301 Help, with hosting?

Hi guys, had a question about the 301 redirect game. Might seem basic, but whatever. After you buy the domain, do you have to set up hosting populate it with content, wait till it gets indexed, and then redirect it? Or can you do it after purchase? I am talking about expired domains, not live sites. Appreciate your input.

I do both, but in the majority of cases, I just redirect it without putting it 'online' first.

If you think about what happens in order for it to index, it's clear that the same thing will happen that will cause the 301 to be discovered by G - that is, G crawls an incoming link to your URL and checks out what's going on...

thanks that makes sense, just don't see it sometimes using majestic, so wondering if I am doing it wrong.

Majestics crawler is slow at best, and total crap at worst... so don't stress if Majestic doesn't show it