Apartment Lease-Up Marketing Plan: What to Do in the 90 Days Before and After Opening

A well-built apartment lease up marketing plan solves a specific problem: you need to fill units on a hard schedule, with no resident reviews, no word-of-mouth, and often no finished interiors to photograph. Every other marketing situation gives you time to recover from a slow month. A lease-up does not. The plan below is organized as a working timeline, from the moment a certificate of occupancy is still months away to the point where the property stands on its own.

90 Days Before Opening: Build the Foundation While the Building Is Still Unfinished

This is the phase most teams skip or compress. That is a mistake, because the work you do here determines whether you have a waitlist on opening day or a vacant building.

Claim Your Google Business Profile Immediately

Do this before the building is complete. Google sometimes takes weeks to verify a new listing, and you want to show up in local search the moment prospects start hunting. Set the category to "Apartment complex", add the address, hours, and a description that uses your neighborhood name and a few natural search phrases. Upload whatever you have: a rendering, a site photo, the exterior in progress. Something is better than nothing.

For a deeper walkthrough of setup and optimization, the step-by-step guide to Google Business Profile for apartments covers everything you need.

Build a Pre-Leasing Landing Page

You need a URL to send people to. The page does not need to be a full website. It needs:

• The property name and neighborhood
• Unit types, square footages, and a starting rent range
• A strong visual (renderings are fine here)
• A waitlist or "notify me" form with a compelling reason to sign up, such as priority access to preferred units or a move-in special for early interest
• Contact information

Keep the copy specific. "Spacious one-bedrooms near downtown with in-unit laundry" beats "luxury living redefined" every time.

Do Your Neighborhood Research Now

Who actually rents near you? The answer shapes everything from your ad targeting to your amenity callouts. Look at the major employers within a realistic commute, the businesses opening or expanding nearby, the transit lines, and the demographics of surrounding buildings. If there is a hospital, a university, or a corporate campus within two miles, those are your first outreach targets for employer and HR partnerships.

Document commute times by car and by transit to the three or four largest nearby employers. You will use these in your listing copy, your social posts, and your broker presentations.

Shoot Photos and Video Before the Model Is Staged

This sounds counterintuitive, but scheduling the shoot for after the model is finished usually means scrambling two weeks before opening when you have ten other fires burning. Get the videographer booked now and plan two sessions: one for construction-progress content (great for social and for telling the community story), and one the moment the model is finished but before the grand opening push.

For the construction shoot, capture the roofline, the neighborhood context, the lobby shell, the views from upper floors. This content works well on social and builds a sense of momentum. For the model shoot, get wide-angle stills of every room, lifestyle shots with real people if you can, and a walkthrough video for your listing.

LeaseRadius never uses AI-generated or fabricated images. Every property we work with uses real photos and video, properly licensed, because invented visuals erode trust the moment a prospect walks through the door and the space does not match the picture.

30 Days Before Opening: Go Live Everywhere

Launch Social Accounts With Neighborhood Content

Do not wait until opening day to post for the first time. A fresh account with one post looks abandoned. Build the accounts now with a mix of:

• Construction progress updates
• Neighborhood content: local restaurants, parks, transit tips, events
• "Meet the team" or behind-the-scenes posts
• Countdown content toward opening

If you are running this lean and need content ideas to fill the calendar, 30 apartment social media post ideas grouped by goal is a useful reference.

Get on the Listing Sites

Apartments.com, Zillow, and the other major ILSs take time to index and rank new listings. Submit now. Write your listing descriptions to be specific and searchable. Mention the neighborhood, proximity to major employers, and the amenities that actually exist. Avoid vague superlatives.

For guidance on writing descriptions that convert browsers to tour bookers, how to write apartment listing descriptions that get tours is worth reading before you draft.

Start Broker and Employer Outreach

Relocation coordinators at large nearby employers, HR departments, and local apartment locators can send you qualified leads before you ever run an ad. Give them a one-page PDF with unit types, pricing, move-in specials, and a direct contact. Follow up. These relationships are slow to build and fast to pay off once someone refers a renter.

Build a Simple Email Nurture Sequence for the Waitlist

Everyone who signs up for your waitlist deserves more than silence. Set up a short automated sequence: a confirmation email, a neighborhood highlight two weeks later, and a "we're almost open" message with a tour booking link. Three emails is enough to keep you top of mind without annoying people. Email marketing for apartments covers how to build these sequences without much technical lift.

