Didn't See It Coming By Marc Stoiber

Spirit Bay is a whole new kettle of fish when it comes to real estate marketing. The village, on the southern coast of Vancouver Island in Canada, was developed based on traditional principles of community design: Building light on the land, with homes following the contours of topography – instead of blasting the entire site level, Designing narrow roads with plenty of twists – ensuring slow driving and more walking, Building hundred-year-homes with materials that outlast (by far) those used in other new homes, Tapping renewable heating and cooling using ocean thermal, Working in partnership with the First Nation band that owns the land, to ensure their values are built into the Spirit Bay manifest. Now for the rub. Perception. Spirit Bay is a textbook case of how to get sustainability right, and sometimes wrong, in real estate marketing. It was, for me, a journey with a definite learning curve. I was asked to do a presentation on the marketing of Spirit Bay by the Urban Design Institute. Prior to