Lease-Up Website Timeline: What to Do and When Before You Open

Where the dates come from

Two published sources set the shape of this schedule, and they disagree in a way that matters to you.

Zipcode Creative's published phase model places the first phase of web presence at "12-18 months before the first phase of completion, or at groundbreaking," and puts the domain and a landing page in that phase. It places an interest-list website at six to twelve months before completion.

Innergy Integral, writing on lease-up management, states that "property management selection should happen 9 to 12 months before the certificate of occupancy."

Put those side by side and there is a gap of six months or more between the date your website work should start and the date anyone is hired to do it. On a self-developed building there may be no management company at all. That gap is the reason this page exists.

The cost of missing it shows up in absorption. Of apartments completed in the first quarter of 2026, 41 percent were leased within three months, the seventh consecutive quarter below 50 percent, according to the Census Survey of Market Absorption as reported by NAHB in August 2026. The same release puts six-month absorption at 69 percent and twelve-month at 89 percent.

12 months or more before opening: register the domain and set up email

What to do. Pick the building name, register the matching .com yourself, and set up email on that domain.

• Register the domain in an account controlled by the entity that owns the building, not a personal account belonging to one partner.
• Turn on auto-renew and put a real, monitored email on the registrar account.
• Set up at least one mailbox on the domain, such as [email protected], before anything is printed or posted.
• Point the domain at a holding page or at us. An empty domain still starts building history.

Why that timing. The name is hard to change once it is on a construction sign, a site plan, and a lender's file. Search engines also treat a domain with some history differently from one registered the week you open. This is the cheapest item on the entire list and the one most often left until it is urgent.

What it costs. A .com runs roughly $10 to $25 a year depending on the registrar and whether the first year is a promotion. That is paid to the registrar, by you, and we never bill for it. One business mailbox is $7.00 per user per month on an annual plan on either Google Workspace Business Starter or Microsoft 365 Business Basic, both checked 2026-09-15 on the vendors' own pricing pages, plus tax. Two mailboxes is about $14 a month. Help setting up email on your domain is included in our build at no extra charge.

The step-by-step version, including which registrar to use and why the renewal price matters more than the first-year price, is on our domain and email setup page.

The fair housing poster on the construction site. The federal fair housing poster rule at 24 CFR Part 110 requires the poster to be displayed "at the beginning of construction and maintained throughout the period of construction and sale or rental," and 24 CFR 110.30 states that failure to display it is prima facie evidence of a discriminatory housing practice. That applies to your physical construction site, well before there is a leasing office. It is not a website requirement, and it is the kind of thing a first-time developer finds out about late.

9 to 12 months before opening: a one-page coming-soon site and the interest list

What to do. Put up a single page on your domain with a short form on it, and start collecting names.

• One page. Renderings labelled as renderings, the unit mix, approximate sizes, the neighborhood, and a delivery window rather than a date.
• A short form. Name, email, phone, the size they want, and roughly when they need to move.
• A decision, in writing, about who owns the list and where it goes when a leasing office exists.
• Analytics installed on day one, so you can tell later where the names came from.

Why that timing. An interest list is the only thing that can make opening week busy. Renters looking nine months out are the ones who will sign first, and there is nowhere else for them to land if the building has no page. This is also the phase where published lease-up guidance puts the interest-list site, so it is not an unusual position.

What it costs. The coming-soon page is the first page of the site you are going to build anyway, on the same domain, so it is not a separate purchase. Our LeaseUp package is $2,500 one time for a five-page site and CommunityPro is $4,500 for up to twenty pages. The first year of hosting, care, and support is included in both. A single coming-soon page can go live within about 24 hours once we have the domain and your text.

We wrote the full content checklist for that page, including what to leave off, at a coming-soon page for a building that does not exist yet. The wider pre-leasing strategy is at marketing new apartments before they open.

9 to 12 months before opening: software and how rent gets paid

What to do. Decide whether you need property management software yet, and decide how residents will pay rent. Do this before the website is scoped, not after.

• Work out what you actually need on day one: a ledger, screening, listing syndication, a resident portal, or just rent collection.
• Get pricing in writing, including per-transaction fees, which are usually separate from the monthly subscription.
• Check the minimums. Some systems price per unit with a monthly floor, which is punishing at fifteen units.
• Tell your website builder which system you picked so the application and payment handoff is built once.

Why that timing. The software decision changes what the website has to do. It is cheaper to know before the site is built than to rewire it afterwards.

What it costs. It depends entirely on which way you go, and the range is wide. See the next section.

About 6 months before opening: renderings, floor plans, unit mix

What to do. Gather the visual and dimensional material the real site is built from.

