CONDO ARCHIVES

Brand Decline

February 2024

Residential building developers take great care in developing, promoting and protecting their brand.  This is how they sell condominium properties.

How something looks and is conveyed presents a strong message.  We see this in the importance of brands for Coca Cola, Amazon, Apple, Airbnb and Uber.  Canadians and Americans convey their unique brands to the world to attract visitors and immigrants.

Branding is what allows developers to promote and sell condominium properties to those that relate to their messaging.  That brand is evident by the quality of units and common areas, availability and type of amenities, location and other identifiable factors.  Owners may be perceived as being in a certain age or income demographic, interested in a healthy lifestyle, or partial to the community’s social activities.

What message is your management and the condo board sending to your community?

What message is your management and the condo board sending to your community?

Once management of a community is handed over from the developer to a condo board, this branding can be abandoned at great cost to the community.  The condo board facilitates branding in the communications they allow to be distributed, committees they create and support, how the building is maintained, the way in which meetings are conducted and how much information is shared with owners.

Residents take pride in the branding of their home and how it is maintained.  The amount prospective buyers are prepared to pay for a property is affected by branding.

A proud and active community engenders a shared responsibility leading to greater participation in management of and care for the home.  It leads to fewer problems, lower costs and greater socialization as everyone seeks to contribute to their home.

Branding is simply a business term to explain the cumulative effect of these activities.  Culture is a less formal term for the same thing.