The Nest: The Home Revolution Is Here!

25 Aug 2025 1 Comment

by John Amardeil in Case Studies, Strategies Tags: , ,

I’ve been working in real estate since 1979, so I’ve seen a lot.

My feeling is that we are in a housing crisis because we aren’t approving enough housing. Construction is not the issue – Canadian builders are amongst the most skilled in the world. 

Getting a new home project approved takes several years and can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. That’s where the bottleneck is.

So, I am thrilled to have played a role in shaping the vision for the development of a new home community that’s the most innovative I have ever seen in Ontario. It offers an unmatched opportunity, with detached homes starting from $399K.

Imagine a 100+ acre site with only natural gas and electricity services available. Normally, such a site would have to wait years for municipal water and sewer infrastructure to become available – a costly, time-consuming and complex process. 

Enter The Nest, a revolutionary new home community in Seguin Township, beside Parry Sound, envisioned by Hall Development Group, an arm of Hall Construction. This company is using its expertise in land servicing and earthworks to create private water and sewer infrastructure. Private individual septic systems and wells shared by up to five homes are the reasons this new home community was able to be conceived and launched in record time and at prices never before seen.

It took conviction and past experience to believe in the viability of the vision and then work with the Hall team to execute it. The Nest offers a bold new model for how housing in Ontario can be built and approved.

Also unique are the condo tenure with homeowner land ownership and the siting of the homes in clusters of five homes set into the natural landscaping to minimize disruption, as opposed to overwhelming the environment with rigid subdivision design. Even the architecture of these right-sized homes is refreshing.

Kudos to Seguin Township for embracing Hall’s vision and for helping to make it happen – it’s encouraging to see such bold and progressive leadership.

Visit TheNestLife.ca to learn more. I’d love to hear what you think.

New Park In The Treetops Community

08 Sep 2015 Leave a comment

by John Amardeil in Activities, Case Studies

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Here at BAM, we’re extremely passionate and play an instrumental role in working with our clients. We help them put their best foot forward when they’re developing the look and feel of their new communities. For this reason, it’s extremely exciting for us to see ideas come to fruition as projects move from development to completion. This can often take some time, as many communities have multiple phases, and certain elements may not be a part of the initial phase.

This was the case with the award-winning Treetops community in Alliston. While working on the project, we encouraged the developer, Lou Biffis, to build a destination community. A community that would require you to spend more time driving to it, but once you arrived, you’d get a superior quality of life with all the amenities you could ever need – or want. A community with ample facilities, including recreation, protected green space, trails and dog parks to walk, run, jog and explore. If you take a look at the community plan, you can see that many of these elements have been wrapped into the overall lifestyle that the community offers homebuyers.

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We were extremely excited to see that Treetops recently opened Treetops Park, which boasts seven acres of activities and diversions for every fitness and energy level, including a multi-level tree-themed playground, splash pad, beach volleyball courts, basketball courts, an amphitheater and a promenade running throughout the park, complete with a lookout area. It’s amazing – and a wonderful amenity for all the community.

It’s a great feeling to see elements come to life in communities – especially when we dedicate so much of ourselves to it in its conceptual phase.

A Recent BAM Success Story

31 Oct 2014 Leave a comment

by John Amardeil in Case Studies, You Need to Know

Sean Mason

At BAM, there’s nothing that makes us happier than helping our clients achieve their bottom line goals – in our minds we are the clients. Working with BAM means we become a part of your team and we do everything we can to champion your brand. So you can imagine how excited we get when we’re able to share successes with everyone.

I’d like to share the recent success story from one of our clients, Sean Mason. He’s an exciting new builder in Barrie who is doing some really innovative things. We’re talking a community of truly green homes. From being ENERGY STAR compliant throughout, to the materials used in the construction and the actual community design, they are homes designed to be healthier for you and your family. BAM has a long history with Sean, spanning seven years. Sean had previously led Mason Homes (his father’s company) to be the first ENERGY STAR standard builder in Canada and has twice won BILD’s Green Builder of the Year award – but this community of smart towns is the first for Sean Homes, which is Sean’s own company.

This past weekend it opened to the public, and we couldn’t be happier with the results. There was a great turnout, and a healthy number of homes sold – to say that Sean Homes was well received would be an understatement.

Bringing the Outdoors In: A Good Way to Sell Homes

20 Nov 2012 Leave a comment

by John Amardeil in Case Studies, Strategies

Brookfield Homes' new Panorama View Window was a selling feature at the Fieldstone community.

The Panorama View Window: Let the sunshine in to new homes in Ontario.

People are often surprised by the British fondness for convertible cars. In a country with such cloudy, rainy weather, why on earth would you get a convertible car?

I disagree. If you have few sunny days throughout the year, there is no better way to make the most of them than to drive a convertible, the sun on your face, the wind on your hair.

By the same token, I’ve long thought Ontario homes would benefit from blurring the separation between the outdoors and the indoors, and that the first builder to do so on a mass scale would stand to make a handsome profit.

Luckily, our longstanding client Brookfield Homes agreed. And in their Fieldstone community, which had a very successful preview opening last weekend, Brookfield launched the Panorama View Window.

Running along the rear wall in the kitchen, the Panorama View Window affords an excellent view and lets in plenty of light, effectively bringing the outdoors in.

I haven’t see many homes around with such an expansive window — definitely none in Fieldstone’s price range. I’m positive they played a big part in helping sell as many homes as we did during the opening weekend.

Victory Demands Risks

19 Oct 2012 Leave a comment

by John Amardeil in Case Studies, Strategies

As I said in my previous blog post, BAM and Empire Communities were about to have a baby. The baby is called Victory, and it was born this weekend as we opened by preview appointment only.

Empire's new kitchen

Empire’s new Live-in Kitchen looks rather like a kitchen you’d find in a condo, not a low-rise community. And that’s precisely why it aroused so much interest.

victory's touchscreen displays

We used touchscreen displays throughout the Sales Office.

In my last post I also asked whether Ontario homeowners were ready for homes that are a tad fresher than your average new home. I’m glad to report the numbers back this belief, as we sold quite a few homes this weekend — more than we’d anticipated.

Could this be the beginning of an era where Ontario homebuyers demand modern homes? Is it possible we’re witnessing the birth of a trend where people want to live in designer homes, not in downtown Toronto but in the outskirts as well?

While we’re probably not there yet, one thing is certain — given the somewhat pessimistic forecasts for the national real estate market, builders could use a fresh outlook if they are to continue to sell homes.

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