Buying off-plan feels like waiting. It isn't. The months between the contract and the keys are the only window in which certain decisions are still cheap.
Before the walls are poured
Anything structural — where a wall sits, where the plumbing runs, where a socket ends up — is a line on a drawing today and a demolition later. Developers usually allow changes up to a deadline, and that deadline tends to arrive quietly.
Then, closer to the keys
Renders, joinery, materials: the layer that turns a delivered shell into somewhere you actually want to live. This part can wait. The first part can't.
Why it's two stages, not one
That's exactly how I structure off-plan work — plans and coordination with the developer now, renders and joinery before handover. Two moves instead of one, because the two sets of decisions aren't due at the same time.
The families who enjoy their handover are usually the ones who did the unglamorous half a year earlier.