Improving Certainty in Real Estate Development? Canadians Want "Purpose-Led"
An interesting recent study has found "that more than half of Canadian consumers — 55 per cent — prefer to buy brands that reflect their personal values and beliefs, and are staying away from brands that don't. An equal percentage of American respondents felt the same way. More than a third (37 per cent) of Canadian respondents in the global survey said they have stopped doing business with a company because they found its actions objectionable."
The subtitle reads "Businesses that aren’t “purpose-led” stand to lose out in an era when consumers see brands as extensions of themselves."
So...how is this relevant to real estate development and city-building? Let me share our experience with this.
While other industries are using and adopting this data and using it to transform their products, services and the way they do business, other industries are slower to adopt and integrate this critical intel into their business models. In my experience over the past 18 years leading over $1 B in real estate development, I have led projects that have been exclusively "profit-driven" and I have led other projects that have aligned "purpose" and key social values into the projects from the outset alongside key profit drivers and targets. There is an exponential difference in outcomes on all metrics of project success - for investors and communities- when we align purpose with profit in real estate development.
As this research shows, the way people make choices is changing dramatically from previous decades. In real estate development, with increasingly complex market conditions, urban site conditions, and political environments, we are working to gain social licence for projects to proceed from diverse stakeholders, to satisfy political and city interests, differentiate our projects in a competitive marketplace and all the while deal with escalating land, consulting and construction costs. It's an intense juggling act and as we are all learning to some degree, "business- as-usual " just doesn't cut it anymore to reduce risks and increase project certainty, and ensure success. In my experience developing projects, when we focus on "purpose" alongside our key profit targets at the project conception stage and throughout the project, we achieve the following results:
Align stakeholders with the project and develop champions for the project
Bring politicians and staff onside to support project
Increase project certainty early in the development process
Stronger and faster marketing and sales
Reduce project costs - consulting and financing
Faster project approval timelines
Unlocking stuck projects
Overcoming community opposition (or preferably avoiding it early on)
Employee attraction and retention
For more information to discuss how we achieve these results, and demonstrated projects that have adopted this approach to achieve these results, connect with us.
Feel free to also share your experiences around improving project certainty and using or not using "purpose" in your projects??
We would love to discuss! carla@purposedrivenroi.com