A developer instalment plan looks like the simplest way to buy a new build: a smaller deposit, the rest in parts, no bank involved. In practice it is a payment schedule in which the instalments, the price per metre and the handover date can all move. Below is what to look at before you sign.
As at October 2026 we hold 2,135 developer units across 425 complexes where there is something to buy. Their instalment terms differ so widely that comparing companies by their reviews is pointless: what you read is the specific contract for the specific building.
The deposit and the schedule
In Odesa new builds the deposit usually starts at seven or ten per cent, and in some completed buildings the payment period runs to sixty months. Those are the extremes, and there is almost always a condition behind them: a higher price per metre, a restricted choice of apartments, or a building at an early stage.
What matters is not the deposit percentage on its own but the whole picture. Seven per cent at the start with a one year term means large monthly payments. Thirty per cent at the start over three years means a comfortable schedule. The first figure is what gets advertised; the schedule is what you pay.
Ask separately whether the schedule is even. There are structures where the early payments are small and the final one is a third of the total: formally a long term, in practice the money is needed sooner.
What happens to the price along the way
The central question for any instalment plan is whether the price is fixed. There are three variants and they differ sharply in money.
First: the price is fixed in hryvnia for the whole sum. The most comfortable for a buyer and the least common.
Second: the price is fixed in dollars or in a notional unit, while payments are made in hryvnia at the rate on the day of payment. Here the currency risk sits entirely with the buyer, and over three years that difference can exceed the whole benefit of paying in instalments.
Third: the price per metre is revised against the construction schedule or an index. That means the final sum is unknown at the start, and the contract should at least cap the revision.
The question is put plainly: how much will I pay in total if I keep to the schedule to the last day. If there is no answer in figures, this is not an instalment plan but a statement of intent.
The small print
First: what happens if a payment is late. A penalty, a revision of the price, or termination with only part of the money returned. The difference between those is enormous, and it is not in the advertising.
Second: the handover date. You need a date, not a quarter and not a year, and beside it the developerʼs liability for missing it. A clause allowing the schedule to move with no consequences is common and means there is no schedule at all.
Third: what exactly you are buying. A construction share, a preliminary contract, a right to property rights, a purchase through a cooperative: these are different structures with different protection. Which one is in the contract decides what happens if construction stops.
Fourth: whether the right can be assigned before handover. If your plans change, that is the only way out without losses, and assignment is sometimes prohibited or carries a percentage fee.
How this differs from a loan
A developer instalment plan is not a bank loan. A bank checks both you and the property, and backs it with its own money. The developer checks only whether you can pay; the risk attached to the property stays with you.
In exchange, an instalment plan needs no income certificates, does not depend on your credit history and is arranged within days. For some buyers that is decisive.
A worked example
Take an apartment at sixty thousand dollars in a building under construction, with a ten per cent down payment over a two year term. Current as of 14.10.2026.
The down payment is six thousand. That leaves fifty four thousand over twenty four months, which is 2 250 $ a month on an even schedule. That is the figure to compare against your income, not the percentage of the down payment from the advertisement.
Now look at what happens to the price. If it is fixed in hryvnia, you pay sixty thousand and that is it. If it is fixed in dollars with payments at the current rate, the hryvnia total is unknown in advance. If the price per square metre is reviewed once a year by even five per cent, over two years that adds around six thousand dollars, a tenth on top of the price.
That is exactly why the question about the final sum is asked at the start and in figures. The gap between those three options is larger than any discount you will be offered for paying quickly.
What to do next
An instalment contract is the one document worth reading in full, even at thirty pages. We go through it with the buyer: the schedule, the price, the term, the liability and the assignment clause, and we say plainly where the weak point is.
We will shortlist options for your budget and guide the deal from the first viewing to signing.
