Read the master plan, not the brochure

When a client first walks into our office to talk about Lusail off-plan, the first thing I ask them to put down is the developer brochure. The brochure is a marketing document. It tells the buyer what the seller has chosen to tell them. It is not the document that should drive a purchase decision.

The document that should drive the decision is the Lusail Real Estate Development Company master plan, last updated November 2024. It is publicly available, it is the source of truth for what is being built around any given plot, and reading it carefully is the single most undervalued piece of due diligence in the Lusail off-plan market today.

A worked example. A client came to us in January with an off-plan villa mandate in Fox Hills. The developer brochure showed an internal community park to the east of the plot. The November 2024 master plan amendment had moved that park west by two hundred and fifty metres and replaced it with a school catchment. The view from the plot’s primary reception room would, on completion, be a school bus access road. We did not buy the villa. We bought a different plot.

I run the firm’s investor desk and I run this kind of comparison on every Lusail off-plan mandate. If a client wishes to buy off-plan in Lusail, the first deliverable from us is a master-plan-versus-brochure note specific to the plot. We charge nothing for this. We charge our 2.5% on transaction.