More often than not, a judge’s expertise is a good thing.

Something important may be about to happen.

Industry outsiders no doubt missed it, given the councillors’ headline-grabbing spat over the TTC that overshadowed most other local news last Monday.

But on the same day, the Toronto City Council asked the province to free the city from the Ontario Municipal Board’s jurisdiction, a measure that its proponents claim would give residents a greater say over what gets built in their neighbourhoods.

This isn’t the first blow to the OMB — only a few months ago, Mississauga called on the province to abolish the Board, which hears appeals of zoning decisions and frequently overturns council.

Indeed, the OMB is no stranger to controversy, having been accused of not keeping itself up-to-date and of acting in a quasi-judicial manner. Recently, a Toronto Star reporter went so far as to call it “a 19th century relic.”

On the other hand, the Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD) says the current system works fine.

“In principle, BILD strongly supports the necessity of the Ontario Municipal Board, by providing an impartial, adjudicative tribunal, further removed from local political pressures,” wrote BILD in a letter addressed to the council.

Moreover, as this article notes, while the OBC is often accused of cozying up to developers, it has also taken decisions that defied corporate interests, such as when it kept Walmart out of Leslieville in 2009.

Local councils certainly have no planning or development training. Their agenda is often short-term, which can prevent them from seeing the big picture.

Given these limitations, I doubt councils will be able to handle disputes between NIMBYs and municipalities, and I worry that they will indefinitely tie up projects.

What are your thoughts?

As you no doubt know, the GTA condo market is on fire. This is good news for us in the industry, but does raise important questions, such as how long will prices continue to rise, and more importantly, whether we’re facing a bubble that could burst anytime.

Last Thursday, I attended a high-rise forum analyzing the GTA condominium market. Organized by BILD, the forum sold out quickly, which is hardly surprising given the significance of the topic at hand.

So if you couldn’t make it to the forum, you’ll likely appreciate the following summary.

According to a Condominium Market Survey that Urbanation carried out last December, 53% of developers, lenders, brokers and consultants surveyed worry about price growth.

Little wonder: the sold index pricing in the Toronto census metropolitan area is up 8% annually to $509 per square foot, compared with $388 per square foot only 4 years ago.

Of course, as the price has gone up, so has the investors’ share of sales, which may reach as much as 80%, according to some in the industry. Indeed, investors are now seeing an increase in incentives designed to lure them rather than homeowners, such as lower down payments, capped closing costs, and guaranteed rental programs.

The problem with rentals is that condo rental appreciation isn’t keeping up with the new index price growth — in fact, index rents declined in the first quarter of last year.

Add to this decline the possibility that investors will experience less price growth, and you get a scenario that could see the Toronto condo market disrupted.

In the end, although we may not have to endure a bubble burst, it pays to act in a way that will mitigate the risks. Possible measures include:

• Keeping 15% to 20% deposits for all units regardless of projects’ percentages sold, eliminating extended deposit structures,
• Eliminating free or inexpensive assignments, and
• Keeping broker commissions at 4%.

What are your thoughts on the GTA condo market?

Who wouldn't?

I was very pleased to learn last week that Mason Homes won EnerQuality’s award for Best Green Marketing Campaign (which we developed).

Called Green for Life, said campaign highlights the immediate, practical benefits that homeowners can derive from living in a Mason home and a Mason community. These include increased health and well-being, as well as saving money thanks to reduced water and energy consumption.

In other words, Green for Life is first and foremost about comfort, economy, and happiness. Saving the environment takes a back seat to the daily reality of most people’s lives.

In this, Green for Life differs from other builders’ green-themed campaigns that make the conservation of natural resources their main selling point.

This doesn’t make either product significantly different from the other. For example, most of these homes are Energy Star qualified. It’s their branding that differs.

To be sure, Mason homeowners are preserving the planet and reducing energy consumption. It’s just that they were sold on a different benefit.

My point? You don’t have to be different to be branded and perceived as different. More importantly, you’re better off not promoting features—it’s by drawing attention to benefits that you will succeed in creating perceived value.

As the article announcing Mason Homes’ award said: Green for Life and Mason Homes did “outstanding work in successfully integrating energy efficiency and a green message into their overall marketing program.”

Many people in the industry still work hard at selling features. In our experience, it’s the benefits that people want to hear about.

One of the challenges that makes this process so fun is trying to present every campaign in a new, thrilling manner.

Take empty nesters. Their kids have moved out. They’re either retired or close to it. Arguably, their outlook of life is not as eager or ambitious as when they became parents or bought their first home.

This is probably why many campaigns aimed at the empty-nester market seem quiet and discreet and almost crusty. Thinking the campaign should mirror what’s perceived as the demographics’ lifestyle, many marketers come up with campaigns that are at best virtually undistinguishable from one another, and at worst just plain ineffective.

Likewise, when it comes to first-time homeowners, many marketers try to conjure a vibrant, sexy lifestyle that they believe reflects the one their target demographic has (or wants to have).

What do consumers want?

All too often we forget in the advertising and marketing industries that people don’t think of campaigns. In fact, they don’t even care for campaigns. They just think about lifestyles.

Yet many new home community campaigns barely touch on lifestyle, promoting instead features and floorplans. Of the few that do actively sell lifestyle, most end up looking generic and uninspired.

So, the first step towards making your target consumer choose the lifestyle you’re promoting is simply to put yourself in their shoes — to look at things from their perspective.

