The list is the whole point
Launches fail slowly. Not because the project is wrong, but because week one is spent generating awareness from zero while the sales team sits waiting. Every day of that is expensive, and the momentum story that sells early inventory never gets started.
Pre-launch fixes the sequence. Six to ten weeks before opening, run awareness on Meta and YouTube against the micro-market you expect to sell into, plus your own past-buyer and broker lists, which cost nothing to reach and convert better than anything you buy. Collect name, phone, budget band and preferred configuration. Nothing more. A longer form halves your list for information you can gather on a call.
What you can honestly say before RERA registration
This is where developers get careless. Until the project is registered you cannot advertise, market, book or sell units, and the regulator does treat pre-launch bookings seriously. So do not price. Do not take money. Do not name units.
What you can do is talk about the location, the scale, the intended positioning and the timeline, then invite people to register interest in being told first. That is enough. ‘A new residential development coming to Sector 79, register to be informed at launch’ carries no offer and builds the list perfectly well.
Give early registrants something real at launch. First choice of floor and facing is more valuable to a serious buyer than a discount, and it costs you nothing.
Keeping the list warm until the doors open
A list you collected in March and ignored until June is a cold list. Message it every ten days or so with something concrete: an approval received, a foundation photo, the sample flat under construction, the launch date narrowing. Short WhatsApp messages, not newsletters.
A week before launch, call every single registrant personally, remind them who you are, and book them into a named launch-weekend slot with an actual time on it, because a loose promise to drop by is worth far less to you than a commitment sitting on the calendar. That call is the single highest-return activity in the whole exercise. Track how many registrants you actually reach, because a list you cannot get on the phone was never a list. It was a spreadsheet.
Related questions: What should a real estate landing page actually contain? · Why do my real estate leads go cold? · How do I get more site visits for my project?.
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Build a list of named, contactable, qualified buyers before you have anything to sell, so launch day starts with demand instead of creating it. Teaser creative, a location and price band, an interest form and a genuine early-access advantage. The goal is not bookings. It is a few hundred people who already know the project and answer your calls.
No. Accepting money before registration for a project that requires it is a direct breach and has resulted in regulatory action against developers. Collect interest, not payment, and speak to your legal team before designing any pre-launch mechanic.
Six to ten weeks for a typical residential project. Longer for a township, or for an unfamiliar location where the market needs educating first. Anything shorter than four weeks rarely produces a list large enough to matter on launch weekend.
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