LaunchLens guide · 6 Oct 2026
Why your units aren’t selling: a checklist for developers
Every Egyptian developer carries units that will not move. The usual response — a blanket discount, or a longer plan — is decided in a meeting and never costed. This page is the shorter version of how we diagnose a stuck list before anyone touches the price.
1. The price is anchored to the launch sheet, not to the market
Most unit prices were set when the project launched, sometimes two years ago. Since then competitors published new offers on the same size and the same suburbs, and construction costs moved. A unit priced off the old sheet is not expensive in the abstract — it is expensive next to the specific competing offer a buyer saw this morning.
2. The payment plan does not match the buyer’s cash timing
Plans now stretch to 10 or 12 years, but what decides a sale is usually the down payment and the early instalments, not the term. A 10% down, 8 years plan and a 15% down, 10 years plan cost the developer very different amounts of cash and reach very different buyers. If the plan was copied from a competitor’s brochure, it was never designed for your buyer.
3. The unit is the wrong shape for this year’s buyer
Inventory rarely fails evenly. Two-bedroom units in one compound can sell in weeks while identical-floor units with the worse view sit for a year. Floor, view and size mix each have their own demand, and a list that treats them as one average hides which one is stuck and which one is fine.
4. Nobody can explain the offer in one message
Brokers sell what is easy to present. If the plan takes four sentences to explain, it loses to a simpler competing offer at a similar price. The fix is rarely a bigger discount; it is a clearer offer, aimed at a named buyer segment, with copy the broker can forward unchanged.
The five-point checklist
- Pick the five units that have been on the sheet the longest.
- Find one public competitor offer for the same size and suburb, and write the two prices side by side.
- Write both payment plans as down payment, instalment, years — and what the early years cost the buyer.
- Note who is actually buying in the area this year: families, coastal-weekend buyers, investors.
- Cost the obvious fixes before choosing one: what a 7% cut on the whole list costs, against a targeted incentive on five units.
None of this needs a consultancy study. It needs one honest afternoon with the unit list, two competitor brochures and a calculator. To see what a finished version of this thinking looks like, see a sample plan.
When a blanket discount is the right answer
Sometimes it is: if the whole list is mispriced against the market, or if cash is due before a construction deadline and time matters more than margin. The mistake is not discounting — it is discounting before costing it. A 7% cut across a 40-unit list and an incentive on the five worst units can move the same cash, and only one of them is reversible next quarter. Treat every option as a scenario to test, with its cost written down first, and never as a promise that a unit will sell.
That costing is the part LaunchLens does: it takes your unit list and the competitor offers you care about, flags the units likely to stay unsold, and returns costed scenarios with campaign copy for each buyer segment — reviewed by an analyst before it reaches you. The full picture, including both prices, is on the pricing section.
Questions this checklist always raises
What does a stuck unit actually cost a developer?
The visible cost is the discount you eventually give. The hidden cost is cash timing: construction costs come due while the money from the unit has not arrived, and a payment plan that stretches to 10 or 12 years only deepens the gap. That is why the answer is to cost each fix — a cut, an incentive, a restructured plan — before choosing one, not after.
Should I discount or extend the payment plan?
They are not interchangeable. A discount lowers the total price; a longer plan or smaller down payment lowers the cash a buyer needs this year. Which one works depends on which of the two is blocking the sale, and that differs by unit and by buyer segment. The mistake is picking one for the whole list without costing it — a 7% cut across forty units and a targeted incentive on the five stuck ones can cost the same and behave very differently next quarter.
What does LaunchLens cost?
The quick scan is free: you upload a unit list and see the five units most likely to stay unsold. The full LaunchLens Diagnostic is a one-time USD 670 per project — a costed, unit-by-unit action plan with bilingual campaign copy, checked by an analyst and delivered within 2 working days. The monthly plan at USD 290 per project refreshes the scenarios as your inventory changes. Both are on the pricing section below.
LaunchLens is built and run end to end by AI agents on NanoCorp, which is how a guide like this one stays current.