Opening Month: Convert Interest Into Signed Leases

Run Tours That Sell Without Discounting the Brand

Specials during a lease-up are often necessary, but structure them carefully. A concession framed as "one month free on a 13-month lease" preserves your face rent and looks better on comps than a slashed headline rate. Offer it as an exclusive for a limited time rather than an open-ended discount. When your opening specials expire, residents who signed under them feel like they got something, not like the price just went up.

For the tour itself, walk the model last, not first. Start in the lobby, go to the amenity spaces, then end in the model where the emotional connection happens. Leave a printed floor plan and pricing sheet so the prospect has something to take home.

Start Generating Your First Resident Content

The first residents to move in are your best marketing asset. Welcome them visibly: a move-in gift, a personal note from the manager, a small community event in the first few weeks. Then, when the moment is right, ask if they would share a photo or a short video of their space. This does not need to be formal. A text asking "Would you mind sharing a photo of how you set up your living room? We'd love to feature it" works fine.

Getting residents into your apartment social media explains how to make this a repeatable habit rather than a one-time ask.

90 Days After Opening: Stabilize and Shift Strategy

Launch a Referral Program at 30 to 40 Percent Occupied

Once you have enough residents to generate referrals, make it easy and worth their while. A referral program does not need to be complicated: a rent credit when a referred person signs a lease works well. Announce it at a community event, post it on social, and include it in your next resident email. The first residents in a new community often know others looking for housing in the same area. Capitalize on that.

For structure and incentive ideas, how to create an apartment referral program that reduces vacancy covers the mechanics in detail.

Request Reviews Consistently

Once a resident has been in the community for a month and has had a positive service interaction, ask for a Google review. Do it personally: a message from the property manager, not a mass email blast. Reviews are the foundation of long-term local search performance, and a lease-up with no reviews is a visible gap that prospects notice.

Audit and Trim Your Spend as Occupancy Climbs

A lease-up budget is not a permanent budget. As you cross meaningful occupancy thresholds, revisit what is still earning its place. Paid search and ILS spend often remain productive through stabilization. Heavy concessions and broad paid social targeting can taper down. What should stay: local SEO investment, social media presence, and reputation management. These compound over time and get cheaper on a per-lease basis as the property's organic visibility grows.

For a longer-term view of where your marketing dollars should go once you are stabilized, the full apartment marketing plan for 2026 is a useful next read.

If you are running a lease-up without a full marketing team behind you, that is a real operational pressure point. LeaseRadius's lease-up and vacancy reduction services are built for exactly this situation, with a team of AI agents handling SEO content, social, and neighborhood intelligence for $499 per property per month, first month free, no long-term contract.

Lease-Up Marketing Checklist

Use this as your running reference. Check items off as you complete them.

90 Days Before Opening

• [ ] Claim and verify Google Business Profile
• [ ] Launch pre-leasing landing page with waitlist form
• [ ] Research major nearby employers, commute times, and neighborhood businesses
• [ ] Book photo and video shoots (construction progress and model)
• [ ] Draft floor plan and pricing structure
• [ ] Register property on ILS platforms (even if listing is not live yet)

30 Days Before Opening

• [ ] Publish ILS listings with complete descriptions and photos
• [ ] Launch social media accounts on Instagram and Facebook
• [ ] Begin posting neighborhood and construction content
• [ ] Set up waitlist email nurture sequence (3 emails minimum)
• [ ] Distribute property one-pager to local apartment locators and employer HR contacts
• [ ] Define opening specials and concession structure
• [ ] Prepare tour script and printed take-home materials

Opening Month

• [ ] Begin scheduling and running tours
• [ ] Activate opening specials with a clear expiration
• [ ] Host a soft-opening community event for early residents
• [ ] Personally ask first residents for a Google review
• [ ] Start collecting resident photos and social content
• [ ] Monitor lead sources and track which channels are converting

30 to 90 Days After Opening

• [ ] Launch resident referral program once occupancy is sufficient
• [ ] Continue consistent review requests after positive service moments
• [ ] Audit paid spend and begin trimming channels that are no longer converting
• [ ] Shift social content toward resident life and community highlights
• [ ] Build out local SEO content targeting neighborhood search terms
• [ ] Set a review of your marketing budget tied to your next occupancy milestone