Everything else about the problem follows from the clock. The community has no reviews and no search history. Its Google Business Profile either doesn't exist or sits there unverified, because a data aggregator built it from a permit filing. The website has to sell floor plans nobody has walked through. And four blocks away, there's a community that's been collecting all of the above for six years.
Property management is where our work runs deepest, apartment community websites included. The wider case for how that work fits together is on the property management marketing hub. This page is about the narrow case where the deadline is the limit.
How do you choose an apartment lease-up marketing agency?
Choose a lease-up marketing agency by its plan for the months before opening. Ask when floor plan pages go live, when the Google Business Profile gets created and verified, how paid campaigns start inside the housing ad rules, and whether it reports leases rather than clicks. Then ask for live community sites you can open.
| Ask the agency | What a good answer looks like |
|---|---|
When do the floor plan pages go live? | Months before the first move-in, so Google has read them by opening day |
When does the Google Business Profile get verified? | In the pre-opening schedule, next to the utilities, not at the marketing kickoff |
How do paid campaigns start? | Narrow keyword sets, creative that says new, targeting inside Google's housing policy and Meta's housing special ad category |
What gets reported? | Tours, applications and leases by source, not clicks alone |
What can I open? | Live community sites, not mockups or a theme gallery |
We'd hold ourselves to the same list, and say one thing plainly: the paid campaign we point to further down this page isn't an apartment lease-up.
What organic can and can't do on that schedule
You can't rank a new domain on the timeline a lease-up runs on. We'd rather say that flatly than sell around it.
A new domain starts deep
It has no history, so its first positions in Google are too far down for almost anyone to see. Climbing out of there takes months, not weeks.
What that means on a twelve-month lease-up
Organic is what you're building for month seven onward, and for the years after the building fills. Not for the opening weeks.
Laying the organic foundation during lease-up is still the right call. You're just not paying for it out of the first quarter's leases. How the two channels split the work is compared in multifamily SEO vs Google Ads.
You can't rank a new domain on the timeline a lease-up runs on.
Paid carries the early weeks, and it starts cold too
The campaign we'd point to isn't an apartment lease-up. It's a development in Sint Maarten that we ran Meta ads for, on behalf of a Sint Maarten real estate agent. It's here because the shape matches. There was one asset and no search history, and demand had to be created before there was any organic to harvest. The campaign ran on Meta from its launch in December 2025.
The other thing worth being straight about: a new ad account doesn't perform on day one either. Anyone describing instant paid results is describing an account that already has data. The longest tuning run we can show is a cryotherapy studio near Seattle, a Renton med spa rather than an apartment community.
Its click-through rate is the share of people who see an ad and click it. In Google Ads, that rate moved from 0.13 percent in Q4 2023, the account's first quarter, to 4.64 percent in Q3 2026. That took years of search data to reach. On a lease-up you're squeezing that into weeks, which changes how you start.
Targeting follows the housing ad rules
In the US, apartment ads run under Meta's housing special ad category and Google's housing ad policy, which limit targeting by age, gender and location. So the creative and the keywords do more of the work.
Keyword sets start narrow
Broad match, Google's loosest keyword setting, doesn't get to learn on your budget.
The creative leads with the one thing a brand-new building actually has
Which is that it's brand new.
Targeting is also simpler than for the rest of a portfolio's marketing. That's the one structural advantage a lease-up gets. A property manager's marketing, whether in Tacoma or any other city, usually splits three ways: vendors, owners and residents. A lease-up doesn't split like that. One building, one date, one audience.
The profile comes before the website
The Google Business Profile has to be created and verified before much of the rest works.
Verification isn't instant
And Google picks the method, not you. So it belongs in the pre-opening schedule next to the utilities, not in the marketing kickoff.
Unverified means invisible on Maps
An unverified profile doesn't show up in the map pack, the short list of places Google shows on a map. The map pack is where a renter standing on the corner with a phone finds you.
Work we do directly
We set up and manage the Google Business Profile, and the Yelp page too, alongside the site.
Build the pages anyway.
Nobody has a good answer for having no reviews
An established community has years of reviews, and yours has none. No amount of ad spend closes that gap. You can't manufacture reviews, and you shouldn't try. What you can do is make the site carry the weight the reviews would.
Photographs of the actual building
Construction progress included, rather than renderings out of the architect's deck.
Named leasing staff with faces
The people a prospect will actually meet.
Floor plans with real dimensions and honest rents
Where the rent isn't final yet, say so.
