Marketing for Female Homebuyers: Is It Time to be Open About It?
09 Mar 2012 Leave a Comment
in Strategies, You Need to Know
The home of your wife’s dreams?
Experience has taught me women tend to call the shots in the home buying process. If you’re in the industry, I’m sure that’s your experience as well.
This is why many of us implicitly market homes for women, highlighting the features that we think appeal to them.
But what exactly is it that female homebuyers want? Experience can certainly give you an idea. But valuable as it may be, experience is a subjective thing, especially when it’s not backed up by studies.
Thankfully, according to Builder Magazine, two U.S. builders made it a point to narrow down the factors that make female homebuyers tick, going so far as to take women-centric design studies.
They seem to have succeeded — one of them, Patcon Construction, continued to sell homes in new Hampshire and Maine even as its competitors couldn’t, while the other, Hugh A. Fisher of Deer Brook Development Corp., quadrupled his business in the middle of the U.S. housing recession.
Ironically perhaps, their findings not just confirm many a builder’s experience, but also a few gender stereotypes. For example, when men look at a floorplan they think about how they will relax in the house, while women focus on how the family will live in the house and how they will work in it.
Women also tend to focus on organizing, having convenient access to laundry rooms, and making sure their husbands have a place where they can drop their wallet and keys (which apparently they don’t want us dropping on the kitchen counter).
Read the article here, or check out this survey, which helps women find the type of floorplan that best suits their personality.
Have you ever marketed homes explicitly for women? What’s your take on all this?
Do You Know Everything You Should About the 2012 Ontario Building Code?
13 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
It didn’t really shock me, upon reading my blog’s 2011 summary, that the year’s most frequently viewed and commented-upon post was Summary of Changes Introduced in the 2012 Ontario Building Code, which I wrote after attending the OBC 2012 Get to Code Workshop last October. The second most popular post also dealt with 2012’s OBC.
Not all diplomas are valuable. This one is.
Obviously, people out there have an interest in the new code. And so they should: as I explained in the aforementioned articles (as well as this one), the new code stands to simplify builders’ lives. Of course, it also ensures Ontario homeowners get a better product for their money and that the environment gets preserved.
While I remain open to questions and comments, I highly recommend to all our clients and all Ontario builders that they register for one of these upcoming seminars (the first is on February 6 and the second on February 8).
Hurry, though — they do sell out quickly.
Latest Development in the 2012 Ontario Building Code Will Help Ontario’s Builders
23 Dec 2011 1 Comment
As I’ve written before, the new Ontario Building Code will come into effect on January 1, 2012. Thanks to stricter standards, this OBC will ensure homes in Ontario use less energy, reducing emissions and helping homeowners save money.
Brookfield Homes’ Pathways is one of many communities featuring Energy Star-qualified homes.
Admittedly, the new OBC has the potential of becoming somewhat onerous for builders to enforce. It has, after all, up to 10 different compliance packages that pertain to builders in the GTA. They involve many variations in insulation levels in the attic, basement walls, and exterior walls, plus an option to include a heat recovery ventilator depending on the chosen package, as well as an increased furnace’s annual fuel utilization efficiency.
Luckily, things are now simpler. The Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing has just published amendments that make it possible for builders to bypass these packages, settling instead for current Energy Star specifications.
In other words, every new home that meets the Energy Star technical requirements will be considered compliant with the energy efficiency requirements for the 2012 OBC. In effect, Energy Star has become the 11th choice for local builders to comply with the new OBC.
This will greatly simplify builders’ lives, making it easier for them to build far more Energy Star-qualified homes while complying with the new OBC. This is why we’ll be calling our clients today to inform them about the new amendments and to encourage them to make their upcoming communities Energy Star-compliant.
This is a good day for green. And with that in mind, I wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.
The Origin of Our Name
16 Dec 2011 Leave a Comment
As Shakespeare’s Juliet famously wondered, what’s in a name?
Although the Bard of Avon implied (or at least Juliet did) that names have little meaning, we marketers know better.
Here at BAM, we spend long hours choosing different names for our clients’ communities. These names need to convey, often in just one word, everything that’s essential to the community. They must embody its spirit. They must be easy to remember. It helps if they’re catchy.
On all accounts, the name of our company does a great job, if I say so myself. (And I have to, since I wouldn’t feel comfortable discussing names we’ve used for our clients.)
Of course, the fact that Builder Advertising & Marketing happens to form such a short potent acronym is not a coincidence. But that’s not the main reason we use it — the way I see it, BAM works as a name because it’s an onomatopoeia.
Indeed, the word “bam,” which dates from 1772 or thereabout and imitates a sudden loud noise, is “often used interjectionally to indicate a sudden impact or occurrence.” Which is precisely what we like to do for our clients — to create an impact.
In other words, BAM works because it’s an acronym that stands for what we do. It works because it’s short and memorable. Above all, it works because it embodies, better than any other word, the idea of an impact.
I’m often reminded of this when I go to an event and someone greets me with a loud “BAM!” I always think, “Thanks for the free publicity,” even as some passers-by look on, a confused look on their face, probably wondering why somebody shouted “bam” at me.
The Concept of Casual Spreads to New Homes
21 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment
in Strategies, You Need to Know
A traditional home vs. a casual home.
Have you seen those Apple vs. PC ads on TV?
As this article that a friend sent me remarks, part of these ads’ success lay in pitting casual (Mac) vs. traditional (PC).
Here’s the kicker: far from being limited to clothes or computers, the appeal of casual has also extended to homes.
This can be seen in today’s prevalence of open-concept spaces and the frequency with which builders use the term “casual living.”
Once the realm of condos, open-concept rooms now abound in detached homes. Gone are stuffy, formal living rooms and rarely used dining rooms. They’ve been replaced with large, family-friendly rooms that you can use for pretty much anything, whether it involves watching TV or eating or playing.
The reasons are twofold. First, 9/11, which reduced travel frequency for most people. Second, the recession, which made people entertain at home more often rather than go out. As a result of these two factors, homeowners now prefer homes better suited for spending quality time inside.
This doesn’t just mean open-concept rooms but also more covered areas in the back and decks for them to host BBQs, blurring the separation between outdoor and indoor living.
(Among our clients alone, Highmark Homes’ The Orchard and Brookfield Homes’ Rosebank by the Lake offer such areas.)
Of course, this isn’t set in stone. Whether you choose to build homes that are traditionally designed or homes with open-concept designs depends to a large degree on location and target demographic.
But you should at least be asking yourself this important question: are you 100% certain that this community’s homebuyers want traditional, separate rooms?
