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How to market off-the-plan apartments and townhouses: the playbook we run

You are asking someone to commit to a home that does not exist yet, on renders and trust. Here is the sequence we run on every off-the-plan release.

Written by Michael Nadalin, Founder · 26 Oct 2026

1. Build the audience before you ask for anything

Cold lead campaigns pay a premium for every enquiry. On Sycamore Place we ran a teaser phase first to introduce the project and build engager and visitor audiences. When the lead campaigns switched on, they landed at about $36 per lead because buyers already knew the project.

2. Give it its own lead page

Do not send paid traffic to the project website. Build a dedicated lead page from your renders with one offer and one form. Our registration pages have converted 7% to 10% of visitors, against a 2% to 5% generic benchmark.

3. Ask for the brochure, not the inspection

Most off-the-plan buyers are months from deciding. They will download a brochure or floorplans. They will not book a time. Make the small step the offer and the funnel stays wide.

4. Profile after the enquiry, not instead of it

Once the brochure is on its way, ask a short optional set of questions: buyer type, timeframe, bedrooms, budget band, broker readiness and display intent. A buyer who stops is still a lead. On Port Lane, 60% of buyers profiled themselves as sales qualified.

5. Run Google and Meta together

Google captures people already searching for the suburb, the product and your project name. Meta creates demand among people who are not searching yet. Brand defence on Google matters more than most developers think, because your Meta ads send people to search for you.

6. Plan creative as a monthly release

Launch creative fatigues on a predictable schedule. Early 3191 tested 52 variants across 14.5 months and held $36 per lead. Plan the refreshes from day one, and test the angles your buyer actually cares about: stamp duty savings, school zones, pricing or no pricing, space, sustainability.

7. Hand over inside the CRM your agents already use

Every lead should arrive with an owner, a next action and a time for that action, inside the system the sales team already works in. Then push confirmed sales back to the ad platforms so the algorithms learn what a buyer looks like.

• Pre-launch: audiences and register of interest
• Launch: brochure-first lead page with profiling
• Each release: fresh creative to a local audience
• Final release: price-banded creative for the remaining stock

Written by

Michael Nadalin

Founder, Market Lead & Property Lead

Michael has run paid acquisition for Australian property developers across Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide, from boutique townhome releases to $19.9M penthouses.