Typical Lease-up Advertising Timeline For New Construction

A lease-up period is a fairly critical period when it comes to a new construction. This period between pre-leasing & stabilization requires a clear lease-up strategy to ensure healthy cash flows in the early stages of the project.

A typical lease-up timeline ranges between 6-18 months basis the size of the project. A fair idea of when to start & accelerate your marketing activities is therefore crucial. Here’s a quick overview of your advertising timelines and the activities that need to be performed at each stage, that are known to bring optimal results:

Phase 1- 18-12 Months Prior to launch- Spending those marketing dollars

This is the perfect time to begin your advertising efforts. Some of the areas to focus upon at this stage include:

• Designing your logo & having other branding elements in place
• Ensuring you have acquired a domain name
• Launching your social media profiles
• Claiming the Google Business Profile Listing
• Having your website ready
• Having a Press Release in place
• Ensuring that you start collecting qualified leads

Phase 2- 9-3 months before launch

As you approach the completion of the project, this is the time to:

• Have several catchy email campaigns in place that you can send out to prospects
• Ensure your social media postings are enhanced & that they create buzz around the community
• Ensure that your marketing collaterals including brochures & flyers are printed & ready for distribution
• Update your website with construction photos. It is best that your website has a form to capture leads. A robust SEO strategy will come in handy at this stage.
• This is also a good time to start your digital ad campaigns
• A follow up press release announcing the exact dates of launch, as you get closer to completion of the project.

Phase 3- 3-1 Month before launch

This is the time to really enhance your marketing efforts. Some focus areas at this stage include:

• Stepping up your digital advertising efforts
• Ramping up your social media calendar
• Working on the ground event for the opening of the project. This task of course has multiple subtasks that need to be performed dexterously to create the right impression on the day of the launch.

Phase 4- Post launch

Once the first few residents have moved in, it is time to continue your marketing efforts, albeit of a different kind. This is the time to:

• Use positive customer reviews as a part of your marketing toolkit.
• Ensure that availability of units along with the price is available real time to customers via your website, so that they are fully updated & can take timely decisions.
• Ensure your social media posts highlight what it is like to live in the community and therefore to drive likeminded people to make their decision.

To Sum up

With a preplanned marketing timeline, you can be sure that you optimize your marketing efforts & maximize occupancy. As a property owner you may not have the necessary expertise to achieve this. Odds are that you find the task of managing the advertising timeline overwhelming. 

 At BFPM we have over 20 years of property management experience. You can count on our experienced professionals to, among other things, draw up a robust lease up marketing plan & follow it through to accelerate leasing. Armed with digital marketing expertise we can ensure that your lease-up goals are met. To know more you could get on a quick  15-minute consultation call with us. We are happy to help you.