Friends-with-benefits as condo ownership model

Vancouver housing is overpriced. That’s the word from UBC’s Tsur Somerville in a new report so shocking to the local media they don’t know what to do with themselves. For most of us regular folk, this is old hat. We’ve known about high prices for years. The incomes in this town make ownership impossible. Unless, of course, you like the idea of sharing a studio suite with three of your closest friends. Hey, do you smell a marketing concept?

Richmond’s Remy condos may be the first development in the region to overtly promote the ménage-à-quatre as a lifestyle benefit of condo living. (I won’t speculate on what the gentleman on the left of the ad is looking at.) All told, this “joy of sex and home ownership” thing is brilliant. I’m surprised it hasn’t been done before. What’s the old saying? Oh yes: Two’s company, three’s a crowd and four’s a mortgage paid off in 35 years.

If this is for you, you need to get your sexually liberated self down to the Remy sales office today.

Live the receivership lifestyle

Anyone who orders a hot chocolate at Tim Hortons knows about the muck at the bottom of the cup. For the unfamiliar, this is the gritty syrup stuff that tends to make up the last 5% of the drink. It’s disgusting and represents the worst of what Timmy’s has to offer.

The condo marketing equivalent of the Ho-Ho sludge is the receivership sale.

No surprise that this ad for some Garden City condo in Richmond leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The ad implies the project going into receivership is somehow a good thing. Am I alone in thinking a one-bedroom starting at $299,900 is not much of a “fire sale” deal? And what’s with the missing apostrophe on the website copy? Does going into receivership mean there’s no money to include the apostrophe in “Richmonds [sic] best value!”?

The only thing that could make this ad worse is if it featured a model holding a coffee mug. Not that condo marketers are still into that cliche. That’s so 2006. Oh wait. Failed that test too.

The cup o’ cocoa muck is looking pretty good right now.

Template at Meridian Gate

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a template!

More specifically, a Polygon template ad for Meridian Gate in Richmond. Why bother with an original concept when you can go with what always works?

Clean, inoffensive design with double-spaced type and all your favourite keywords including:

• Exciting address!
• Contemporary apartment residences!
• Evolving area!
• Village-style!

Honest to blog — yeah, I just wrote that — this kind of condo ad is like sex in a relationship that’s gone on too long. It gets the job done and you’ll take it over nothing but it’s far from exciting and new.

Prado imperfection

Why be a fashion model when you can be a condo model?

Models are all the rage in condo marketing these days. Pulse in Kits launched with Topless Babe in Shades, Grand Central Coquitlam made its mark with Woman in the Golden Gown, and now Prado gives us this gift for gazing eyes.

Looking beyond the socially constructed hottie brought to us courtesy of the Appia Group of Companies, let us consider what a Prado home is supposedly all about:

A home modeled on perfection, finished with exceptional quality, central to all that is important, and destined to impress. Prado. A reflection of you.

The marketing-speak in play here is truly awesome. Prado isn’t just a Richmond condo across the street for Lansdowne Centre, it’s modeled on perfection. In short, it’s an embodiment of excellence sure to invoke envy of the highest order. Obviously there’s no way the developer can live up this “commitment” in any plausible sense. It is so vague as to be meaningless, yet it exists for all to consider.

Why does advertising insist on being so useless? And not to leave consumers off the hook, why do so many consumers accept it without challenge? Personally, I’d love to have buyers take on the marketers to defend their claims. If you happen to find yourself in the sales centre, ask the nearest available agent for their take on Prado’s “destined-to-impress” attributes.

Bonus points for any response containing references to countertops and soaker tubs.

Paloma uninspired

The curved facade of the new Paloma 2 bares a strange resemblance to a Wavy Lays potato chip. Maybe a metaphor for the crunch of condo living?  (Yeah, I know that was weak.  I’ll try harder next time.)

Richmond’s latest “landmark” condo arrives courtesy of Regent International Developments.

For once could somebody put up a tower that isn’t characterized as a landmark? There’s gotta be a market for that. Get Rennie on it and brand it Stealth or Mystique or Camouflage. I don’t know. Just do it. Would sell like hot cakes.

I have little info on Regent but like most developers, their marketing program is on auto-pilot to the point that it begs attention to its weaknesses.

“Inspired collection. Urban connection.” That’s tagline one.

“A step above. A step beyond.” That’s tagline two.

“Yawn.” That’s me exhausted and bored.

Here’s an idea for the condo marketers: Use combinations of words that actually have meaning. Take time to write your copy. Read and re-read your copy to make sure it’s efficient, effective and error-free.

“Ideally located across Richmond Centre with RAV less then [sic] a minute away.”

That’s from the ad.  So I say again, read and re-read your copy so you know it’s error-free. I’d like to think that at $223,900 you could afford to hire a copy editor.

Taming the tiger

I’d like to think that I came up with that cool headline, but credit goes to the Vancouver Sun. They profiled the condo I’m looking at today — Cressey’s Mandalay Residences in Richmond — about nine months ago. Before you fret that I’m running out of content and resorting to old news, you should know that this is a deliberate editorial choice.

Today’s hype would have us believe that opportunities are running in short supply, that the market has no place for the contemplative buyer. Not so with Mandalay. You could’ve contemplated having a child and actually carried it out, start to finish. With more than nine months since pre-sales opened up, residences at Mandalay are still up for grabs.

Of course, you might not know this if all you consulted was the mainstream media. Like a good arsonist, they’re quick to start the fire and flee the scene. On July 15, 2006 in the Sun’s business section, the headline proclaims “Pre-sale interest high in Richmond development.” Quoted in the article is Cressey vice-president Hani Lammam, who offers up this deliciously ironic gem:

We really stepped up the quality on these projects, and buyers are telling us that’s what they want.

Stepped up the quality? What, like as opposed to the “stepped down” quality of Cressey’s previous developments? (Things get funnier when the Sun reporter goes on to list “stainless steel appliances, granite countertops, solid wood cabinets and hardwood flooring” as examples of Mandalay’s “stepped up” quality.)

I’ll leave it to the bulls and bears to debate whether Mandalay is a good investment. For me, I’ll just take pleasure in being hip to the hype. Oh, and remember my theory from a few days ago about the use of the word luxury? I think we’ve got a record here: Four uses in the first 21 words, or roughly 20 percent of the copy. Maybe the writer lost his/her thesaurus?