Blade, Part V
Birth of a Condo: Pent-up demand + master marketing = success
April 30, 2010
RYAN STARR
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
In this five-part series, the Toronto Star follows the development of a highrise condominium — Blade in Brampton — from site selection through to the sales launch, offering an in-depth look at the logistical challenges and critical decisions that emerge along the way.
For years, Doris Grottoli would drive by the old Dominion Skate factory in downtown Brampton and think, “this would make a great place for lofts.”
The century-old building, though defunct and derelict in recent times, boasts heritage architecture and a choice location: in the middle of the city and across the road from a GO Transit station.
Grottoli, a local small business owner, wasn’t the only one who considered it prime real estate.
Brampton council has long wanted to have the factory site redeveloped and serve as a catalyst in a downtown revitalization. And Toronto-based developer Preston Group, which acquired the property several years ago, was happy to lend a hand.
Grottoli began to notice signs heralding the launch of Blade, a striking 27-storey glass condo tower that will incorporate the skate factory into its base. “As soon as I saw an ad in the paper, I called,” she says.
Grottoli was fifth in line at the project’s grand opening Feb. 13. She and her husband bought a one-bedroom-plus-den unit on the highest floor they could get. It wasn’t a loft, but it was the right fit for them.
“We’ve been watching the downtown core for a good 10 years,” she says. “And we wanted to live in that building specifically.”
Grottoli was joined at the opening by a parade of prospective purchasers: young families, older couples, younger couples and parents with grown children looking for a starter place.
As folks strolled through the Blade sales centre that Saturday, they perused suite layouts, went on virtual building tours via touch screen, and chatted with salespeople while waiters zipped around with trays of hors d’oeuvres.
The heavy traffic at the grand opening was testament to the pent-up demand for highrise condos in Brampton, a market that has been underserved in that regard.
Debbie Cosic, a partner with In2ition Realty, says this translated into healthy sales numbers both during the launch — In2ition had some 400 appointments booked for opening day — and at broker preview events in previous months.
“We’re right where we want to be,” she said in an interview a week after the opening. “At the moment, we’re sitting at just a couple of units short of 50 per cent of the (349-unit) building sold.
“People might say those aren’t great numbers compared to Toronto,” she acknowledges, “but for Brampton, it’s exceptional.”
Looking back, Cosic was surprised by the strong response of the local broker community, which fully got behind the Blade sales effort.
“Our competition had said there isn’t a brokerage market there; that it’s very shallow and you won’t get big numbers from them,” she says. “We said that’s baloney, and we proved them wrong by doing over 100 deals with local brokers.
“That proves they can be rallied and brought into the fold, just like downtown Toronto brokers. You just have to work harder at it.”
Another big difference with the Brampton market, Cosic notes, was that the majority of Blade buyers have turned out to be end-users, not investors, as is often the case in Toronto.
“Downtown, our buildings are 60, 70, 80 per cent investor-driven. In Brampton we’re finding that we’ve had probably 60 per cent end-users and 40 per cent investors, which is what every builder wants.”
The marketing of Blade was weighted heavily toward end-users, particularly young single people who commuted by GO Transit. “Commuters were a big target for us and they definitely turned out to be huge,” Cosic says.
Still, helping Brampton’s prospective purchasers get familiar with the condo-buying process was a challenge.
“It’s not as deep of a condo market there, so there’s still an education needed on the whole concept of condos,” she says. “It’s about going back to the basics. They needed to understand maintenance fees, interim occupancy, how much money they need down.
“We’re definitely cutting into new territory in Brampton.”
In the end, though, the sales strategy for Blade was executed as well as Cosic could have hoped for.
“We had a very clear and concise game plan and we followed it step by step,” she says. “We’re at step 10 now, with another 10 steps to go before handing over the building to the developer.”
GRAND OPENING
People might have beaten a path to the Blade grand opening. But the project’s marketing maven, Gerry Ryan, took some last-minute steps to ensure the event generated sufficient buzz.
On the day of the launch, he bought front page cover wraps for several hundred copies of a certain Toronto tabloid newspaper and used them to do a final push for Blade, offering would-be buyers the chance to win a new Hyundai or a five-year GO Transit pass.
To catch the full attention of commuters, six scantily clad “sunny” women were dispatched to hand out the newspapers at the GO station. “It would have worked better in the summer,” Ryan says, “but it got the message across.”
It was an example of what the owner of Ryan Design Inc. calls guerrilla marketing, a strategy he credits for much of the success in selling Blade.
Ryan’s firm also employed Bluetooth proximity marketing for the project. The technique involved the sending out of text messages to hand-held devices within a range of up to 180 metres of the Blade sales office, primarily aimed at GO users.
“We marketed harder to the commuter,” Ryan says.
The messages would contain special deals and offers, part of an effort to entice GO riders to drop by the sales centre and find out more about the project. If the message was opened, Ryan got the person’s contact details for future purposes.
“We recently got back the results of the Bluetooth marketing and we’ve had an amazing number of people accepting the signal we sent out,” Ryan says.
“I can’t actually track how many ended up showing up at the sales office. But I was able to get my message out, and that’s all I needed to do.”
ACCORDING TO PLAN
Eddy Goldstein of the Preston Group, the developer of Blade, was pleased with how the project has been rolled out by his team.
“So far it’s going according to what we had in mind,” he says.
Goldstein has spent the bulk of his development career with Preston building single-family homes and subdivisions. Blade was his first foray into the world of highrise condos.
Given the success of the experience, he says Preston will be taking on more condo projects in the coming years.
The firm is currently planning another highrise for Brampton: a 27-storey tower with 225 suites near Bramalea city centre.
“The cost of buying a single-family detached starter home is very expensive these days,” he says. “Condos are cheaper to get into; they have a lower price point.
“I think they’re the way of the future.”
Catch up on the series so far:
Part
One: Site Selection
Part
Two: Hanging on to heritage elements
Part Three:
Blade inspires some edgy marketing
Part Four: A case of sharp marketing