Ask three agencies what a pre-construction lead costs in Quebec and you will get three confident, incompatible answers. The reason is definitional: one is quoting a Meta form-fill, one a registered microsite prospect with a phone number, and one a sales-appointment-booked buyer. Those are three different products at three different prices.
This article puts definitions and observed ranges on the table so a developer can budget a campaign — and audit a marketing partner's claims — with a shared vocabulary. The ranges below reflect Quebec pre-construction campaigns in the 2025–2026 market; treat them as planning bands, not promises. Results vary by project, price point, and market conditions.
First, Define the Lead
Tier 1 — Contact. A form-fill or ad-platform lead: name and email, low intent verification. This is what most cheap CPL quotes describe.
Tier 2 — Registrant. A prospect who completed a project microsite registration for plans and pricing: name, email, phone, and often unit-type intent. Meaningfully more qualified.
Tier 3 — Appointment. A booked sales meeting or gallery visit. This is the number the sales team actually cares about.
Every channel discussion below prices Tier 1 and estimates conversion down the funnel. A typical healthy funnel: 100 contacts → 35–55 registrants → 8–15 appointments → 1–3 sales, with wide variance by project quality and price band.
Observed Cost Ranges by Channel
Meta (Facebook/Instagram). The volume engine of Quebec pre-construction. Observed Tier 1 CPL for condo projects in Greater Montreal: $15–$60 for broad launch audiences, rising to $40–$120 in sustain-phase retargeting pools. French-language creative typically outperforms English in reach-adjusted cost in most Montreal submarkets. Lead quality is the weakness: expect heavy Tier 1 → Tier 2 attrition without an instant qualification flow.
Google Search. High-intent, lower volume. Observed CPL: $50–$150 on project-brand and "condos neufs [quartier]" terms. Searchers arrive closer to decision; Tier 1 → appointment conversion is typically 2–4x Meta's. Brand-term defense (bidding on your own project name) is cheap insurance against competitors and aggregator sites intercepting your own demand.
The broker network. Not a CPL channel — a cost-per-sale channel. A co-op commission of 2.5–3% on a $600,000 unit is $15,000–$18,000, paid only on closing. Broker-referred buyers arrive pre-qualified, pre-educated, and often decided. For most Quebec projects this is the largest single source of closed sales and the cheapest effective cost per sale, despite the highest absolute per-transaction cost. The activation playbook is covered in the pre-sale strategy guide.
Email (the registration list). Near-zero incremental cost, highest conversion rate of any channel — but only as strong as the list the paid channels built. This is why teaser-phase list-building spend is the highest-leverage dollars in the campaign.
Portals and aggregators. New-construction portals sell placement or leads at $30–$100+ per contact. Quality varies enormously; insist on source transparency and test with a capped budget before committing.
Out-of-home and signage. Priced by impression, not lead. On-site hoarding is nearly free awareness for neighborhood-driven projects; paid OOH beyond the site is a branding decision, not a lead-gen line, and should be judged accordingly.
The Math That Matters: Cost Per Sale
CPL comparisons across channels are meaningless without funnel math. A worked example for a 100-unit project at $550,000 average price:
- Meta: $35 CPL × 2,000 contacts = $70,000 → ~700 registrants → ~120 appointments → ~25 sales → $2,800 per sale
- Google: $90 CPL × 300 contacts = $27,000 → ~140 registrants → ~40 appointments → ~10 sales → $2,700 per sale
- Broker co-op: 30 sales × $16,500 = $495,000 → $16,500 per sale, zero risk (paid on closing only)
The digital channels look dramatically cheaper per sale — and they are, for the buyers they reach. But the broker channel reaches buyers digital never touches, carries no cash-flow risk before closing, and its cost lives in the sales budget, not marketing. Mature campaigns run all three and let attribution data shift weight between them monthly.
Budget Benchmarks by Project Size
Observed total marketing budgets (excluding broker co-op commissions) for Quebec pre-construction, as a share of gross project revenue: 0.75%–1.5% is the common band. Concretely:
- Under 40 units: $60,000–$150,000 total — weighted to microsite, renders, and Meta
- 40–120 units: $150,000–$450,000 — full channel mix, sales gallery optional
- 120+ units: $450,000+ — gallery, PR, sustained media flights, dedicated campaign management
Where budgets get wasted, in order of frequency: paid traffic sent to an ungated brochure site (nothing to register into), creative refreshed too slowly while frequency fatigue drives CPL up, English-only campaigns in majority-francophone submarkets, and leads that receive their first human contact 48 hours after registering. That last failure is the cheapest to fix — the case for automated instant follow-up is strongest in exactly this context.
Law 25 Applies to Your Lead Machine
Every tactic above collects personal information from Quebec residents. Consent language at the point of capture, a compliant privacy policy, disclosed AI processing if you qualify leads automatically, and data-processing agreements with your ad and CRM vendors are all requirements, not options. The Law 25 compliance guide covers the checklist; build it into the campaign before launch rather than retrofitting under scrutiny.
FAQ
What is a realistic cost per lead for a Montreal condo project in 2026? For Tier 1 contacts: $15–$60 on Meta at launch, $50–$150 on Google Search. For microsite registrants with phone numbers, blended acquisition cost typically lands at $60–$180. Any quote far below these bands is usually measuring a weaker definition of "lead."
How much should a developer budget for marketing overall? The observed band is 0.75%–1.5% of gross project revenue, excluding broker co-op commissions. A 100-unit project at $550,000 average price should expect a $400,000–$800,000 total marketing envelope across the campaign's life.
Is the broker network worth the co-op commission? On cost-per-sale math including risk, usually yes: the commission is paid only on closing, and broker-referred buyers convert at rates digital channels do not approach. Most successful Quebec projects treat brokers as the anchor channel and digital as the volume feeder.
Why are my leads cheap but my sales absent? Almost always a definitional problem: the campaign is optimizing for Tier 1 contacts rather than qualified registrants. Move the conversion event deeper (registration or appointment), accept the higher CPL, and cost per sale improves.
Related Resources
- Pre-Sale Condo Marketing in Quebec: The Complete Strategy
- The Project Microsite That Actually Converts
- AI Tools for Real Estate Marketing in 2026
- Quebec Law 25 and AI: Compliance Guide
- Property Marketing Services
Want a lead budget modeled for your specific project? Let's talk.
Jeremy Soares — OACIQ H2731