• Exterior and interior renderings from your architect or rendering firm, in the largest files they will give you.
• Floor plan drawings for each distinct plan, cleaned up for public use rather than construction sets.
• Unit mix and approximate square footage per plan.
• Amenity list, parking, pet policy, and anything already decided about utilities.
• A plan for real photography after delivery, and who is taking it.

Why that timing. Floor plans are the most viewed pages on any apartment website, and they take longer to assemble than anyone expects because they come from three different people. Starting at six months means the full site is not waiting on a drawing set.

What it costs. Renderings and photography are third-party costs, paid to your architect, rendering firm, or photographer. We do not sell photography and do not mark it up. We will advise on what to shoot and in what order if that helps.

4 to 6 months before opening: pricing decisions and what you can advertise

What to do. Settle rents, fees, and deposits, then decide what goes on the page.

• Set rent by plan, and decide whether you are publishing a number, a range, or nothing yet.
• List every mandatory fee: application, administrative, pet, parking, utility billing, and anything charged monthly. Some states require them itemized and some require them rolled into a single advertised total price.
• Check your state's rules on how rent and fees must be advertised.
• Make sure copy and images comply with fair housing advertising rules, which apply to a coming-soon page the same as to a finished listing.

Why that timing. Pricing is the last thing to firm up and the first thing prospects ask. Publishing a number too early means retracting it, and a retraction reaches exactly the people on your interest list.

What is actually binding. There is no federal rule on apartment rent advertising today. The FTC's rule on unfair or deceptive fees, 16 CFR Part 464, covers live-event tickets and short-term lodging only. Rental housing is at the advance notice of proposed rulemaking stage, announced March 12, 2026, with no rule in effect. The real exposure is state law. The National Apartment Association's tally published December 9, 2025 counted thirty states with no fee disclosure requirement, ten states plus the District of Columbia requiring full itemized disclosure before lease signing, and four requiring total-price disclosure in advertising. Named examples with dates: Colorado HB25-1090 effective January 1, 2026, Connecticut SB 3 effective October 1, 2025, Oregon HB 3521 effective January 1, 2026, and Nevada AB 121 effective October 1, 2025, which also requires at least one fee-free rent payment method. Check your own state and do not rely on this page for a legal answer.

On fair housing: the binding rule is 24 CFR 100.75, which makes it unlawful to publish any advertisement indicating a preference or limitation based on a protected class, and it covers website copy and imagery. The Equal Housing Opportunity logo or statement is long-standing standard practice and worth including, but the HUD guidance that described the logotype, 24 CFR Part 109, was removed from the regulations effective May 1, 1996. So include it because it is the industry norm and because the advertising rules do apply to your page, not because a regulation currently mandates the logo.

About 3 months before opening: the full site replaces the coming-soon page

What to do. Build out the real site on the same domain, and claim your local listings.

• Floor plan pages, amenities, neighborhood, gallery, and contact, replacing the single page.
• Tour request and contact forms delivering to a monitored inbox, not one person's personal email.
• Listing syndication set up. Some listing sites require approval and a testing period of several weeks, so start this before you want it live.
• Google Business Profile created once you have a staffed leasing address. A profile needs a real address where you meet customers, so this waits for the office.
• The interest list imported wherever the leasing team will work from it.

Why that timing. Three months gives listing approvals and local search time to settle before the first move-ins. It also means the site is finished while the leasing team is being hired rather than during their first week.

What it costs. This is the build you already paid for at $2,500 or $4,500, not an add-on. Google Business Profile is free. Listing site fees are paid to the listing sites and vary by market.

About 1 month before opening: tour scheduling and the application flow

What to do. Make it possible to book a tour and apply without emailing anybody.

• A tour request that works in one tap on a phone, with an answer within a business day.
• The online application linked from every floor plan, pointing into whatever system you chose.
• Test the whole path yourself, on a phone, from a search result to a submitted application.
• Confirm where leads land and who is responsible for answering them on a Saturday.

Why that timing. The people on your interest list will act in the last thirty days, and a broken form during that window costs signed leases directly.

What it costs. Forms and the application handoff are part of the build. Application and screening fees, if any, belong to your management software.

Opening: hand it to whoever runs it day to day

What to do. Write down what exists and who controls it, before the people who set it up move on to the next project.

• Record the registrar, the DNS host, the analytics property, the Google Business Profile owner, and the lead inbox.
• If a management company is taking over, put in the agreement that the domain, the analytics, the profile, and the exportable lead history stay with the ownership entity.
• Swap renderings for real photographs as they arrive.
• Keep a single owner for updates, so availability and pricing on the site match reality.

What it costs. The first year of hosting, care, and support is included in the build. After that the site stays live on a care plan at $99, $199, or $299 a month depending on how much hands-on help you want.

Use our handoff sheet to record it. If you ever change management companies later, the transition checklist covers what to ask for.