Instalments: how to sell more flats on credit and still get paid
By Makon Team · 3 October 2026 · 3 min read
For many families an apartment is only affordable in instalments, and a developer who offers a clear plan sells to buyers that a cash-only competitor never meets. But every instalment sale is also a loan the developer has to collect, often for years, while the money is needed on site today. The plan that sells best is not always the plan that gets paid.
Design the plan before you advertise it
Decide the rules once, for the whole complex, and write them down: the minimum down payment, the longest term, whether there is a final lump sum at handover, and what happens to the price if the buyer pays faster. A sales manager negotiating these from scratch at every table produces fifty different contracts and a cash flow nobody can forecast.
“I'd rather be alive at 18 percent than dead at the prime rate.”
A schedule on every contract, not beside it
The schedule is part of the deal, so it belongs to the contract. In Makon each contract carries its instalment plan, generated with it, with a final lump sum when the deal has one. Each payment is then spread over the schedule oldest first, so what is paid and what is overdue is never a matter of opinion.
Remind before the due date, not after
Most late payments are not refusals; they are forgotten dates. A reminder a few days before the payment is due prevents more debt than any call afterwards. Makon sends buyers SMS at set moments in the contract's life; each message can be switched on or off and its text edited, so the tone is yours.
Catch slipping buyers early
Debt is easiest to collect while it is small. The collections team should start every morning from one list, ordered by what matters most.
- What is overdue, and by how much.
- What is due today and this week.
- Buyers whose payments are slipping before the debt grows, through client ratings and an at-risk list.
- A task for every call — to do, in progress, called, done — so nobody is forgotten.
Keep the money right when plans change
Instalment buyers change their minds more often than cash buyers: they switch flats, pay ahead, ask for money back. Each of these must leave the books correct. In Makon a buyer's money can be kept on their wallet, moved between clients or refunded with an undo, and a refund can never exceed what was paid. Money on a payment is never edited in place; a correction is recorded, not overwritten.
Because every schedule is in the system, the same records also show what is still to come: projected income from the schedules already signed, and how buyers actually pay against them. That is the number a developer needs when deciding how fast the next building can go up.
Instalments are a sales tool and a loan at the same time. Fix the rules once, put the schedule on the contract, remind before the due date, and act on small debts before they become large ones.
Further reading
Never Split the Difference
Chris Voss, 2016
A former FBI hostage negotiator on listening, labelling emotions and calibrated questions — useful in every discount conversation.
Good to Great
Jim Collins, 2001
A study of companies that went from average to outstanding: the right people first, facing hard facts, and steady discipline over bold leaps.