Who at a Development Company Is Supposed to Handle the Apartment Website?

Someone told you to find out about a website for the new building. You are an analyst, or a project coordinator, or the assistant to a principal, and this is not your field. You are wondering whether it should have gone to someone else.

It should not have. At a development company of the size that builds forty to a hundred and twenty unit buildings, there is usually no one else. That is not disorganization. It is how these firms are staffed.

The job does not exist on the org chart

Look at published team pages at development firms and the pattern is consistent. A six-person developer will list a principal, a controller, a director of operations, a development analyst, an operations manager, and an assistant project manager. No marketing title of any kind. Not a smaller marketing role, not a shared one. None.

It holds at scale too. One large developer with tens of thousands of apartment homes lists a chief development officer, several executive and senior vice presidents of development, multiple vice presidents and directors of development, and no marketing title anywhere in the development section. The only marketing role on the page sits inside the separate management services arm of the company.

We also pulled 319 open roles from five multifamily developer and operator job boards and searched every description for the word website. It appears as boilerplate in accommodation notices, and in "explore our website." It never appears as a responsibility.

A titled website person does not reliably show up until a firm is around a hundred staff and manages its own properties in house. Below that, the work exists but the role does not.

So it lands on whoever is closest to the project

In practice that means one of three people. At a pure developer it is the development analyst, assistant project manager, or development coordinator. Job descriptions for those roles ask them to assist with the selection, contracting, and oversight of the project team, which is written with architects and engineers in mind and quietly includes marketing. At a firm that also manages its properties, it goes to a marketing coordinator who already maintains the existing property sites. Otherwise it goes to the executive assistant to a principal.

None of those three has spending authority. All three have to produce something for someone else to approve. That is the actual shape of the task you have been given: not "buy a website" but "find out enough that someone senior can decide."

The timing gap that creates this

There is a specific reason this lands on the development side rather than waiting. Lease-up guidance puts the first web presence twelve to eighteen months before completion. Property management companies are typically selected nine to twelve months before the certificate of occupancy.

For several months, the website is needed and the company you would have handed it to does not exist yet. So it stays with the project team, which is you.

What to actually collect

Whatever you end up recommending, these are the facts every vendor will ask for, and having them ready turns a series of vague calls into comparable quotes.

• Unit count and mix. How many units, and the breakdown by bedroom count.
• Target certificate of occupancy or first move-in date. A range is fine. Everything schedules backward from this.
• The property management system, if one has been chosen. If not, say so. It changes what is possible and when.
• Who holds the domain. Whether one has been registered, and on whose account. This is the single most common thing nobody knows.
• How many floor plans. The main driver of page count and therefore price.
• Who receives leads, and who approves the spend. The second one determines what your deliverable needs to look like.

What you are being asked to produce

Almost always one of three things: a number for a budget line, a comparison of two or three quotes, or a short memo recommending one. It is worth asking which, because it changes how many vendors you need to talk to.

If it is a number, you need published pricing, and you will notice quickly that most vendors in this category will not give you one without a call. If it is a comparison, you need the quotes structured the same way, which mostly means asking every vendor identical questions. If it is a memo, you need a fixed price, a scope, and a sentence about what happens if you do nothing.

We have published the tools for all three, free and without an email form, because this is a genuinely annoying task and the artifacts should not be the hard part. There is a list of questions to ask any vendor, a scope of work you can send out to get comparable bids, and a one-page recommendation memo with the structure already written.

If it helps: the fact that this landed on you is not a sign that anyone thinks it is trivial. It is a sign that the firm is structured the way development firms are structured, and you are the person standing closest to the project.