With deposit and treasury certificate rates elevated, we ran the actual opportunity-cost math on a 4-year off-plan payment plan. With bank deposit and treasury certificate rates at levels that make simply parking cash look attractive, it's a fair question: does locking money into a 4-year off-plan payment plan still make sense? The opportunity cost is real When risk-free EGP returns are elevated, the bar for any other use of your capital gets higher too — including a payment plan on a property that won't be ready for years. That's a legitimate reason more buyers are asking harder questions before signing than they did a few years ago. What off-plan still offers that a deposit doesn't A high-yield certificate protects your cash; it doesn't protect you from future construction cost inflation or from being priced out of a growth area once it's built out. Off-plan pricing today typically still sits meaningfully below projected completion value in areas with genuine infrastructure momentum, which a cash return, however attractive, doesn't replicate. How to reconcile the two This doesn't have to be either-or: some clients keep the bulk of their capital earning the higher rate and commit only the required down payment and near-term installments to an off-plan unit, effectively riding both trades at once rather than going all-in on either. The math only works if the specific project's appreciation potential genuinely outpaces what your capital is earning risk-free in the meantime — which is a project-by-project judgment, not a blanket rule. We don't tell clients off-plan is automatically still the better trade in this rate environment — we walk through their specific numbers, because the honest answer depends on the project, the timeline, and what else their capital could be doing.
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