for mortgage clicks at $11.96 on average, 12% above the national price of the same keywords, followed by Georgia at $11.44 (8% above) and Florida at $11.50 (7% above). New York is the cheapest at $9.47, 12% below.

Microsoft Ads, which shows ads on Bing, is much cheaper. For the 467 mortgage keywords priced on both platforms, a Microsoft Ads click costs $5.49 on average against $11.64 on Google Ads, 53% less. Mortgage search demand peaked in September 2025 and was lowest in August 2026, with 1.78 times as many searches at the peak.

Separate research searches from application searches. Calculator and rate-check terms are cheap and busy, but they come from people still doing the math; give them their own low-cost campaign that offers a tool or a rate alert. Preapproval, quote and VA terms cost far more and come from borrowers closer to applying, so send them to a page that starts the application.

Watch the calendar and the platform. Demand in the peak month was 1.78 times the low, so a budget set a year ago may no longer match demand. Then copy your application campaigns to Microsoft Ads, where the same searches cost about half as much. Our ppc management services split mortgage campaigns by borrower stage so the expensive clicks go only to the searches most likely to apply.

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