By: Jeff Hamilton Founder and Managing Principal, Columbus & Over Group

Through our experience selling new condominium developments in and around Boston, we’ve come to know and appreciate the idiosyncrasies of timing out our sales efforts. When played strategically, the sales team on a new development can capitalize on three individual inflection points throughout the construction journey to capture buyer attention, create momentum/buzz and maximize seller proceeds.

The three lynchpin “moments” of new construction sales process: 

• Phase 1: Before/during the earliest stages of “Ground Breaking.”

• There will always be buyers around who are naturally curious about a development purely based on the location. These buyers can be captured in this earliest phase and can help set benchmarks for pricing going forward. It may make sense to keep pricing tempered in this moment just to build up some base momentum with units under agreement ahead of phase 2. 

• Phase 2: After a quieter period of marketing for the first several months of construction, plan to attack the sales as soon as some small concentration of units has completed framing. Once units are framed buyers can understand layouts but, importantly, the layouts often feel more open, airy and bright than they will when the unit is dry walled and plastered. 

• This is the most important part of the sales funnel as it typically gives the developer a chance to push pricing higher than phase 1 as the project gets closer to its completion date and there are more buyers in the market who are willing to wait 6-12 months for occupancy.

• Phase 3: Once the units are fully complete and staged you should be able to push pricing while riding the momentum from the earlier phases if done well. 

• We like to believe more than 65% of the units would be under agreement by the time you get to this phase. Ultimately, there are many factors that contribute to the percentage of units that can be pre-sold.

Columbus & Over Group has a best-in-class marketing department that complements our sales experience and acumen. Our marketing team has creative agency talent for branding and video while knowing and adapting to the roller coaster of real estate development. Our team is prepared to take on sales assignments throughout Greater Boston spanning from 3 units up to 100 units or more. We can put together a custom marketing strategy and pricing model for developers to consider at the earliest stages of their design review.