Sometimes, if you work hard enough, this can help you find a lifestyle that your target audience didn’t even know was possible, one that excites them and makes them happy.

In the case of the empty-nester market, our campaign for the Port Hope Golf & Country Club did away with tradition and painted an optimistic image, active image, featuring unexpected touches such as touchscreens in the sales office and musical lyrics peppered on the website.

As a result, Port Hope Golf & Country buyers felt empowered to live an active lifestyle, to understand and appreciate technology, and to feel optimistic about the years ahead.

Concerning first-time homeowners, our latest campaign, Treetops, also tries to break with tradition. The community itself will be extraordinary, featuring 1,800 semis and detached homes in Alliston, Ontario, all of them adjacent to the Nottawasaga Inn and Resort, which offers a stunning array of activities, and is surrounded by 50 acres of forest and parks.

That said, none of the aforementioned are the reasons why they’ll buy a Treetops home — they’ll do it because they want to partake in the lifestyle reflected in this video. It’s a lifestyle that’s not just about being active, but also about happiness and romance and joy. A lifestyle where a touch of the whimsical is present every day, and where life extends beyond your backyard into a fantastic community.

How do we make that happen? For starters, by putting ourselves in the consumers’ shoes.

Here’s what the pollsters found.

Almost 50% of the people polled who make between $50,000 and $60,000 said they’d consider themselves wealthy if they earned at least $100,000. Yet, of the people who actually do make $100,000 or more, only 16% thought of themselves as wealthy.

Is the owner a wealthy person?

It gets better: 43% of the people making over $100,000 said they’d need at least $250,000 a year to be wealthy. Twenty-four per cent said they’d need half a million, and 11% said they’d need at least one million.

The conclusion, it would seem, is that people are never satisfied. This is indeed what the writer herself concluded, as did some of the article’s readers.

Other commenters raised a good point, namely that wealth is not just about your income. For example, a person who earns $35,000 and has little debt is doubtless wealthier than another who makes $200,000 but has prohibitive expenses.

So it’s arguably true that some of the people who were polled aren’t wealthy — even if they’re making $100K.

One way or the other, it’s an undeniable fact of life that most people will never settle for whatever they have. It may be a whole lot better than what they had before. It may even be a whole lot better than what the vast majority of people in the world have. (In fact, if you live in Canada or the US, you automatically are better off than most human beings.)

No matter. Whatever you have now won’t do. You’ll always want more.

And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

I’m not suggesting we should overwork ourselves to death. Nor am I saying we should take on expenses beyond our means. And I’m certainly not saying we should work to the point where we barely spend time with our family.

Yet if we didn’t want more, we’d still be back in the caves. We wouldn’t have evolved as much as we have. We wouldn’t have modern medicine and airplanes and heated homes and more food than we know what to do with.

Of course, this isn’t to say the world is perfect. Senseless wars are still fought. Children still die from preventable diseases. Women are still oppressed. Even more depressingly, these things will likely continue to happen for quite some time. Perhaps forever.

But the evidence is that these awful realities have decreased throughout the last few centuries — and will continue to decrease.

Why? Because we fought. We innovated. We wanted more — and we reached out and we got it. This is our basic impulse, and it can take us too far, but it can certainly improve our lives.

So next time someone asks whether you’re wealthy, realize that you probably are, and then go about becoming wealthier, not necessarily because you make more money, but maybe because you reduce your expenses, or because you put some of that money to use in a way that contributes to making someone somewhere wealthier.

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.

Indeed, according to this Forbes article, half the New Year’s resolutions are out the window by July. Only about 10 percent of us maintain our resolve by the time the following New Year’s rolls around.

Worst of all, many of us go on to make the same resolution next year, telling ourselves that this is it; this time around we will stick to it.

Does this make New Year’s resolutions pointless?

Was it the best it could be?

Of course, asking this very question raises a larger question: is setting goals pointless?

In my view, the problem lies not with resolutions themselves, but in failing to plan ahead, and in setting too ambitious goals that we’re not fully committed to in the first place.

I am a strong believer in planning ahead. I believe in mapping out the road ahead and in setting ambitious (yet achievable) goals. And I believe this is important not just on a personal level, but also on a professional level.

I also happen to like the idea of beginning the New Year with a clean slate and a clear direction in my mind.

So to avoid wandering around, and to make 2012 the best year our company has ever had, I have outlined what our goals for the New Year are. I will also discuss them with my team, which not only opens up the field for discussion, but also amounts to making my resolutions (somewhat) public. (Incidentally, this has been proven to help people accomplish their goals.)

Do you believe in resolutions and goals, whether at the beginning of the New Year or at a different time? Do you set them at a personal level, professional level, or both? Do you share them publicly?

More to come?

Many people worry that our housing market will burst. Others say we’ll be fine. This article summarizes both points of view.

Published last week in The Globe and Mail, it depicts a best-case scenario where homes prices will likely end 2012 flat despite an initial slight contraction.

In the worst-case scenario painted by the author, a spike in the unemployment rate and a pullback in credit demand might make the housing market experience a hard landing.

I for one don’t think there is a bubble in our housing market. Bubbles tend to grow quickly before they explode, and they never last long.

The current state of affairs has lasted too long to be called a bubble, although it may merit being called a balloon. If so, I hope it won’t explode, as it’s very inflated right now.

What’s your take? Do you think we should brace ourselves? Or will everything work out fine?

One way or the other, I thank you for reading my blog and wish you a very happy New Year!

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.

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.