Specific answers to what a first resident is nervous about
At a new building, that's usually what's finished and what isn't.
Then set up a way to ask the first residents for reviews at move-in, while they're still pleased about it. Month three is roughly when the organic work you're building now starts to show.
Build the floor plan pages before the units exist
A renter comparing four buildings on a phone wants the floor plan, the price, the move-in date and the pet policy. At lease-up, two of those aren't final and the units themselves don't exist. Build the pages anyway. Put a floor plan page live four months before the first move-in, and Google has read it by opening day. That's worth more than a page published the week the doors open.
The pattern on the community sites we build
The pages carrying individual floor plans and availability are the ones that do the work. The gallery of those builds is on the multifamily website design page.
The structural decision at build time
Your availability and floor plan data may arrive as a listing widget from your management platform. If so, the code and the styling usually aren't yours to control, and the listings live on the platform's domain, not yours.
Template sites, rebuilt
When a community runs on the website template its management platform ships, such as AppFolio's, we rebuild it so every property and floor plan gets a page of its own, with amenities, features and photos, and calls to action and lead forms that fit the site.
The search side of it is on the multifamily SEO page. Whatever platform you're on, the question is the same. Does each floor plan have a page Google can read, and can you control how the listing looks? We'd want to look at yours before answering that.
When should pre-leasing marketing begin?
Pre-leasing marketing should begin months before the first move-in. Create and verify the Google Business Profile in the pre-opening schedule, put floor plan pages live about four months ahead so Google has read them by opening day, and have paid campaigns ready for the first day there is something to tour.
Every row below restates a step from this page.
| When | What should be live | Why |
|---|---|---|
Before the website launches | A created and verified Google Business Profile | An unverified profile doesn't show in the map pack |
About four months before the first move-in | Floor plan pages with real dimensions, and honest rents or a note that the rent isn't final | Google has read them by opening day |
The first day there's something to tour | Paid campaigns with narrow keyword sets | A new domain starts deep in search |
At move-in | A way to ask the first residents for reviews | The community starts with none |
Around month three | The first organic results | The organic work laid during lease-up starts to show |
Month seven onward | Organic carrying more of the leasing | That is what the organic foundation is for |
Questions owners ask about lease-up
What does lease-up mean?
Lease-up is the period when a new apartment community signs its first leases and fills from empty. It starts around the certificate of occupancy and the first move-ins. The owner's plan expects a set number of units leased by a set month. Lease-up ends when the building reaches the occupancy that plan assumes.
What is the difference between lease-up and stabilized?
A lease-up building is filling from empty toward the occupancy its owner's plan assumes. A stabilized building has reached that occupancy and is replacing move-outs. Lease-up marketing creates demand for a building nobody knows yet, mostly through paid ads. Stabilized marketing protects occupancy with search, reviews and renewals, so the plan changes with the stage.
What is lease-up in property management?
In property management, lease-up is the job of filling a new building before the owner's deadline. The leasing team runs tours and move-ins while marketing creates demand from nothing. The building has no reviews, no search history and often an unverified Google profile. Paid ads carry the early weeks while organic search is built.
How long is a lease-up period?
A lease-up period has no fixed length: it runs until the building reaches the occupancy in the owner's plan. The unit count, the local market and how early the marketing starts all shape it. Starting the profile and floor plan pages months early means Google has read them by opening day.
Should you hire a lease-up marketing agency?
Hire one when your team can't cover the months before opening on its own: building and indexing floor plan pages, getting the Google Business Profile verified early, and running paid campaigns inside the housing ad rules from the first day there's something to tour. If your team already does those well, keep the work in-house.
What is lease-up risk?
Lease-up risk is the chance a new building fills more slowly than the owner's plan assumes. A shortfall doesn't get made up later; it gets carried. On the marketing side, the risk grows with a late Google profile, floor plan pages published too late, and ads that start cold. A good apartment lease-up strategy starts each one early.
The glossary has a short definition of lease-up, with the housing ad rules that apply to it.
If you have a lease-up coming
The sequence that works is dull, and it depends on starting early.
Profile created and verified
In the pre-opening schedule, next to the utilities.
Site and floor plan pages live and indexed
Months ahead of occupancy.
Paid running from the first day there's something to tour
Targeting inside the housing ad rules, narrow keyword sets, creative that says new.
The organic foundation laid quietly underneath all of it
For the years after the building fills.
If you want us to look at what you've got and where the gaps are, ask for an audit. And if you're weighing this against the wider question of how a portfolio's marketing should be structured, start at property management marketing instead.
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