Every off-plan purchase is a bet that a specific company will finish a specific building on something like the promised date, to something like the promised standard. The escrow regime protects your money if they do not; it does not give you the home. So the developer is the decision, and it deserves more of your attention than the choice between a corner unit and a mid-floor one.
The difficulty is that developers are judged in public almost entirely on marketing. Launch events, celebrity endorsements and 'sold out in hours' announcements tell you about demand for the launch, which is not the same thing as delivery of the building. What follows is how we look at a developer, and where the evidence comes from.
Delivery record
Start with what they have actually handed over. How many projects, over how many years, and how did the handover dates compare with the anticipated dates in the sale agreements? A developer who is routinely six months late is predictable, and a buyer can plan around predictable. A developer with one project delivered eighteen months late and three more under construction is a different proposition.
This information exists but is not conveniently published. Land Department records show completion dates; earlier buyers show the anticipated ones. Our developer pages carry the figures we have compiled — projects delivered, the share delivered within the contractual grace period, the average delay in months — with the date we last checked them, and the compare-developers tool puts two or three side by side. We would rather show a dated figure than a flattering one.
Financial position
A listed developer publishes accounts, and you can read them: revenue, debt, cash, and how much of the pipeline is presold. A private developer does not, and you are relying on reputation, bank relationships and the fact that escrow funds the build regardless. Neither is disqualifying. But a private developer with a short record launching several large projects at once is carrying more risk than a listed one with a thirty-year history, and the price should reflect that.
Quality of finish, and how it ages
Go and stand in something they finished five years ago. Not the show apartment — the lobby of a delivered tower, the corridors, the pool deck, a unit on the resale market. Are the finishes the ones that were promised? Has the building been maintained? What are the service charges, and how have they moved? A developer's older stock tells you what your new stock will look like when you come to sell it.
The show apartment tells you what the developer can build. The five-year-old lobby tells you what they did build.
Behaviour after handover
Ask owners in delivered projects how the developer handled snagging and defects, whether the management company they appointed was competent, and whether the community amenities promised at launch were delivered on time or quietly deferred. Owners' groups, building committees and our own after-sales files are candid about this in a way no brochure is.
The questions worth asking
- Which of your projects was delivered latest, and by how long? A straight answer is a good sign in itself.
- Who is the main contractor on this project, and have you delivered with them before?
- What share of this project is sold, and what share of the escrow has been drawn against certified progress?
- Which amenities in the master plan are the developer's obligation, and which depend on third parties?
What a good record does not do
It does not make any single project safe. The strongest developer in the city has handed over late; the best-run master plan has had a phase that disappointed. A record lowers the probability of a bad outcome; it cannot remove it. And a long list of active projects — often presented as strength — is exposure. Twenty towers under construction is twenty places for something to go wrong at once. We prefer a developer who launches when the last phase is well advanced to one who launches whenever the market is warm.